Kempner’s Unofficial Business
I’ve been a reporter or editor since gas was about a dollar a gallon and “Hands Across America” was a thing. I’ve spent lots of time covering government, the environment and, for most of my career, business. But I don’t daydream about fiscal policy and corporate earnings. What I love about business is the strategy and the people and the journeys that those people take. I like irony and surprise and nuance. I’ve interviewed soldiers, oystermen, football stars, chicken plant workers, Fortune 500 CEOs, suburban activists and entrepreneurs dreaming big dreams. How cool is that? I’ve teared up in interviews, laughed inappropriately, been yelled at and snookered. I do like an adventure. Let’s see where this one goes.
Shopping for a college education? Here are some questions AJC columnist Matt Kempner found himself asking at colleges while touring dozens of campuses with his own kids.
Does the college have specific, effective programs in place to help keep students on track to graduate within four years? And do many students take advantage of them? Ask current students. Many merit scholarships last up to four years at the most.
Does the university have professors or staff do assigned check-ins with students to help them focus not only on the right classes but also strong outside activities and job networking? Some offer resume check-ins in a student’s senior year, which seems late to be filling holes.
How closely do professors work with most students? Do many professors hold outside-classroom gatherings or activities or research to broaden a student’s education?
Do real professors teach most of the courses?
Is it hard for students to get required classes in the semesters they need them?
Don’t just look at the quality of the university overall. Consider the caliber of professors in your kid’s major. How do you do that? An engineering professor advised me to look at their university and outside sites to see if it looks like they’ve done meaningful research or projects in your kid’s area of interest.
At the same time, overall quality is important. Switching majors is common.
When considering scholarship money or financial grants, don’t fixate on the discount; focus on the drive-out price.
Remember that name brand universities don’t have a lock on the world. The talented journalists I work around at the AJC attended every stripe of college. I graduated from a state school. Behind me sits a Princeton guy. Across from him is a Harvard grad.
My daughter is going off to college. I’m proud and excited.
Except about the bill. And I have two of them: My son is already attending a university.
Their college search was so fun that we went a tad overboard. We visited more than 50 campuses over the last four years, which was at least as much about road trip adventures as it was about higher education.
One thing I learned in the process: it’s incredibly hard for consumers (and that’s who we are) to accurately measure the value of one university versus another. (In a bit, I’ll tell you about some imperfect workarounds I’ve tried.)
That’s a costly blind spot when you are contemplating spending tens of thousands of dollars on college so your kid will get a broader understanding of the world, a more fulfilling life and hundreds of thousands of dollars in improved career potential.
The value of college isn’t limitless, even if the prices we are charged seem like they might be. We increasingly are at risk of paying more than we should.
Whether you’re on a national shopping trip for colleges or debating just among Georgia’s in-state public options, the value question is a big deal. Plenty of students don’t get the full HOPE scholarship, and even those who do often lose it because their grades slip.
The government has made it easy for me to compare the energy efficiency and costs of one washing machine versus another. I can gauge the safety of different small SUVs, thanks to ratings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
But want to figure out the best college value for a neuroscience major? Good luck.
I suppose some university presidents wouldn’t like the comparison of a higher education degree with shopping for a washing machine. But I’m not the only one looking for a little clarity.
Two years ago the White House said it had a plan for making college comparison shopping easier. It would require colleges to gather and disclose more data. Higher education leaders howled. Couldn’t be done, they said. Such ratings would be unfair and inaccurate, they argued.
The White House has since scaled back its plan. The U.S. Department of Education has said it will unveil a ratings tool later this summer that will publish more data than ever comparing colleges. But it’s sounding like the ratings tool might launch without having actual ratings.
UPDATE: Here's the site the U.S. Department of Education came up with: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov
Information overload?
It's true that parents and prospective students can find lots of statistics already. One of my favorite sites is run by the National Center for Education Statistics ( https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ ). It allows you to create side-by-side comparisons of universities on everything from the average college grants given per student to admission rates (University of Georgia 56 percent, Princeton 7 percent) and the average SAT score ranges of incoming students.
Of course, a variety of outlets from U.S News & World Report to Money and Kiplinger’s produce ratings of things like top universities or best college values. The guides are good, big-picture snapshots.
But some rankings may be influenced more by the caliber of the students coming in than by the quality of the education supplied by the university.
Many outlets, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's recent "Cost of College" feature online, rely in part on information from PayScale, a company that specializes in compensation data.
PayScale figures the return on investment for students attending various universities (http://www.payscale.com/college-roi ). It compares the total cost with what its surveys show alumni make working.
So, for example, Georgia Tech offers students the eighth best ROI in the nation, according to PayScale. Great, right?
But if you look only at the expected ROI among college engineering majors — Georgia Tech’s bread and butter — the school falls to a far less impressive 72nd, according to the company. I should point out that the school is regularly regarded as having one of the nation’s top engineering programs.
Lessons from 50 campuses
For now, marathon campus visits may remain the best way to do your homework.
I’ve gleaned a few things from mine. I’ve questioned students, tour guides, financial aid counselors, career center staff and professors from the Bronx to Morgantown, Athens to Baton Rouge, Durham to neighboring Chapel Hill. They’ve volunteered intriguing stuff.
Not all of it is strictly financial. You learn the cool traditions (jumping into Florida State’s fountains on your birthday) and the reassuring extras (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assigned someone in each dorm to fix students’ broken computers for free, day or night). Students share about their school’s biggest pasttimes (smoking weed was particularly big at one) and dating atmosphere (students at one fancy school reveled in hookups, while long-term relationships were considered odd).
You can figure out which parts of some campuses you wouldn’t want your kid walking in at night. You learn which university has the most outwardly friendly students (Mississippi State gets my family’s vote). And you pick up on which university is remarkably self-segregated by race.
You also learn the things virtually every college highlights. Study abroad classes? Any university of any size seems to have them. It’s hard for me to tell why one is better than another.
Fancy fitness centers complete with rock climbing walls? Seen a bazillion.
Family focus
Eventually, my family focused on a few things we’ve come to believe matter more in terms of the true value of college. Check out the list that’s with this column.
I also recently asked the folks over at PayScale how to shop for a good college value.
Just in financial terms, “it matters so much more what you major in, not where you go,” said Lydia Frank, the company’s senior director for editorial. “And it matters what you do while you were there.”
For bargain hunters, she shares this comforting news: “the more selective schools were not putting out graduates who earned a ton more…. You don’t have to go to the most expensive school.”
But she said you still should consider the quality of the school. How would she do that? I asked.
“Good question,” she said. “Graduation rate (in four years) is one kind of proxy…. It’s not the perfect metric, but it is better than nothing.”
I’ll take better than nothing.
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