Arjun Muralidharan, aka the Productive Student, has a list of 14 ways college students can strive for greenness on Earth. You’ll want to do them all to slow the destruction of the planet, but you’ll actually do them to save yourself some coinage.

14 Ways to Be a Greener Student (and Save Money Doing It):

-Eat less meat or go vegetarian
-Do more efficient laundry
-Buy groceries with less packaging
-Eat out less
-Buy a greener computer
-Optimize your commute
-Decompose organic waste
-Bring your own bag for shopping
-Recycle paper
-Buy recycled notepads and textbooks
-Put old and unwanted textbooks up for sale
-Use a durable water bottle
-Be conscious about lights everywhere
-Reduce and manage electronic devices

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(recycled notebooks)

Oh, it’s coming. Denying it won’t help you. Fall Term is starting up soon whether you’re ready or not. When the first week of classes have been attended and while you’re still focusing on first chapters, small quizzes, tolerable assignments, and the finer points on your professors’ syllabi, at the very least please skim this: How to Study: A Brief Guide. Learning how to learn is, how do you say, crucial, of the essence, invaluable, indispensable and totally effing necessary.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(take notes)

Not being a gambling girl by nature, I’m nonetheless fascinated by Alec Torelli’s post about ditching college to play poker. As a career. Never in a thousand years could I leave school for the gambling life. First of all, I dislike the odds. Secondly, I know way too much math to ever see gambling as anything more than a little bit of skill laced through a huge pile of less-than guaranteed luck.

I’ve gambled twice in my entire life: I bought one $2 lottery ticket and won $20, and I played my pre-decided limit of $20 in a slot machine in Vegas and won $60. Done. Never have to gamble again. Do you know what the odds are of playing twice and winning twice? Total crap. The probability of my being that far ahead again is insanely low, so there is absolutely no reason for me to hand over one cent more.

I clearly have a bad attitude about gambling and the mathematically challenged chuckleheads who continually shove their money down the toilet. That being said, I’m still somewhat impressed by Mr. Torelli’s post. He’s not an idiot, and despite myself I enjoyed reading his argument (see below).

While everyone wrote [college] off as a mandatory rite of passage that follows high school, I had my doubts. I did what I knew best and ran the numbers. I began by breaking down the cost of a standard degree at a supposedly lucrative university.

University of Southern California annual fees

Tuition: $ 40,384
Insurance: 1,040
Fees: 614
Books: 1,500
Room/Board: 11,458
Personal / Misc: 1200
Transportation: 828
Season Football Tickets: 145
Total Cost: 57,169
Estimated Hours or Opportunity Cost (including studying): 50/ week x 40 weeks = 2,000 hours

Note: For relevance, these numbers were updated for the 2009/2010 school year, copied verbatim from the USC website.

Multiply this figure by a minimum of 4 years and you get a stunning $228,676 and 8,000 hours of time. Does this sound absurd to anyone besides me? I couldn’t help but think to myself, “do you know what I could do with these resources? Shit give me the money and I won’t go to school.” More…

Who knows what his future will be like, but at this point he’s doing well and makes a decent argument for his current path in life. His numbers work out as long as he’s staying ahead, but, you know, what are the odds his luck won’t run out?

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Ten more days until taxes are due for the 2009 tax year. And by “due” I mean that they must be postmarked by April 15th, 2010 or you’re in trouble with the IRS.

If you’re doing your own taxes, it’ll be fairly simple. College tuition, scholarships, and college tax credit rules make it slightly more paperwork-y. If your parents are footing your higher education bill, then it’s their taxes that will be wrapped 80 billion times over with red tape. Fun!

Below please find several resources for pertinent tax-time information for college students and their parental units.

2009 Tax Year Deadline: April 15th, 2010
Tax Credits, Deductions, and Tips for Students
U.S. Taxes: Education Credits
IRS: Tax Benefits for Education
College Tuition Tax Credits
The College Tax Breaks Explained
The New, Improved College Tax Credit

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Obama is upgrading the higher education system in this country (we hope), starting with an increase in Pell Grant award amounts. What does that mean for Pell Grant applicants? Who qualifies and for how much? Basically, the results of the FAFSA number-crunching are what determine a student’s eligibility.

Sandra Proulx lays it all out and takes a closer look at Pell Grant qualifications:

…there is no “one size fits all” recipient.
Keep in mind, the Pell Grant is awarded to undergraduates with a high degree of unmet financial need; most Pell money goes to students with a total family income around or below $20,000. But, students whose families have a total income of up to $50,000 may be eligible too. In 2005-2006, students with family incomes of less than $20,000 accounted for 57% of Pell Grant recipients.

