1. If you want to know how difficult it is to say goodbye to your children as they leave home basically for good, read my New York Times article, “When a Dad Says Goodbye to His Daughter,” New York Times Education Life, August 6, 2000.
2. “College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2013 High School Graduates,” U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 22, 2014, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm. While the title of this book suggests that most students who attend a four-year college or university leave home and will live in a residence hall, this is not the case for everyone. Still, whether living at home or on campus, the experiences of first-year students who attend four-year institutions will be similar.
1. Cited by Gayle Ronan, “College Freshmen Face Major Dilemma,” MSNBC News, November 29, 2005, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10154383/ns/business-personal_finance/t/college-freshmen-face-major-dilemma/#.VIHUXyiWds8.
2. Barbara Hofer and Abigail Moore, The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up (New York: Atria, 2010), 20.
1. Christopher Drew, “Rethinking Advanced Placement,” New York Times, January 7, 2011. John H. Pryor, Linda DeAngelo, Laura Palucki Blake, Sylvia Hurtado, and Serge Tran, The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2011 (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, 2011), 9, http://heri.ucla.edu/PDFs/pubs/TFS/Norms/Monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2011.pdf.
2. General education requirements in the School of Engineering are more modest but the principle is the same, which is to say, to also give future engineers exposure the liberal arts as well as writing.
3. See Trip Gabriel, “To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery,” New York Times, July 5, 2010; Lauren Sieben,“Many Cheaters Are Overly Optimistic about Their Academic Ability, Study Finds,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25, 2011. Other studies show higher figures. See Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 165.
4. According to a recent HERI study, an incredible 41.2 percent of first-year students report having witnessed academic dishonesty or cheating (as opposed to having cheated themselves)! “2014 Your First College Year Survey: Institutional Profile Report” 2015. This information is unpublished but available if requested from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. HERI data used in this book involves the same group of 9,168 students.
5. See Ipsos Public Affairs, How America Pays for College 2011: Sallie Mae’s National Study of College Students and Parents Conducted by Gallup (Newark, DE: Sallie Mae, 2011), 17. This figure would probably be higher if Sallie Mae also looked at non–Work Study job income. See http://news.salliemae.com/sites/salliemae.newshq.businesswire.com/files/publication/file/HowAmericaPaysforCollege_2011.pdf.
1. Our children feel the same way. In 2014, 53.4 percent of incoming first-year students said that getting a job is the primary reason for going to college. Kevin Eagan, Ellen Stolzenberg, Joseph Ramirez, Melissa Aragon, Maria Suchard, and Sylvia Hurtado, The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2014 (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, 2014), 4, http://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/theamericanfreshman2014.pdf.
2. This is a very controversial number with little hard data to support it. What I do know from experience is that the college graduates I have been involved with seem to be doing dramatically different things every few years. The number might be, if anything, too low. See Carl Bialik, “Seven Careers in a Lifetime? Think Twice, Researchers Say,” Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2010.
3. Increasingly, colleges are using advisers who are not members of the faculty. There is considerable debate in higher education circles over whether this is desirable. See Jeffery Selingo, “Here’s Your Schedule, What’s Your Hurry?” New York Times, April 13, 2014.
4. But see Steven Conn, “The Rise of the Helicopter Teacher,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 5, 2014.
5. But see Ariel Kaminer, “Princeton Is Proposing to End Limit on Giving A’s,” New York Times, August 7, 2014, where Princeton is reconsidering a cap on As.
6. See Doug Lederman, “When to Specialize?” Inside Higher Education, November 25, 2009.
7. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
8. National Survey of Student Engagement, “Topical Modules: Academic Advising” (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, 2013), 2, 3, http://nsse.iub.edu/2013_institutional_report/pdf/Modules/2013%20Advising.pdf.
9. National Survey of Student Engagement, A Fresh Look at Student Engagement—Annual Results 2013 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, 2013), 22, http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2013_Results/pdf/NSSE_2013_Annual_Results.pdf.
10. John Henry Newman, “Discourse 7: Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Professional Skill,” in The Idea of a University, The Newman Reader, The National Institute for Newman Studies, rev. September 2001, http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/discourse7.html. For a more modern defense of the liberal arts, see Michel Roth, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).
11. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
12. According to a study by the National Endowments of the Arts, 65 percent of first-year college students read for pleasure for less than an hour per week if at all. National Endowment for the Arts, “To Read of Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence,” Research Report no. 47 (Washington, DC: NEA, November 2007), 8, http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/ToRead.pdf.
13. This is not to suggest that lectures are necessarily bad, just that lecturing without any active student involvement (such as debate or discussion) is not the best way to learn subject matter.
