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Private colleges and universities are quietly announcing increases in tuition and fees crossing the $50,000 mark for the 2010-2011 academic year. Coupled with promises of increased financial aid, the boost in tuition is needed to cover continuing shortfalls in campus operating budgets.

This week, Harvard University announced that undergraduate tuition and fees for next year will total $50,724, an increase of 3.8 percent. According to a Harvard press release, financial aid for undergraduates will be increased by 9 percent, to a record $158 million for the upcoming academic year. “Harvard remains committed to a fully need-blind admissions policy that will enable us to continue attracting the most talented students, regardless of their economic circumstances,” said Michael D. Smith dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Harvard’s tuition increases remain roughly in line with other Ivies, including Yale, which announced tuition and fees totaling $49,800 or an increase of 4.8 percent; Princeton, which went up by 3.3 percent to $48,580; Brown at $51,360 or 4.5 percent over last year; Penn at $51,944—3.9 percent more; Dartmouth to $52,275, up by 4.6 percent; and Cornell, which will increase by 4.4 percent for the university’s endowed colleges to $52,316.



Other private colleges and universities crossing the $50,000 threshold for the next academic year include Boston University at $51,120 (+3.7%), Carnegie Mellon University at $52,250 (+2.98%), Notre Dame at $50,785 (+3.8%), Washington University in St. Louis (+4.2%), and Stanford University at $50,576 (+3.5%).

 Both George Washington University and Georgetown have been over $50,000 for the past two years. This year, Georgetown tuition will go up by 3 percent and room and board will increase 2 percent for a grand total of $52,443. GW will remain true to tuition commitments leveling a 3 percent tuition increase only on incoming students leaving tuition and fees the same for all others.

While tuition increases at private colleges are not good news, they don’t approach the projections for public institutions. Florida college students could face 15 percent tuition increases for several years, and University of Illinois students will pay at least 9 percent more next year. Georgia’s 35 colleges and universities are planning a 35 percent tuition increase on top of a raise in student fees according to the Huffington Post online. The University of Washington will charge 14 percent more at its flagship campus, and in California, tuition increases of over 30 percent have sparked protests.

A four-year freeze on college tuition in Maryland is expected to end this year, but the increase is likely to be only in the range of 3 percent. Virginia schools so far remain mum on the subject, but increases are all but inevitable.


By Nancy Griesemer

What is the FAFSA?? It is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (apply online at fafsa.ed.gov). colleges use it to determine eligibility for all kinds of financial aid. It has been revamped this year so is easier to file.

I am wondering - how many of you considered going back to school? Online Degree Programs are a good way to get your foot in the door. There are a ton of options, they are easy to take (on your own time, and you can finish as quickly as you like.

Any other reasons to take an online class?

Join in the discussions at: http://forum.howtogetin.com/

In the time since my last update, I’ve spent 30 hours on the road and covered about 2,000 miles. I spent some time with relatives, discovered that I hate toll booths and the confusing lanes that go with them, and decided that finding radio stations while driving across the country is a surprisingly difficult task.

But I’ve finally made it to Medford! I’m sitting in my hotel room watching The Skulls (which has both Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker, so I can’t help but find it wildly entertaining regardless of its actual quality as a movie) and making sure I know what to expect for Orientation tomorrow. My dad and I spent a while exploring the area. We ate lunch in Davis Square where I found a Chipotle, a fun little movie theater, and had a pretty good Gyro. These three things are all very important in my life so I consider our trip a success.

All throughout the summer, and especially these last couple days, everyone keeps asking if I’m “ready” for college. I guess that’s one of those questions where you’re expected to lie (or at least majorly simplify your answer) because how someone could casually respond to that question in the midst of small talk is beyond me. I’m tired of sticking with the simple “excited but nervous” answer so I’m going to attempt to do a better job here.

The simple answer is actually true. I am both excited and nervous, but the amount of each of these and the other emotions that go with it vary at times. Right now I’m mostly excited. I’m really looking forward to moving into my dorm, meeting my roommate, and finally getting to start college life. But I am nervous about the academic side. Like choosing my schedule and whether or not I should take the language placement exam. I’m also nervous because I don’t know anyone there. I’ve been trying to remember how I became friends with people in the last 18 years of my life, but I’ve realized that even though the people I’ve hung out with have changed, I haven’t had to find an entirely new group of friends since elementary school. I’m also a little overwhelmed by all the changes that come with college. I’m concerned that I’ll miss something important during Orientation and I don’t know how I’ll adapt to all the new responsibility I’m facing. I could go on, but at some point it just becomes too convoluted and confusing to explain.

