Flexible College Options

Go Back to College on Your Own Terms Last year I donated my 1973 Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia to charity. Why? Because it was so doggone scary to drive. Way back when I bought the car in 1981, it didn’t feel that way. My wife and I actually took a 600-mile road trip in it one summer. But the older the car got, the scarier it got, especially in comparison to the modern cars that we drive now – cars that can actually start, merge into highway traffic, go around corners, and stop when you apply the brakes. The only air bag that was ever in the Karmann-Ghia was an aunt of mine who couldn’t stop talking. Well, cars aren’t the only things that have improved over the last few decades, or gotten less scary. Take college, for example. Back in ...

Getting closed out of college classes can be more than an inconvenience for students. Here are two case studies about young women at elite universities – paying hefty tuition fees – who locked horns with getting shut out of courses . . . Case Study One: The Customer is Always Wrong Gretchen V., about to enter her final semester of undergraduate work, was applying to medical schools. She had taken tons of science and pre-med courses, but when she read the “fine print” in the application for her top medical school pick, she realized that she needed to have completed four semesters of social sciences or humanities courses as a prerequisite for admission. And she was one course short. Suddenly, she was scrambling to find an open ...