14. “Topical Modules, Development of Transferable Skills,” in National Survey of Student Engagement, 2014, 2, http://nsse.iub.edu/2014_institutional_report/pdf/Modules/NSSE14%20Module%20Summary-Development%20of%20Transferable%20Skills.pdf.
15. Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 123.
16. See Dan Berrett, “Students Come to College Thinking They’ve Mastered Writing,” New York Times, March 21, 2014.
17. See Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 96
18. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
1. National Center for Educational Statistics, “Table 320: Average Undergraduate Tuition and Fees and Room and Board Rates Charged for Full-Time Students in Degree-Granting Institutions, by Type and Control of Institution: 1964–65 through 2006–07,” Digest of Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp. College Board, “Average Published Undergraduate Charges by Sector, 2014–15,” Trends in Higher Education, http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-published-undergraduate-charges-sector-2013-14.
2. John Pryor, Linda DeAngelo, Laura Blake, Sylvia Hurtado, and Serge Tran, The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2011 (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, 2011), 12. See http://heri.ucla.edu/PDFs/pubs/TFS/Norms/Monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2011.pdf.
3. Ron Lieber, “Placing the Blame as Students Are Buried in Debt,” New York Times, May 28, 2010. For the impact of student debt on the general economy, see Neil Irwin, “How Student Debt May Be Stunting the Economy,” New York Times, May 14, 2014.
4. See Natalie Kitroeff, “Loan Monitor Is Accused of Ruthless Tactics on Student Debt,” New York Times, January 2, 2014.
5. Pryor, Eagan, Blake, Hurtado, Berdan, and Case, The American Freshman, 12.
6. Steve Cohen, “A Quick Way to Cut College Costs,” New York Times, March 20, 2014.
7. Mark Keierleber, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, reports that in 2012, 45 percent of bachelor’s degrees were awarded (but not without problems) to students who transferred from a community college. See Mark Keierleber, “Four-Year College’s Views of Transfer Credits May Hinder Graduation,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7, 2014. Conversely many elite colleges and universities with large endowments have eliminated loans altogether for middle- and lower-income students. Consequently, even though they have a higher “sticker price” than their public counterparts, the cost for attending one of these institutions can end up being less. For a list of the elite colleges and universities that seek out lower-income students and provide them with generous financial aid, Vassar College foremost among them, see David Leonhardt, “Behind Ivy Walls: Top Colleges That Enroll Rich, Middleclass and Poor,” New York Times, September 8, 2014. See also Richard Pérez-Peña, “What You Don’t Know about Financial Aid (but Should),” New York Times, April 9, 2014.
8. See David Leonhardt, “Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say,” New York Times, May 27, 2014.
9. Eduardo Porter, “Dropping Out of College, and Paying the Price,” New York Times, June 25, 2013.
10. For an extreme example of this, see “Former College Financial Aid Head Hit with Federal Fraud Charges,” Boston Business Journal, July 21, 2014.
11. See “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015)
12. Everyone in higher education knows that if your student has high board scores and an impressive high school GPA it’s sometimes possible to bargain up the financial aid package if a competing college has offered more scholarship money. But this can only be done before accepting admissions and it does not work for students who are weaker academically or who have no needed skill (like throwing a football or playing an instrument needed in the college orchestra).
13. According to a recent survey, 45 percent of all first-year students were employed during the first semester. This breaks down to 27 percent working at on-campus jobs and 18.9 percent at off-campus jobs. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015)
14. Of students who went on to college in 2013, 36.7 percent worked between six and twenty hours during their last year of high school. See “Almanac of Higher Education 2014,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 22, 2014, 36, http://chronicle.com/article/A-Profile-of-Freshmen-at/147335/.
15. Cited in Jennifer Epstein, “Will Work for Beer,” Inside Higher Education, October 8, 2009.
16. Ipsos Public Affairs, How America Pays for College 2014: Sallie Mae’s National Study of College Students and Parents Conducted by Gallup (Newark, DE: Sallie Mae, 2014), 56, http://news.salliemae.com/files/doc_library/file/HowAmericaPaysforCollege2014FNL.pdf.
17. See Richard Pérez-Peña, “Despite Rising Sticker Prices, Actual College Costs Stable over Decade, Study Says,” New York Times, October 24, 2013.
18. See Scott Carlson, “Spending Shifts as Colleges Compete on Students’ Comfort,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2014.
1. Closely related to online education is what has come to be called competency-based education or the idea that what matters is not so much how you learned but what you learned. The suggestion is that time-to-degree (and thus the cost of education) can be greatly reduced by testing competencies that people have already mastered. Competency-based education (or “credit for experience”) also threatens the traditional residential college. See Anya Kamenetz, “Are You Competent? Prove It: Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went,” New York Times, October 29, 2013.