Overall though, I do feel ready. I recognize the fact that any mistake I make in the upcoming weeks has probably been by someone before me and they probably turned out okay. I also know that I’m about to embark on a phase in my life that I’ve waited years for and that chances are I’ll find my footing. Tufts is going to provide me with some fantastic opportunities and even though I might be nervous about certain parts, I can’t wait to see where the next four years lead.

Tonight though, I plan on relaxing and enjoying my last few hours of laziness because I’ll be pretty busy starting tomorrow.

The Brain Development of the College-Bound…

I just posted a new page to my website.  The “Scary Statistics” page is a look at college life by the numbers.  And yikes….it is scary!

When I speak to parents one-on-one about their college-bound child, they often say, “Well, we raised Johnny the right way.  He isn’t like all the other teens out there.”  You may have raised him right, but from a neurological development standpoint, he’s probably just like every other college-bound student out there: an adult body matched with a brain that still has a child’s ability to reason and determine consequences.  As the scary statistics indicate, that’s a bad combination.

College Drinking, Sexual Activity, and the Science Behind It

Scientists from Harvard Medical School, Yale, UCLA, the National Institute of Mental Health, and others have teamed up to map out adolescent brain development and get a clearer picture of what reasoning tools a teen may have.  Here is a quick snapshot of what they have learned.  The scientists were surprised by their findings…

• The teen brain undergoes an intense overproduction of gray matter (the brain tissue that does the “thinking”)
• Gray matter “pruning” takes place, white matter develops, and the new brain circuitry allows for more precise operation.
• The frontal lobe (the reasoning center) undergoes more development and change during adolescence than any other stage of life.
• Teen decisions are heavily based on emotions because of a lack of the brain’s ability to determine and evaluate consequences of their actions
• The “understanding consequences” piece of the brain doesn’t fully develop until the early to mid-20s

Many of the scientists who participated in this research were very surprised at two things in particular: the amount of development of the frontal lobe (decision-making, reasoning) part of the brain during the teen years, and how far behind that part of the brain is compared to the other parts of the brain during the teen years.   This is the very last part of the brain to develop.

The implication?  The teen brain is not well equipped to determine consequences of independent living during the college years.

(For more on this study, click here.)

How to Prepare Your Child for College: Make Life Lessons Shake Teen Emotions

The study mentioned above mapped out the brain well enough to determine that teens (including the college-bound) make their decisions based upon emotion.  Stop for a second.  Stop.  Now, think of all the life lessons you would like to teach your college-bound student.  Money, sex, alcohol, responsibility, integrity, spiritual congruency.  For each life lesson that needs to be taught, the mechanism for teaching it must reach your teens on an emotional level.  If the lesson doesn’t reach their emotions (where their decision-making is made), it won’t help them to make the right decision when the time comes to make the right choice.

Conceptually, this is a big deal.  If you are a parent, teacher, or youth leader, I hope this significance of this shakes you to the core.  Immersive teaching  strategies, full with experiences that hit teens on an emotional level, are necessary in order to impact the decision-making of a teen.

To give you an idea as to how much this has impacted my work with teens and parents, I have completely scrapped the current manuscript of my next book for parents.  I have started over.  College preparation needs to be immersive.  It needs to hit the emotions of teens.

If you spend five minutes with a teen, you will be reminded quickly that they think very differently than adults.  VERY differently.  Let’s double down on our efforts to meet them on their most important level: their decision-making level.

Bring sex to life at a teen pregnancy center.  Money lessons may be best taught at the pawn shop, in the rough part of town, or in a credit counseling center.  Wake up emotions  regarding talents and careers in a cubicle, on stage, and in extreme corners of the workforce.

Teens need to feel the consequences of teen sex and pregnancy.  They need to feel the consequences of credit card debt.  Teens need to get hard-wired to the design of their talents and the implications of their skill set on the world.

It is our job to positively impact the brain development of the college-bound.  It is our job to help them feel their way through the most challenging part of their development.

Adam Erwin has written two books on the transition from high school to college.  He works with teens and their parents who want to better prepare for college.  Visit adamerwin.com to learn more about Adam’s books and work.

