Posts with the tag college

Savings on Federal College Loans for Millions of Students, Starting Today

ChairmanGeorgeMiller — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:04:11 EDT

Starting today, July 1, interest rates on need-based federal student loans will drop, making these loans cheaper for millions of college students. With our economy putting enormous financial strains on Americans and tuition prices continuing to soar, these new financial aid benefits could not be coming at a more critical time for college students. As families continue to explore their financial aid options for the coming school year, it is crucial to make sure that students are fully aware that significant financial relief, whether in the form of cheaper student loans, increased grant aid, or up-front tuition assistance, is available to help them pay for college this fall.

Randolph College Students Visit Brothel

Kayla — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:38:12 EDT

Via CNN:

A dozen Randolph College students visited the Chicken Ranch, a legal brothel ouside Las Vegas, last week as part of a course on American consumption.

The brothel tour was a natural fit for a class that tells students "don't just study America -- live it," said Julio Rodriguez, the director of the college's American Culture Program.
Each semester the course examines a strain of American culture and ends with a class trip. Past destinations included post-Katrina New Orleans, Walt Disney World and the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
This year's focus on Nevada started with a professor's interest in water rights and conservation. It grew to include discussions of the wedding and entertainment industries and, inevitably, prostitution.

The most scandalous field trip I ever made was a trip to the local waste management facility.

Gourmet Dining Halls

Annika — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:27:42 EDT

The New York Times food section has a piece today on the proliferation of gourmet menus at American colleges and universities—apparently students increasingly demand lobster, London broil, and “spa water” in their cafeterias.

After a page of sumptuous description, the reporter tacks on the pricing info:

Of course, colleges that put a premium on food tend to have higher endowments and more costly meal plans. Bowdoin, which renovated its two dining halls for $13 million, charges $2,600 per semester, Yale $2,380.

The basic Virginia Tech meal plan is $1,155 per semester, but if a student wants the add-ons in quality or choice, he pays à la carte. A lobster at P.J.’s costs four times as much as the London broil, which may be a reflection of its real price at a college where in-state tuition runs just under $7,400, compared to Bowdoin’s $34,000.

Duh. I myself lived on Korean kimchi-flavored ramen in college. It’s really spicy, and is especially good if you add add an egg to it (al la egg drop soup)--you can’t even tell you’re eating ramen, and it's still really cheap.

Ok, ok, I still eat it all the time.

Best Monday Ever

John Maryland — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:18:39 EDT

I drank alot at the opening day celebrations for the O's on Monday, so its taken 48 hours of sleep to get my head back to normal and write something down here. My last and first post talked a little about influences and how we should be wearier of them, but in a conversation with my friend Thor, I realized I left out a really important point.

First of all, I have to say how damn funny it can be sometimes when you've been drinking and you think you’re Ari-freakin-stotle. Like you're in the perfect state of mind to realize the answers to every question that mankind has. So back to the point I didn't make last time, which was how your parents affect your socio-political ideals and beliefs. Huge point I missed, but a difficult one to quantify or estimate, because of the factors associated with the role of parents in each individual's life.

Looking at myself, my parents are great, but the influence that my father's political beliefs have had in the development of my own has swayed in a number of directions. I'm 22 years old now, on the verge of having a real job, making real money and having real responsibilities, and I feel like I am far more likely to listen to my father and have educated discussions with him on politics and the economy than I was when I was a wiseass 16-year-old. That said though, I'm more educated now, and my days of impressionability have come and gone, the prime of which has taken place during the past 3-4 years I have spent in college. So while how my father thinks has and always will be important to me, this is one possible scenario of many.

I could have had parents that just didn't care, I could have not had parents at all, I could have spent all of my life rebelling against them or I could spend my own life not giving a rats a$$. Either way, I think it's important to consider what influence our parents had or didn't have in the development of our personality and our beliefs. Just a thought, maybe next time I'll talk about some real stuff.

Enough serious stuff, go O's, Best Monday ever, Markakis Awsome, thanks to Thor, keep it real, and Thanks for readin.

Think about it

John Maryland — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:49:14 EDT

So chances are I fall into the minority of blogger's at Campus Progress, not because I want to but because I have no choice. Let's start with the basics, I dig the death penalty, doing something big with the immigration situation, stem-cell research, Dave Matthews and I think Anne Coulter is kinda hot. I don't dig abortion, most gun control, people thinking they know what's actually goin on in Iraq myself included, people scaring other people about the environment, and spiders.