…Pell Grant qualifications can be affected by a student’s enrollment status as well as income earned through employment, too. Think about it – if you are enrolled half-time, your tuition is less and therefore you will require less aid. Undergraduates who work while they are enrolled are more likely to have incomes that decrease their eligibility for federal need-based aid (ahh, didn’t think of that, did you?). Some low-income students may even find themselves ineligible for Pell Grants because they are enrolled part time at very low cost colleges, or they work while they are enrolled, or do both. More…

Further Reading:

Excellent FAFSA Resources

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Studying for the California Bar exam? Have an extra $1000 burning a hole in your freshly-law-degreed butt-pocket? Then by all means check out BarMax: California Edition. One of the only iPhone apps to cost that much money, its creator, Mike Ghaffary, a JD/MBA ‘06 Harvard grad, says it has everything one might require to study up for the bar.

Ghaffary has an MBA and as of December 2009, is a member of the California Bar; so he’s got that whole I’m business savvy and I studied for and conquered the bar exam thing going for him.

As with all things iPhone, it’s portable and weighs a lot less than the fifty pounds of books you’d be buying and dragging around town if you were to go the dead-tree route. So handy! Also, if you contact BarMax, they’ll send you a free trial version so you can evaluate the materials before forking over a decade’s worth of ramen money.

BarMax: California Edition, available now in the iPhone’s App Store for $999.99, is a study guide for the California Bar Exam. Harvard lawyers oversaw development of the app, which weighs in at 1 GB and includes outlines, lectures, a study calendar, and real questions and essays from previous exams. The only comparable app available now is from BarBri, but you must be enrolled in the company’s $3000 to $4000 classes to use most of the features.

TechCrunch reports that Mike Ghaffary, a former law student and current director of business development at TrialPay, envisioned BarMax as an alternative to BarBri’s pricey classes and digital offerings. Ghaffary partnered with successful app developers in Los Angeles, and enlisted some fellow Harvard Law alumni to guide development. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Here’s a quick video showcasing the college student experience with eTextbooks on tablet devices. It’s cool. (If you’re into that sort of thing.)

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Have I mentioned the awesomeness that is Flat World Knowledge? I’m fairly certain that I have. They were doing good things in the textbook world back in September of 2008, and now they’re teaming up with Bookshare to provide alternative textbook options to students requiring non-traditional textbook modalities.

Students who are blind, have low vision, or have a learning disability that requires computer-generated speech and highlighted text soon will have more resources after publisher Flat World Knowledge announced Dec. 14 that it will make its content available to Bookshare, the largest web-based library for people with print disabilities.

Bookshare, which has 75,000 members worldwide, will add 11 new digital textbooks to its online library, which has been bolstered in the past year by contributions from colleges and universities hoping to bring reading material to students who can’t see standard print or can’t turn a page. More…

Further Reading:

Partnership a Boon for Alternative Textbooks
Bookshare.org: Books Without Barriers
FlatWorldKnowledge.com
Flat World Knowledge
Buying Textbooks: New, Used, Rented or Digital
Custom: Cool for Sneakers, Not for Textbooks

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Kay M. McClenney, whose day job involves being the director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, is a contributing writer for the NY Times blog, The Choice, which focuses on college admissions advice. Dr. McClenney just posted part 5 of a week-long series answering readers’ questions about community college.

Guidance Office Posts:

Answers About Community Colleges, Part 1
Answers About Community Colleges, Part 2
Answers on Community Colleges, Part 3
Answers on Community Colleges, Part 4
Answers on Community College, Part 5

Further Reading:

Too Much Enrollment, Not Enough Funding
The Community College Guide
Community College Before the Four-Year School
Community College vs. University

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Again with the slapping. This time it’s for the jackasses in charge of higher education in this country. If you still feel they (the schools, the loan people, and the government) aren’t lacking in smarts and high-moral-ground-standing cojones, then please read this excerpt from WSJ’s Journal Editorial Report.

It’s a conversation between Paul Gigot, Naomi Schaefer Riley, and Dan Henninger regarding the cost of college, who’s in charge of making it cost so damn much, and the three-year-degree option. It’s buried three conversations down in the transcripts, so I’m posting the conversation in its entirety.

Also, when I tried to narrow it down to just the really good, informative chunks, ninety-nine percent of the conversation made my slapping hand twitch, so I figured it needed to be posted in complete form. Not long, not boring, and full of jaw-clenching tidbits about the Orwellian state of higher education. (Spoiler alert: They’re all bastards.)

Gigot: It’s a trend that most parents are keeping an anxious eye on: the skyrocketing cost of a college education. According to a new report by the College Board, those costs continued to rise last year despite a 2.1% decline in the Consumer Price Index. Hit hard by state budget cuts, four-year public colleges raised tuition and fees by an average of 6.5%, while prices at private colleges rose 4.4%. Add room and board, and the average cost of attendance at a public four-year college is now more than $15,000 a year. At private colleges, the price tag is $35,000. The sticker shock has led some, including Tennessee senator and former education secretary Lamar Alexander, to push for a three-year degree program at the college level.