It’s 12:45 in the morning and I just said goodbye to three good friends. One for what might possible be the last time. He’s going to an out of state school and his parents are moving across the country. The other two I’ll hopefully see at Christmas, but definitely not before then. I have another big one scheduled for tomorrow, and plenty more from now until the 26th when I start driving up to Massachusetts.

This has been the most bizarre part of the whole preparing for college experience.  It’s insane to think that these friendships which have been so crucially important in my life will never be the same.  It’s especially weird for me since I’m going out of state. The vast majority of my friends are staying in Texas, many of them are staying in town and going to UT. They’re going to see each other so much more than me and I’m not sure what that’s going to be like in the future. At the same time though, I know going out of state for school is the right decision for me. I love Tufts so much already and I’ve only ever spent a few hours on campus. I’m expecting my love for it to grow even more once I get there. I know my experiences at this school will cause me to grow and change. I’m thankful, excited, and ready for that.

That’s why I use the word bizarre and not depressing. I know I’ll miss them, but at the same time I really do feel ready for the future. Still, as confident as I am in my decision to go to Tufts, it’s crazy to consider that I am going to be doing all this changing with very little support system. Most of my family and friends are halfway across the country. The closest friend I have will be over 4 hours away at a college in Vermont. (And since neither of us will have a car, the distance is kind of substantial.) I’ll make friends at Tufts, possibly even closer ones than I have now, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’m just realizing that in the midst of college preparations people tell you so many hints about packing and avoiding credit card schemes, but they never tell you how to deal with the goodbyes.

If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the University of California, Los Angeles, is for cash, consider that its arts and architecture school may resort to holding a bake sale to raise money. California’s severe financial crisis has left its higher-education system — which serves nearly a fifth of the nation’s college students — in particularly bad straits. But tens of thousands of students at public and private colleges and universities around the country will find arts programs, courses and teachers missing — victims of piercing budget cuts — when they descend on campuses this month and next.

At Washington State University the department of theater arts and dance has been eliminated. At Florida State University the undergraduate program in art education and two graduate theater programs are being phased out. The University of Arizona is cutting three-quarters of its funds, more than $500,000, for visiting classical music, dance and theater performers. Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, which supports four departments — dance, music, theater and visual arts — is losing 14 percent of its $1.2 million budget over the next two years. The Louisiana State University Museum of Art, one of the largest university-affiliated collections in the South, saw 20 percent of its state financing disappear. Other private and state institutions warn of larger classes, trimmed offerings, higher tuition and fewer services, faculty and visitors.

The arts are of course not the only victims of the recent economic meltdown. Large reductions in budgets have stung pretty much every corner of academia, from philosophy to Chinese, from gymnastics to geology.

The University of California, for example, is raising student fees by 9 percent, reducing freshman enrollment by 6 percent and cutting at least $300 million across its 10 campuses. There are no nationwide statistics to reveal whether one discipline is suffering more cuts than others. But administrators at more than a dozen state and private campuses who were interviewed say that the way that arts programs are structured and operated may amplify the effect of reductions.

Since tenured faculty are generally insulated from layoffs, budget cuts fall on part-time and visiting staff, Christopher Waterman, dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture at U.C.L.A., explained. For teachers, “we want artists who are in the thick of their careers,” he said. The result is that a large proportion of the school’s instructors are not permanent members of the faculty. Every department across the board has been ordered to cut 5 percent — on top of a 10 percent cut last year — but that relatively small reduction could mean the elimination of a third of the art department’s staff, Mr. Waterman said. (Final decisions on specific cuts have not been made.)

Crowded classes may not be as harmful in lecture courses, but in creative and performing studios, increasing class size is not always an option, he added. “You can’t teach painting to 40 students or give that many students voice lessons in opera or jazz.”

Several other college arts administrators around the country also said programs that serve the surrounding community as well as the students — like museums and performing arts centers — are especially vulnerable.

In California figuring out which programs and positions will survive will take a few more weeks. In the meantime the School of the Arts and Architecture, like other sections of U.C.L.A., has been told it should search for more ways to raise money itself. “We’re looking at more summer classes for high school seniors and bake sales,” Mr. Waterman said.

Elsewhere on the campus the Film & Television Archive is paring back its foreign-film program “because we cannot afford shipping any more of those prints from foreign countries,” said Jan-Christopher Horak, the archives director. A smaller staff in the film studies center could translate into less academic research, he added. As public universities watch state legislators slice away their funds, private colleges have seen their endowments shrink. Both are having to rely more on private donations at the same time that the recession has left individual contributors less able to give.

