August is here, and many families are preparing their children for the next academic challenge – a college education. By and large, a college degree is viewed as an important credential for gainful employment and professional success. At the same time, college is costly, and college financing strategies are complex. Students and their families use…
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Students are bombarded with an array of competing opportunities during college, all with the promise that each will lead to a better job or higher earnings upon entering the “real world.” One such option is the double major, in which a student earns two bachelor degrees at once, sometimes in entirely different disciplines. But will…
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The unemployment rate has plunged to about the lowest level in half a century. Yet at least one group of Americans is being left behind: men who didn’t go to college. Just 78 percent of men aged 25-54 who never went to college were employed in 2016, the latest year for which data are available in the American…
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Should college majors be a thing of the past? That idea received a fresh airing when author Jeffrey Selingo suggested that it’s “time to end college majors as we know them.” As a researcher who studies higher education, I concede that something about the way colleges and universities educate students in the United States needs to…
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In a 2009 speech, President Barack Obama proclaimed that by 2020, the United States will “once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” As we near 2020, it is worth asking how close are we to reaching that lofty goal and what have been the results of focusing so intently on college graduation…
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The rising amount of student loan debt can pose serious challenges for individual borrowers. For that reason, colleges and universities and even the federal government have been pursuing solutions to alleviate the burden. But what are the best ways to go about student debt relief? Who should qualify? And what practical effect will debt relief…
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Students who are the first in their family to attend college tend to see it as a means to improve their personal lives and as an opportunity for social mobility. That contrasts with the main message students get from policymakers and universities that largely emphasize career growth. This is the main finding from interviews we conducted with…
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College graduation gaps between Black and white students tend to shrink when there are more students of color or faculty of color on campus. This finding is based on analyses of 2,807 four-year U.S. colleges conducted by psychology researcher Nida Denson and me. Our research appeared as a peer-reviewed article in 2022 in Volume 93, Issue 3, of The Journal…
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A recent federal study on graduation rates for American colleges and universities shows that 40% of all students did not earn a degree or credential within eight years of leaving high school. The graduation rate is even lower for low-income students. Among students from families with income levels of US$115,000 or more, 66% who enrolled in higher…
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Published: June 26, 2024 2.17pm SAST The idea that a college degree levels the playing field for students of different socioeconomic classes has been bolstered in recent years. Research from 2011 and 2017, for example, found that earning a bachelor’s degree helped students from less advantaged backgrounds do as well as their better-off peers._ Jessi Streib, a sociology…
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