2. Massive open online courses are high-quality courses produced by prestigious universities normally at no cost. They are popularly known as MOOCS.
3. Sometimes called “Velcro parents” because they seem stuck to their child.
4. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
5. See Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 69, where the authors show that the average college student only studies twelve hours per week.
6. I am told by fellow college presidents that this letter has appeared in many different forms throughout the years.
7. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
8. Ibid.
9. “Does Living Environment (Co-ed vs Single Sex) Impact the Housing Experience?” EBI-MAP Works, November 14, 2011, http://www.webebi.com/community/research/41/does-living-environment-(co-ed-vs.-single-sex)-impact-the-housing-experience.
10. Colleges have different command chains with a key administrator at the top of each. For student affairs, campus safety, and disabilities issues, the top person is usually the vice president for student affairs; for academic or advising matters and often for athletics, the vice president for academic affairs or the provost; for financial matters, the vice president for finance or treasurer.
11. “2013 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile,” HERI, UCLA (2014).
12. “According to a number of studies, including one from 2008 at Ohio University, when students take part in extracurricular activities, they feel more connected to campus and are less likely to transfer or drop out. This same study also shows that students who get involved make better grades, have more friends, feel like they fit in, and adjust more easily to campus life” (https://www.woofound.com/blog/posts/extracurricular-activities-might-be-the-key-to-the-college-experience). The Ohio study referred to is A. Michael Williford and Joni Y. Wadley, “How Institutional Research Can Create and Synthesize Retention and Attrition Information,” Professional File, no. 108 (Fall 2008), http://airweb3.org/airpubs/108.pdf.
13. American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment, Spring 2014 Reference Group Executive Summary (Hanover, MD: American College Health Association, 2014), 6, http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_ReferenceGroup_ExecutiveSUmmary_Spring2013.pdf.
14. “Regular Marijuana Use by Teens Continues to Be a Concern,” National Institutes of Health, December 19, 2012, http://www.nih.gov/news/health/dec2012/nida-19.htm.
15. American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment, Spring 2014 Reference Group Executive Summary (Hanover, MD: American College Health Association, 2014), 6, http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/acha-ncha-ii_referencegroup_executivesummary_fall2012.pdf.
16. Scott E. Carrell, Mark Hoekstra, and James E. West, “Does Drinking Impair College Performance? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Approach,” NBER Working Paper no. 16330, Journal of Public Economics 95, no.1 (2011): 54–62, http://www.nber.org/papers/w16330.
1. American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment, Spring 2014 Reference Group Executive Summary (Hanover, MD: American College Health Association, 2014), 13, http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_ReferenceGroup_ExecutiveSUmmary_Spring2014.pdf.
2. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
3. American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment, Spring 2014 Reference Group Executive Summary, 10. For the most recent figures on unprotected sex, see also American College Health Association, American College Health Assessment, Spring 2010 Reference Group Executive Summary (Hanover, MD: American College Health Association, 2010), 9, http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_ReferenceGroup_ExecutiveSummary_Spring2010.pdf. The same survey reports that 20.4 percent of first-year students had unprotected sex in the past twelve months when drinking alcohol (9).
4. Kevin Eagan, Ellen Stolzenberg, Joseph Ramirez, Melissa Aragon, Maria Suchard, and Sylvia Hurtado, The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2014 (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, 2014), 13, http://www.heri.ucla.edu/PDFs/Monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2014.pdf, and The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2009, 28, http://www.heri.ucla.edu/PDFs/pubs/TFS/Norms/Monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2009.pdf.
5. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
6. American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment, Spring 2014 Reference Group Executive Summary, 15.
7. According to the National Survey of Counseling Center Directors, in 2011 (the most recent figures), only 10.6 percent of students enrolled at four-year colleges made use of a counseling center. Robert Gallagher, National Survey of Counseling Center Directors 2011, Monograph Series no. 8T (Alexandria, VA: International Association of Counseling Services, Inc. 2011), 4, http://collegecounseling.org/wp-content/uploads/2011-NSCCD.pdf.
8. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015). “Drinking Levels Defined,” National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Health, http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-your-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/moderate-binge-drinking
9. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA, 2015.
10. Robin Hattersley Gray, “95% of College Presidents Don’t Want Guns on Campus,” Campus Safety Magazine, June 13, 2014.
1. According to a recent study, 35.9 percent of first-year small-college students report playing an intramural sport and 26.6 percent intercollegiate. “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015).