Figuring out what or who faces the budgetary guillotine has been a harrowing process no matter how it was done. Few go quietly.

Officials at Washington State University held a dozen public forums, testified before state lawmakers, appeared before the student council, the Faculty Senate and the Board of Regents; they responded to thousands of electronic messages and spoke with every single student, legislator, faculty and staff member, alumnus and community member who requested a meeting before deciding where $54 million and 360 jobs over the next two years would come from. One result: Sports management got a reprieve; that program and major will continue, while theater arts and dance will be phased out.

Arizona State University’s four campuses lost 500 jobs, closed 48 programs and imposed 10-to-15-day furloughs this spring. The schools of music, theater, film and design were all incorporated into the existing art and architecture center. Virgil Renzulli, the university’s media spokesman, said that officials focused on slashing administrative costs to maintain the same number of courses and tenured faculty.

In Flagstaff, Northern Arizona University spread the $21.3 million in cuts across departments. “The only program that we eliminated was a B.A. in theater education,” said Tom Bauer, assistant director of public affairs. “It only had 15 students, and they will be allowed to finish.” He added that the university is still waiting to hear from the governor’s office how much federal stimulus money might be directed its way.

Like California, Louisiana has had a tough year, although the doomsday cuts that some administrators were forecasting have not come to pass. Laurence Kaptain, dean of the College of Music and Dramatic Arts at Louisiana State University, said, “We tried to save people and cut things in our operations.” The college, which took a 3 percent cut this year on top of a 10 percent reduction last year, is holding back on upgrading computers and production technology, spending less on costumes, scenery and special effects as well as travel and conferences. “It’s making us more dependent on private funds,” he said.

Over at Louisiana State’s College of Art & Design the dean, David Cronrath, said a 4 percent cut ate up the positions of three full-time tenure-track faculty members, eight adjunct faculty and two staff members. He hopes to offer the same number of courses by increasing the faculty members’ loads and by relying more on graduate-student teaching assistants and part-time faculty, he said. But he, like others around the country, expects more cuts despite federal stimulus money and student loans.

For some institutions many tough decisions are yet to come. Cornell University, for example, recently approved long-term capital projects, including a $20 million extension to its art museum and a $55 million building for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, said Simeon Moss, a university spokesman. But the university is also undertaking a top-to-bottom evaluation in the face of a projected operating deficit of approximately $150 million within five years.

Although some arts advocates, faculty and students have complained that their subjects are saddled with a disproportionate share of the cuts, Sally E. McRorie, the dean of visual arts, theater and dance at Florida State University, said that did not happen in her case.

“Florida State has a long history of dedication and investment in the arts,” she said. “Our cuts have not been greater than anybody else’s.” She said the university made a decision to use federal stimulus money “to keep people employed” but noted that after next year, when “those funds are gone, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to maintain those positions.”

by: Patricia Cohen

At this point you should have already completed your FAFSA and received your awards letter from the school outlining your financial aid options, which may include the following;

• Pell Grant
• Scholarship (Institution or Private)
• Federal Work-Study
• Federal Perkins Loan
• Federal Stafford Loan
• PLUS loan

The first two options, grants and scholarships, are obviously the best as they are free money which you don’t need to repaid. Next, if you were offered a work-study I hope you took it. A work study is the amount you are eligible to earn while working either on campus or at an approved off-campus job. This helps to further decrease your cost of tuition. After that comes the land of borrowed funds.

Perkins and Stafford loans are those listed in a students name which do not require repayment until after school. PLUS loans are available for either the parents of a dependent undergrad student or a student attending graduate school.

Unfortunately most students will not have all of the options listed above available to them, and if they do they are still short funds which is why private loans are generally needed to help bridge that gap. Private student loans have favorable interest rates at this time due to the stale economy. Both the LIBOR index and prime rate are at historic lows. In the summer of ‘06 the prime was at 8.25%, last summer it was down to 5%, and today it’s at a jaw dropping 3.25%!

To qualify for a private loan you will most likely need to be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident with a credit worthy co-signer who is also enrolled in school at least half time or greater as defined by the school (usually 6 credits). In a tough economy it’s good to know you still have options. Get the funds you need today!

ScholarshipPoints code: PRIVLOANS.