If you’ve read this blog for more than a few months, then you know where I come down on the College Rankings issue. It’s crap, and I don’t like it. You can read the full, venomous fury in the Previous Posts list below.

For now, here’s one rankings list that is based on tuition costs alone, which I mostly trust because I can’t see how they could tweak and warp basic numbers. U.S. News and World Report has a simple list of the 10 Most Expensive Public Medical Schools for In-State Students. It’s not at all what I would have expected.

1. Oregon Health and Science University
2. University of Pittsburgh
3. University of Minnesota
4. Medical University of South Carolina
5. University of Virginia
6. University of Illinois
7. University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey—New Brunswick (Johnson)
8. Michigan State University (College of Osteopathic Medicine)
9. University of California—Davis
10.University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey—Stratford

Previous College Rankings Posts (the short list):

Hone Your Inner B.S. Detector
Beware the College Rankings Machine
New System For Ranking Colleges
College Rankings
Acceptance

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: UC Davis water tower)

What has risen 400% in 25 years? Not housing prices in San Francisco, but that’s an excellent guess. Nope, it’s college tuition. That one-liner factoid takes me out at the knees and makes me want to hurl.

Phenomenal amounts of money are spent, borrowed, and paid back over lifetimes for higher education. At some point, one hopes, the college students will become educated enough to figure out when the price of education is just too damned much.

Since that hasn’t happened yet, two professors were interviewed on NPR recently so they could explain WHY college costs so much. It turns out that any and all tuition payers (students, parents) are at the sticky bottom of any given school’s list of people to impress or keep happy. The violent rage I’m feeling makes me warm inside.

Economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University and Stephen Trachtenberg of George Washington University tell NPR host Neal Conan what in the hell is going on with college costs.

You can read listen to the story (30 min.) or you can read the transcript in its entirety here.

Excerpt from the transcript:

CONAN: I wanted to ask, you wrote an op-ed for CNN.com, “Why Does College Cost So Much,” you argued essentially that colleges have absolutely no incentive to reduce costs.

VEDDER: That’s right. Now, there are a few exceptions to that. The for-profit higher education sector is certainly a clear exception, but by and large, most colleges do not get rewards. The presidents of the universities, the senior officials, the key faculty do not get rewarded by being efficient, by teaching more students for the same amount of money or whatever, by using buildings efficiently, six, seven days a week, et cetera. There’s no incentive in that for them.
So there’s no great compulsion to reduce costs, and yet spending more money often has rewards. It can help improve your rankings in the magazine rankings that go on by magazines like US News or Forbes. And it is actually beneficial to colleges, or at least it’s perceived to be beneficial to colleges, to spend more money: nicer facilities for students so you attract more students, better students, whatever, lower teaching loads for faculty so that they’re happy and content and not likely to cause a lot of problems.
So the job of a university president is to raise a lot of money, tons of money, and distribute it, and not too much attention is placed on lowering the cost to the consumer.

CONAN: In fact you argue that the consumer, the student and then the student’s parents, but they come last in a list that includes, you mentioned the faculty, key faculty members are bribed with lower teaching loads. You mentioned alumni, who are in a sense are bribed to make donations to the school through successful sports programs and other things like that, and trustees.

VEDDER: Yes, I think that’s right. Remember, colleges and universities don’t have the profit motive that compels people in the traditional private sector to cut costs, be efficient, try to get more bang for the buck, as it were. So that is sort of lacking. It’s a nonprofit sector, and there’s a lot of third-party payments, that is government money and also private, philanthropic money, that comes into universities that reduces the need to depend utterly, solely on the consumer to foot the bills, to pay the freight, as it were.

Related Posts:

How To Avoid Graduating College Summa Cum Debt
Watching America’s Higher Education Creams Go Down In Flames
College Tuition: Save Or Borrow?
Ways To Kick The Ass Of Student Loan Debt
International Students Bring $18.8 Billion To U.S. Economy
I Live In A Van Down By Duke University
College Or Gambling?
The Cost of College and the Three-Year Degree Option
Streamlined and Fuel-Efficient Three-Year Degrees
Economy Makes Being an RA Seem Like a Good Idea
Increased Tuition Increases Some More

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: new Stanford University library)

The one thing no one tells new parents: Maybe don’t start shoveling aside the gargantuan pile of cash your kid will need for college. The one thing people never fail to ask new parents, after Girl or boy? and What’s its name?: How’s that college fund going? The You poor bastards is implied.

Any yahoo walking around advising parents to not start amassing gold bullion runs the risk of being smacked upside the head for sheer stupidity. However, one such individual (the only one I have ever heard of) does exactly that. Financial planner to new parents, Kristin Harad, explains to spanking new parental units that the college fund is about four down on the list of financial priorities.

