Monthly Archives: April 2013

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The Dreaded Out-of-State Fee

At flagship universities, balancing the budget on the backs of out-of-state students

I read an off-hand reference to a fact that all but knocked me out of my seat: tuition and fees at UCLA for out-of-state students total $35,570 for the current academic year. (Room and board is extra: another $14,232.)

I wondered how many students were paying such a huge sum. In addition to the 7 percent who are international students, only 5 percent of UCLA’s undergraduates are from out-of-state. Still, that’s more than 1,300 students – not an insignificant number. Moreover, at UC Berkeley, with a comparable out-of-state fee, 10 percent of students (about 2,500) are from out-of-state, in addition to the 9 percent who are international students.

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How to Choose the ‘Right’ College

As May 1 approaches, some advice for those students about to become the Class of 2017

We are in the closing weeks of college choice decision time: most institutions have a May 1 date for students to “accept the acceptance.” After that date, some colleges and universities will have a full class for the fall of 2013 and will return deposits postmarked May 2 or later; at many others, the choice (or even the availability) of residence halls, as well as classes, may be severely restricted. So prospective students should be prepared to make their choice of campuses by May 1.

But for many students, cost is a factor that limits choice. In short, can the student (and his or her family) afford the campus that is the student’s first choice?

It is at this point that the expectations of the campus and the student are often at odds. Based on extensive survey data, most students and their families expect to pay substantially less than the institution’s sticker price – and that is often the expectation of the institution as well. But there are enormous differences between and among institutions as to their willingness (or ability) to offer financial support.

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A Day in the Life

The joys of being president of Roger Williams University

A lot of my posts to date – perhaps, for some of you, too many – have been rants about what is wrong with higher education today, in terms of costs, debt and the job readiness of graduates. Lest you think that I spend every waking moment gnashing my teeth in anger and frustration, let me tell you something of the joys of being president of Roger Williams University.

I’ll focus on one day: Wednesday, April 10, 2013.

After the weekly Wednesday morning session of the President’s Cabinet and a short meeting with an alumnus who has established an endowed scholarship in the memory of his now-deceased college roommate, I set off for Newport, and a conference at Touro Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in North America (a product of the doctrine of separation of church and state first advocated by our state’s founder – and our institution’s namesake – Roger Williams).

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In Search of the Best University

Too often, we allow the decisions of others to influence our choice when it comes to selecting the right college

We Americans are a funny lot. Whether because of our heritage as a nation born through revolution and blessed with size and an abundance of natural resources, or because of our fascination with winning, as we do in athletics, we seem inordinately fond of defining, and being associated with, “the best.” Tonight and tomorrow night, respectively, we will determine “the best” men’s and women’s collegiate basketball teams in the country, and ice hockey will soon follow. We’ll get to baseball in late spring, and next January it will be time to declare “the best” college football team.

This fascination with determining “the best” carries over to colleges and universities themselves. Shouldn’t we urge our children to attend “the best” college or university – or at least “the best” institution that will accept him or her? Why settle for second best? We want “the best!”

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Where Should the Talented Poor Attend College?

Arguments for and against elite schools for high-achieving, low-income students

In his March 17 column (“Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor”), David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote about a study that found that only 34 percent of high-achieving students in the bottom quartile of family income enrolled in one of the nation’s 238 most selective colleges, as compared to 78 percent of high-achieving students in the top quartile of family income.

One conclusion is that elite schools, for all their rhetoric, are failing to recruit an economically diverse entering class of students.