the Sam Jackson College Experience

CollegeScholarships.org kindly sent along this really nice graphic about students loans today and the way their costs accrue to students over time. It just scratches the surface of some of the issues about student loans, but it’s a valuable quick-look-tool. I wish it included information about financial aid, which I think is a very important counterpoint to consider when looking at student loan sizes and tuition prices, but still quite interesting all the same.

I haven’t written about loans or financial aid in some time… big, scary numbers like the ones in this graphic make me want to revisit the issue. Especially when I start thinking about grad school. (!)

student loans by the numbers

(via www.collegescholarships.org)

Today I am very excited to announce that the college admissions scholarship I originally outlined and later updated is finally off the ground: myUsearch has stepped up to the plate and is offering $1000 to the best student essay answering the following questions: What has been the most frustrating part of your college admissions process? Why is it important for colleges and universities to change this? What suggestions do you have for colleges and universities to try to relieve your frustration and the frustration of your fellow students?

The program I originally envisioned would be specifically linked to an effort to promote the development of new resources for students in the college admissions / higher ed marketing spaces. I remember how frustrating and painful college admissions was–that’s why I started this blog, and why I continue to work to try to make things better. With my younger sister (now 15) just gearing up to apply to college, and the demographics and admissions figures ever-worsening, there is no better time for a scholarship like this one which will hopefully bring us all some really great new ideas. I am going to work to make sure that the best of these suggestions received get heard by schools.

The scholarship is open to fall ‘08 freshman and those students applying for 2009 (important update as of 5/22!). pursuing an associate or bachelor degree at an accredited U.S. postsecondary institution with a combined household income of $100,000 or less. If that describes you, apply today! If it doesn’t, tell a friend for whom it might be applicable. More rules and instructions after the break in this post.

I will be involved in the judging, and personally I would encourage participants to write about ways that new technology (especially the internet and new media) could help improve the college admissions / higher education process — basically, I’m hoping to see some really great stories and ideas which will then be put into action convincing colleges to make these reforms happen!

I originally wanted to organize a scholarship from the ground up myself, but it turns out that this is quite tricky! Having myUsearch administer the scholarship proved to be a good alternative. I do want to thank all of my friends and colleagues who were ready to put money on the table for my proposed scholarship, and I would say that I hope to be able to do more in this direction, long term. This is going to be a great start.

More details in the days ahead! Complete Press Release and instructions below.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a Yale student, it’s a nice reaffirmation of the resources available when I load the New York Times webpage and find a nice photo of the squash courts in an article about schools with massive endowments. Only in late January, when that happened, it wasn’t Yale at all–it was my high school, Phillips Exeter Academy. I could even spot some of my friends in the photo (not featured here).

The article begins by profiling Curtis Thomas, a student made able to attend Exeter thanks to its generous financial aid. Curtis is really cool, I don’t know him especially well but did work with him on the Martin Luther King Day committee; in any event, I can certainly say that I’m very glad Exeter has the enormous pile of money to bring him and people in similar positions to Exeter.

Despite Exeter’s expanding commitments, which include a new promise to pay the full cost for any student whose family income is less than $75,000, the school’s endowment keeps growing. Last year — fueled by gifts from wealthy alumni and its own successful investments — it crossed the $1 billion mark, up from just over $500 million in 2002.

Exeter may be a particularly successful example, but its ballooning endowment also reflects a broader trend. In the 10 years through the 2005-6 academic year, the number of students at independent schools, which does not count parochial schools, rose just 11.6 percent, according to the National Association of Independent Schools. Over the same period, the average endowment per student, adjusted for inflation, increased by 93.5 percent.

So the rich are getting richer, both individuals and institutionally–independent school spending per student is up 40% between 1999 and 2004, versus 28% for public schools; at the high end of things, Exeter-style, things

Over a recent breakfast in Exeter’s cafeteria, Tyler C. Tingley, Exeter’s principal, said the school had commissioned a report showing that in 1980, 40 percent of American families could afford to pay tuition at Phillips Exeter, but by 2004 that number had declined to just 6 percent.

The ability of Exeter and other wealthy institutions to underwrite students helps explain why they may enjoy an advantage over other independent schools in competing for the best students. [...]

“If your selection pool is only 6 percent of the population,” Mr. Tingley, the principal, said, “that is a small percent to draw from. We are trying to create a level playing field. It used to be that we gave financial aid to 34 percent of the student body. Now it is 46 percent. We anticipate it will increase further as a result of the changes.”

Now, it’s striking to see that Exeter is in the top 25 endowments for ALL private schools–including colleges. I knew many friends who were sad to realize how much they might end up lacking for resources after they left high school. Here at Yale, I’m better off, but it can still be mind-boggling. Looking at this story about rich old schools doling out big bucks for financial aid sounds positively heart-warming: for whatever income disparity there might be, and whatever wealth gap, at least attempts are being made to mitigate the difference… right?

Not so fast. At the high end of things, Exeter type schools have that flexibility. But for schools that don’t run capital campaigns in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, they still want to compete for the dollars that students from rich families bring, as well as searching for the best students. Even Exeter does this. It says it looks for “students from every quarter” and it makes sure that it doesn’t overlook the “extremely wealthy” quarter (not that that’s 25%). For schools which don’t have the same resources, what can this mean?

“Private school is a luxury, and rich families want the best facilities,” said Michael Gary, director of admissions at Exeter. “All too often fund-raising is about the buildings and the sports facilities. The schools need them to attract the wealthy families. They don’t have high on their priorities providing access to kids who can’t afford it.”