We’re back with Dan Henninger and Steve Moore. And also joining us, The Wall Street Journal’s deputy Taste Page editor, Naomi Schaefer Riley.

Naomi, why do college costs keep rising even if the price level doesn’t for everyone else?

Ms. Riley: Well, it’s a third-party-payer system. I mean basically what you have is, colleges know they can keep raising the price, and they know that the government, through financial aid programs and various grants that they give to universities, both public and private, is basically going to pick up the difference. Unfortunately, for middle-class parents, it doesn’t always work out that way. They’re not picking up all of the difference for them, but colleges keep raising the sticker price.

Gigot: Because there’s income limits on who gets the subsidies, but the subsidies are vast–I mean, the Pell Grants, direct grants for people. There are basically subsidized loans, and then there are subsidies for saving for school too, which is how a lot of middle-class parents help. Are you saying there’s a kind of chasing-your-tail quality here? The tuition goes up, subsidies follow, and then the people say, tuition can go up again, and then subsidies have to go up again?

Ms. Riley: That’s absolutely true. And then in addition to that, you also get a kind of arms race among the colleges. I mean, you get a situation where, first of all, it turns out that parents think the college is better if they raise a price. So if you see a $50,000 cost on college–which by the way, happened this year.

Gigot: Where is that?

Ms. Riley: Middlebury College. It costs $50,000 for tuition, room and board.

Gigot: In Vermont.

Ms. Riley: Yes, for this year. Vermont, you know, a very high-cost-of-living state. And, you know, but parents see that sticker price, and they assume, “Oh that must be a great college education.” So, you know, it’s–all of the wrong incentives are in place. And then colleges are spending money on things like landscaping and fancy food programs and Wi-Fi in the bathrooms and, you know, it’s really hard to sort of figure out where the quality is.

Gigot: I have a hard time imagining. I barely used a PC, Dan.

Henninger: Well, you know, it’s going to get worse, Paul. The College Board just reported that private loans last year for college dropped by 50%, while the public federally subsidized loans rose 15%. Now, we also know that the Congress has taken–is going to disadvantage the private loan program, which means that the federal program is–

Gigot: They’re going to put it out of business.

Henninger: They’re going to put it out of business, right, which means that basically colleges are going to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the federal government. You will never get countervailing price pressure under those circumstances.

Gigot: All right, Steve, is this going to lead to you want to go send your kids to college for only three years?

Moore: Well, you know, Paul, I have an 18- and 16-year-old. I’m listening to these prices that Naomi’s talking about and I’m going to need a big fat pay raise, or else my kids are going to be with me another four years, which is a nightmare.

But look, this is a real issue. It’s going to cost now $200,000 to put a kid through college. You have to start asking yourself the question, “Look, I’ll give you a $200,000 check. Maybe that’s a better way to start your life than going to college.” But Naomi put her finger on the problem. The two areas–I was looking at the inflation rates in health care and education–both of those have booming costs. Education costs have gone triple the rate of inflation over the last decade. And it’s because the people who are getting the service aren’t the ones who are paying for it, and that leads to exploding costs.

Gigot: Naomi?

Ms. Riley: Yeah, I just want to say something about the three-year college costs. You know it’s funny, if you go back to the 1970s, which we’ve been thinking about a lot lately, a lot of colleges actually reduced the length of their semesters, and they said this was to save costs for parents. But of course, the semesters stayed shorter, so kids got less education overall. And the prices never went down. So I think you also have to kind of take these big ideas from schools about saving you money with a grain of salt.

Gigot: The likelihood is that they’d find a way to charge the same amount anyway, even if you only went for three years.

Ms. Riley: Exactly. That’s exactly right.

Henninger: But you get a year earlier to start work and pay back those loans.

Gigot: That would be the benefit. It’s an opportunity cost would be lower. But Dan, the government is going to–isn’t going to change any of this. If anything, they’re increasing the subsidies. they want to make Pell Grants an entitlement. Right now, it has to be passed with annual appropriation. They want to make it automatic.

Henninger: Yeah, and, you know, there is a social aspect to this as well. It’s pretty well proven that the payoff to a college education is higher lifetime earnings. The demand for college now is tremendous. People are just going to these colleges. Probably what we need is either online colleges or more colleges to meet the supply.

Gigot: But which college doesn’t necessarily help, does it?

Ms. Riley: No, no. There are a lot of studies that show, if you are a person who got into both Harvard and, say, the University of Arkansas, and you chose the University of Arkansas, your lifetime earnings would not be that much different. Of course one solution is just improving K-12 education.

Gigot: That would help enormously. And you might get higher returns on people who then don’t go to college or go to community colleges.

Ms. Riley: Yeah, the way it used to be.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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