Affording College: Top Five Articles of the Week – April 12, 2013

Welcome to our second Weekly Roundup! There were quite a few interesting and useful articles on college this week. Articles published have covered everything from admissions to arguing for the value of a college degree. Without further adieu, here are the top five articles of the week.

Applying to College

• Getting Personal: Writing College Essays for the Common Application. Amanda Christy Brown and Katherine Schulten offer up their expertise for helping students writing college essays for the common application over at The Learning Network of the New York Times.

Financial Aid

• Mitchell Schnurman: What student loan crisis? Most college graduates have manageable debt. From DallasNews.com, Mitchell Schnurman offers a dissenting opinion on the student loan crisis. Is it really as bad as everyone says? In his opinion most college graduates have manageable debt, with 9 in 10 owing less than $50,000, and 40% of borrowers owing less than $10,000.

Affording College and College Value

• U.S. tuition must match degrees’ true worth. Marina Kracht at The Daily Aztec (San Diego State University’s newspaper), who grew up in France, maintains that college tuition is simply too expensive in the US. Among the many points she raises about the negative consequences of this is that many intelligent US citizens are lost to other countries schools that are more affordable. It’s a cost-prohibitive “brain drain.”
• College Tuition: How America Can Lower It. James Banks offers up an article that gives solutions to the problem described in the article above. Much of a students’ tuition goes to expensive college administration departments, and tenured faculty; not to mention room and board. While not a “silver bullet,” Mr. Banks thinks online and other technological solutions could eliminate or lessen some of these expensive realities.
• The Biggest Myth About College Graduates and the Recession: Busted. In addition to all these articles covering expensive tuition and student loans, many believe college graduates are suffering even more because of the recession. The lack of employment opportunities and crushing student debt have brought the value of college degree into question. Jordan Weissmann at The Atlantic writes an article that attempts to bust the myth that the recession has had any effect on a college degree’s value.

That’s all we have for this week. Check back next week for more updates, and have a great weekend!