February 2012

Download StraighterLine’s Free New Guide to Going Back to College Today If you’re busy earning a living or raising children, going back to college to complete a degree could be the furthest thing from your mind. But we have a little advice for you . . . Going back to college could be one of the best ideas you will ever have. There are many reasons. First and foremost, the financial benefits in going back to school are considerable . . . If you have earned a bachelor’s degree, you can expect to earn about 66% more during a 40-year working life than the typical high school graduate earns over the same period, according to a 2010 study conducted by The College Board. If you have earned a bachelor’s degree, you can expect to ...

The Changing Face of College Status The word “status” has traditionally been associated with college. But what does status really mean?  And how has the concept changed with the times? FIFTY OR SIXTY YEARS AGO . . . Status was sexist. Men earned most of the status points for going to college. Of course there were exceptions to that rule – some brilliant women used their college degrees to make significant contributions to the world and earned respect in what was essentially a man’s world. But men earned a disproportionately high percentage of the respect and high status for attending exclusive colleges and universities. Sadly, many highly educated women were expected to put their careers behind those of their husbands. Me ...

Strategies to Cut College Tuition We recently covered president Obama’s speech at The University of Michigan – the one in which he proposed the idea of only permitting colleges to increase tuition if they proved that they were meeting certain benchmarks. “If you can't stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down,” the president said. “We should push colleges to do better. We should hold them accountable if they don't." As soon as the echoes of the president’s last words had died away, people started to voice objections to his idea... David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, told the New York Times, “The answer is not go ...

The Washington Post Praises StraighterLine in New Editorial “Obama’s disappointing college plan,” a recent editorial written by Matt Miller for The Washington Post, praises StraighterLine’s unique potential to help American students bring college costs under control. “Straighterline offers the general and introductory courses that account for up to a third of enrollment nationwide,” Miller notes, “subjects such as college algebra, English composition, microeconomics, psychology 101, accounting 101, and U.S. history. The 4,500 students it will serve this year then transfer the credits elsewhere.” Miller also quotes StraighterLine’s founder, Burke Smith . . . . “Our prices are low because we don’t try to subsidiz ...

Colleges Falsify Data to Boost their Ratings in U.S. News Over the last few days, a number of newspapers have been reporting that an administrator at California’s prestigious Claremont McKenna College has just been fired for falsifying data that the school has submitted to U.S. News for its college rankings. Since 2005, the administrator in question had been adding points to the SAT scores of incoming students that he reported, as a way to boost his school’s position in U.S. News college rankings. (The average SAT scores of incoming students are one of the key indicators that the magazine uses to rate schools’ competitiveness.) And the strategy apparently worked, since the college – which is actually excellent – has worked its ...