2. At the same time, the rate of Division I spending on intercollegiate athletics is beginning to outpace spending on academics—not a good sign! See Tamar Lewin, “Colleges Increasing Spending on Sports Faster Than on Academics, Report Finds,” New York Times, April 7, 2014.
3. See, for example, “Higher GPA for Freshmen Who Frequent Campus Gym,” Inside Higher Education, September 4, 2014.
4. For example, according to the American College Health Association, only 21.2 percent of college students nationally live up to the American Heart Association’s standard for moderate aerobic exercise, which is thirty minutes, five to seven days a week, and only 32.9 percent live up to the standard for vigorous aerobic activity, which is twenty minutes, three to seven days per week American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment, Spring 2014 Reference Group Executive Summary (Hanover, MD: American College Health Association, 2014), 12, http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_ReferenceGroup_ExecutiveSUmmary_Spring2013.pdf.
5. “How Do Athletic Scholarships Work?” National Collegiate Athletic Association, June 21, 2011, http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/NCAA%2BAthletics%2BScholarships.pdf.
1. Victor B. Saenz, Sylvia Hurtado, Doug Barrera, De’Sha Wolf, and Fanny Yeung, First in My Family: A Profile of First-Generation College Students at Four-Year Institutions since 1971 (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, 2007), 6–7, http://www.heri.ucla.edu/PDFs/pubs/TFS/Special/Monographs/FirstInMyFamily.pdf; “Almanac of Higher Education 2014,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 22, 2014, 36, http://chronicle.com/article/A-Profile-of-Freshmen-at/147335/.
2. Claudia Dreifus and Andrew Hacker, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do about It (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 185.
3. See Jake New, “The Opposite of Helicopter Parents,” Inside Higher Education, August 13, 2014.
4. Saenz, Hurtado, Barrera, Wolf, and Yeung, First in My Family, 15.
5. See “Almanac of Higher Education 2014,” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 22, 2014, 36, http://chronicle.com/article/A-Profile-of-Freshmen-at/147335/. Data is for the fall of 2013.
6. Still, the 42.6 percent four-year graduation rate for SEEK students at Queens compares favorably to the national average for all students. Only 34 percent of all students who attend four-year colleges graduate within four years. See Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 54.
7. “Where Schools Fall Short,” New York Times, December 4, 2011.
8. Sharon Otterman, “Most New York Students Are Not College-Ready,” New York Times, February 7, 2011.
9. According to recent data, 53.6 percent of first-year students report having taken a course or first-year seminar to help them adjust to college-level academics. See “2014 Your First Year College Survey: Institutional Profile Report,” HERI, UCLA (2015)
10. Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement show that first-year students averaged fourteen hours of study per week, far below the two hours per classroom hour suggested by most faculty. See National Survey of Student Engagement, A Fresh Look at Student Engagement—Annual Results 2013 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, 2013), 9, http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2013_Results/pdf/NSSE_2013_Annual_Results.pdf.
11. Saenz, Hurtado, Barrera, Wolf, and Yeung, First in My Family, vii.
12. For data supporting the value of positive intervention with first gens as articulated by Mr. Modeste, see Paul Tough, “Who Gets to Graduate?” New York Times Magazine, May 15, 2014.
1. The percentage of first-year students nationwide who have a documented learning disability is from 2008, the most recent figure. Joseph Madaus and Stan Shaw, “College as a Realistic Option for Students with Learning Disabilities,” Council for Learning Disabilities, January 2010, http://www.council-for-learning-disabilities.org/publications/infosheets/college-as-a-realistic-option-for-students-with-learning-disabilities.
2. I wrote about this tour in the New York Times. See my “Campus as Obstacle Course,” New York Times Education Life, October 30, 2012.
3. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, in 2008 (the most recent figures) about 11 percent of all postsecondary students had a disability. Most had a learning disability but 15.1 percent (of the 11 percent) had an orthopedic or mobility impairment, 6.1 percent had a hearing challenge, and 2.7 percent were blind or visually impaired. Higher Education and Disability: Education Needs a Coordinated Approach to Improve Its Assistance to Schools in Supporting Students, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives ([Washington, D.C.]: Government Accountability Office, 2009), 8, 38, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1033.pdf.
1. This notion is supported by a Gallup survey of over twenty-nine thousand college graduates, 63 percent of whom strongly agreed with the statement “I had at least one professor who made me excited about learning.” This was by far the highest percentage response to questions that included internship experiences and extracurricular involvement. Julie Ray and Stephanie Kafha, “Economy: Life in College Matters for Life after College,” Gallup, May 6, 2014, http://www.gallup.com/poll/168848/life-college-matters-life-college.aspx.