The schools that want to attract students have to choose to spend on aid or facilities if they can’t compete on both–and in a financial bind, they often choose facilities. Something to remember about all of those bulging endowments. Exeter had lots of its endowment tied up only for athletic or other restricted purposes. The best of all RIDICULOUS endowed things? There is a prize, given out on prize day, to any student who receives the same prize that their mother or father received when they were a student. To my great delight, in recent years it has garnered some booing and hissing. Its recipients still shrug, and go and collect their money for being both talented at whatever achievement they’re receiving… and being legacies… and the cycle continues.

At the start of February I announced my desire to organize a scholarship through my site. A little more than a month later, things are really going strong. Here’s where things now stand–still working things out:

The Idea: A contest to propose the best new ideas for using new media, the internet, and technology to improve the college admissions process and/or higher education marketing in general.

The contest will be sponsored (at least in part) by some of those same agents most want to hear about the ideas for reform and who are looking for innovative solutions. They’ll have direct exposure to the ideas so that they could be better implemented! After a winner (winners? still fundraising) is chosen, their proposal / essay and other top ideas will be put online for everyone to see and learn, leading to a great dialogue about ways to make things better for both students and the college / marketing forces who want to engage them.

Participants: Current high school students, but also recent high school grads who are now undergraduates: students who have recent experience with the

The Prize: Cash towards college education! I have been working hard over the last month not just with midterms but also trying to drum up support for this scholarship idea. My original target was to get ~$500 from a wide range of individuals and organizations in higher education and college admissions fields as well as general sponsorship and donation (technology companies, anyone?). We’re getting close to that target! But wait, things get better…

The other day, I was very happy to learn that I had just won a brand new Toshiba x205 laptop in a recent Gizmodo contest! This is a really nice laptop, worth $1400, which would definitely make a great addition to someone’s dorm room. 17″ screen, 4 speakers and subwoofer, 250 GB hard drive, nice Nvidia GeForce 8700M graphics card… I know college laptop costs can be pretty significant, so hopefully this could help blunt that for whoever wins. Hopefully we will be able to find it a happy home soon! I’ll have more details when it arrives at home in a week or two.

Thanks to Toshiba for indirectly sponsoring it… I had been trying to lobby other laptop manufacturers but so far have been unable to get in touch with the right people. The Lenovo VP for USA was supposed to come to Yale this past weekend, but had to cancel–my plan had been to corner him and ask. In any event, I am absolutely still interested in looking for more partners, and if I had more to give out we could offer it to more people and really expand things.

________

So! I now have a laptop and a few hundred dollars cash ready to give away, and I’m pretty psyched. It makes me want to set my sights higher, but to do that I need more help from my readers (and people they know…). So please forward around my request for more help in organizing this scholarship, and let me know if you want to get involved or if you have any leads on people who might want to get involved. Either send me an e-mail at sam [at] samjackson [dot] org or use the contact form (or comment here)! Still hammering out more details and will solicit some prompts and start working on framing the questions for scholarship applicants soon, and things will definitely keep growing as I add participants.

For would-be sponsors: This is a really great opportunity to give something (a very small donation, even!) while getting a lot (of good publicity, exposure, and of course, useful insight and new ideas). It’s all going to a good cause and so I highly recommend getting involved! Alternately, if you feel you don’t want to give money to any random student talking about college admissions, and would rather give that money just to me, I still have open advertising inventory for the new few months, so let me know.

Princeton University has decided not to raise its tuition for the upcoming year, the New York Times reports. Room and Board will still increase 4.2% to $10,980.

University officials said the strong performance of Princeton’s investments, which earned almost 20 percent last year, helped pave the way for the decision, along with generous donations by alumni and an increase in the size of the student body. Officials said a decision by trustees’ to spend more of the endowment, which totaled about $13 billion in June, also helped.

Hmm… strong investment performance, eh? Where do I recall hearing about another endowment getting really, really good returns?

Princeton’s provost, Christopher Eisgruber, who heads the university’s priorities committee, said in a statement today that the committee was “delighted that the university’s financial circumstances allowed the trustees to approve its recommendations for addressing highest priority needs.”

The committee’s recent report said that making higher education accessible to all qualified students was one of its considerations and that Princeton’s tuition increases had been “at the bottom end of the university’s peer group” in the past 10 years.

Apparently Williams froze tuition in 2000-2001, but otherwise I don’t see too many places being particularly friendly about the ever-raising costs of attendance. GWU has a nice plan in place which locks tuition in place on a per-student basis, set when they first begin attending, and guarantees institutional aid won’t decrease.

This comes, interestingly enough, at the same time as the release of a UCLA study about financial burdens leading people away from 1st choices. AP wire, via NYT.

Many students are settling for their second- and third-choice colleges, at least partly for financial reasons, a new survey says. The study, by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, surveyed more than 271,000 students at 393 colleges and universities. It found 32.7 percent of freshmen at a college other than their first choice. Almost half of those at their second choice had been accepted at their first. Of the students accepted at their first-choice university who did not enroll, a third said they could not afford it. Other reasons included geography and athletics. [emphasis mine]

Tuition costs won’t stop me from going to Yale, but they won’t make it any easier, either. We got reminder-flyers in our P.O. boxes this week about filling out the FAFSA. I wish the higher education scene could take a closer look at costs for students, particularly middle class students, rather than squeezing more money out to pay for quite lovely expansions of programs. It’s not fair to justify this just by saying “lots of this money goes to financial aid!” because tuition isn’t quite the sliding scale certain income taxes are (or could be). If a third of first-choicers couldn’t attend because of cost, that’s a problem. In the age of 4 billion dollar capital campaigns, when is it enough to take a step back and look at the burden these tuition raises are putting on students who don’t fall to the income extremes?

It was nice to see the House do some good student loans work this past week (Miller’s moustache looked great on CSPAN; we watched the vote come in) but it was too bad that the Bush administration also saw fit to continue subsidizing a student-loans company that was and is defrauding the American people. Can’t win ‘em all.