Three items must be dealt with prior to starting the college fund:

Emergency Fund (enough to cover 6 months’ worth of expenses)
Retirement Fund (student loans exist, retirement loans do not)
Household Budget Under Control (spending less than you make)

Further Reading and Previous Posts:

You’re A Parent, Now Plan
Ways To Kick the Ass of Student Loan Debt
How To Avoid Graduating College Summa Cum Debt
Tax Breaks for Higher Education
Fall 2011 Facebook App for Financial Aid
College Grads and Student Loan Debt
Number-Crunching the Effects of Student Loans
Calculating Potential
Adventures in Education: Paying for College

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: college fund)

Pamela Yellen over at the Huffington Post gives advice on How to Avoid Graduating College Summa Cum Debt. I’ve read dozens of articles on this topic over the years and none have irked me and impressed me with their proposals and solutions the way Yellen’s article has.

Her main piece of advice is to flat out not head off to college at all “unless or until you can afford it.” Not the standard higher education version of the American Dream. Usually everyone’s telling young adults to do whatever they and their parents can in order to acquire a college diploma, regardless of how many decades beyond graduation both parties will be swimming in debt.

Whether you agree with her or not, it’s interesting stuff to think about:

Four Paths to a Debt-Free College Education
1. Save it first.
2. Postpone it.
3. Do it smarter.
4. Skip it altogether.

Further Reading:

Ways to Kick the Ass of Student Loan Debt
Number-Crunching the Effects of Student Loans
Adventures in Education: Paying for College
The Economy and Higher Education
No One Likes a Recession
Calculating Potential
Investing in Students’ Futures
Extremely Useful Guidance for the Newly Salaried
Fall 2011 Facebook App for Financial Aid
College Grads and Student Loan Debt
Arne Duncan: Direct Student Loans
Increased Tuition Increases Some More

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Forbes contributor Robert W. Wood gives advice about which forms of higher education qualify for tax breaks. Wood lists the following articles for even more information on how to get a break from the IRS for funding one’s higher education pursuits:

Ten Rules for Deducting Career Education
Who benefits from student loans and educational tax benefits?
Two Tax Credits for Higher Education
IRS Publication 970: Business Deduction for Work Related Education
IRS Tax Topic 513: Educational Expenses
Deductibility of Work Related Educational Expenses
IRS: Tax Incentives for Higher Education

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: taxes)

It turns out parents and students are less than rational when it comes to choosing institutions of higher learning for the prospective college student’s matriculation. Paying for the education venture twists everyone’s grey matter into knots as well. Let’s keep our heads in the game, people! Read this article in the Wall Street Journal: Get Smart About College.

From the article:

When weighing present obligations against future potential, it can help to take a step back. College is an investment but it’s a peculiarly intimate one; students are investing in themselves, parents in people they love. To get some perspective on the matter, families should look at choosing and paying for a college like starting a small business (You, Inc.). Would someone launch an enterprise without a line of credit? Or skimp on equipment and human capital to avoid cutting into short-term consumption?

Families should also think carefully about context when they’re making estimates of future earnings. Someone who graduates in four years is likely to have a shot at a much better first job than someone who graduates right now; many experts hope and expect the economy to look quite different by the time today’s high school students finish college.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(photo: campus)

Hello, frugal (read: cheap-ass and poor) college students! September, the month of the best laptop prices, is almost over. Buy it now if you’ll be needing one in the next year. Or you can pay attention for the particular laptop you want to become super cheap the week before the spankin’ new model hits the market.

If you’re a planner and would like to mark your calendar now for the next twelve months’ worth of strategic shopping, feel free to use the jelly-filled orbs in your sockets to scan WiseBread’s Buying Calendar. It’ll save you more money than those cinder-block shelves and eating all that ramen.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Forbes has an article up on the 10 Things College Students Waste Money On. Tuition seems to be the least avoidable item on the list, but textbooks and school supplies are certainly full of frugal options.

1. Textbooks
2. Tuition
3. Automobiles
4. Housing
5. School Supplies
6. Food
7. Socializing
8. Applying for Credit

Also included: excellent advice on how fresh-faced college students can learn early on how to live below their means, which sets them up for a better financial life later on down the line.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(fancy school supplies)

The five commandments Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post has come up for college freshmen (so they won’t screw their first term up too badly):

Thou shall be responsible for YOU.

Thou shall take advantage of what college offers.

Thou shall be a student of learning.

Thou shall develop a personal brand.

Thou shall not forget those who are making college possible and gave you this great start in life.

It’s difficult to balance the learning part with the taking advantage of everything college life offers, but you’ll figure it out eventually. I hosed Fall Term of my freshman year pretty well, but I maintained a life and a solid GPA after that. Good luck, everyone. Here’s some advice from me:

Further Reading:

College Advice
Don’t Screw Up Your Future
I Live In A Van Down By Duke University
Year One: A College Blog

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(fall foliage campus)

It’s painful receiving the short, simple advice that paints one pristine illustration which you will never ever be able to remove from your mind. The kind of advice you understand you need to know, but that you sorely wished you’d never heard, read, or seen.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy sums up saving for college versus borrowing with this vomit-inducing blow:

Every $1 you stash away for college will save you from borrowing $3.

Stupid logical math.

Posted by Alexa Harrington