So I got that goin for me, but I have to tell you I'm new to this concept of writing down what I think and hoping people care enough to read it. Which reminds me of a blog I just read about how Fox News is infiltrating facebook. The first thing that came to my head was "who cares?" I mean, I just go on facebook to see if any of the dumb crap I did the weekend before made it onto someone's camera, but then I got to thinking and it led me to the first point I'm going to make in this new venture. As 18, 19, 20, 21, ... year old men and women, we swim in pools of bias. Whether it be left, right, up, down or around, institutions of higher learning throughout the United States are shaping the political climate to come, not Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hanity or The New York Times. Their incites are left primarily to the baby boomers and our parents who are over the proverbial hump.

Ninety-nine out of 100 of us are going to form our beliefs on politics and government as a function of the institutions that raise us, and maybe only 60 out of 100 are gonna care enough to do something. I'm no angel and I may or may not fall within that 99 or 60, but it should be forums like this, conversations with each other, and finding out for ourselves that builds our beliefs and our characters and fights the biases we see and feel everyday. I'm not sure, but I don't think I'm gonna loose any sleep when The LA Times puts a link up on doratheexplorer.com, but it does shake me up to see how much we swallow in class and around campuses, without really considering it fully. Thanks for readin.

Tell Me Something I Didn't Know

Kayla — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:25:25 EDT

College students are stressed. Really, they are. They can't eat, they can't sleep, they have trouble concentrating and are sometimes irritable. An Associated Press and mtvU survey found that four in 10 students say they often feel stressd. Almost one in five said they feel stressed all the time. One in five has been too stressed to complete schoolwork or be with friends. Twenty percent also contemplated dropping out of school.

The study also goes into percentage of students with a mental health disorder (13 percent) and whether they stick to their treatment plan (about two-thirds).

On the upside, six in 10 reported that they are usually hopeful and are enjoying life.

One of the students quoted summed it up best:

"Everything is being piled on at once," said Chris Curran, a junior at the Albany College of Pharmacy in Albany, N.Y. He said he has learned to cope better since starting school. "You just get really agitated and anxious. Then you start procrastinating, and it all piles up."

Most of my stress came down to poor time management, too.

Good News on Birth Control Costs

Annika — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 11:12:23 EDT

This week, a bipartisan group of representatives introduced a bill to combat the rising costs of birth control on college campuses. When the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 was implemented this year, it removed university clinics from a list of groups eligible for discounted rates from pharmaceutical companies—monthly birth control costs spiked, going from $5 to $50 or more in many cases.

“A technical oversight prevented many lower-income women from safe and low-cost contraceptives,” noted co-sponsor Mark Kirk (R-IL). “This should not be a political debate – it should be a matter of restoring discounts to support women’s health.” It’s refreshing to see such a quick, pragmatic response to an innocuous omission.

And, even better, the bill’s sponsors are drawing a direct link between prohibitively expensive contraceptives and unintended pregnancy, getting at the meat of the issue. “Let’s be frank with the American people,” said Tim Ryan (D-OH). “If Congress does not fix this problem, the cost of contraceptives will continue to rise, unintended pregnancies – especially on college campuses – will continue to rise, and more abortions will be the result.” So not only are these representatives working to quickly fix its mistake, but they’re using it to make a larger point about the importance of access to birth control. Happy Friday!

via Inside Higher Ed.

Is Being Misunderstood for Being Racist the Same as Being Racist?

Chelsea Toy — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:27:02 EDT

Friday, Ohio University held a race issues forum to help students, faculty and community members come to terms with the racism that is far too prevalent in Athens and the world.
At the forum, I spoke up about how white activists at OU did nothing in support of the Jena Six. (See earlier post - Racial Divide in Campus Activism)
After I said I felt that we "sat that one out," and that white activists should be ashamed for not taking part, a black student from the back of the room spoke out against me. She said it hurt to hear me speak about the white activists, when the black activists worked so hard to raise money to send students to Washington, D.C., to protest.
Damn, did I feel bad. I didn't mean black students didn't do anything, I meant white students didn't help them. I suppose she looked at it as my white privilege allowing me to dismiss her efforts and think that black students needed white students' help. That was not what I mean at all, but I felt terrible.

Charity in Exchange for Luxury

Kay Steiger — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:11:08 EDT

Ezra notes Robert Reich's column in the LA Times today that donations to colleges and universities, especially prestigeous ones like Harvard or Princeton, are really the kind of contribution that subsidizes the wealthy. This is a major source of potential revenue that the federal government is foregoing. What's more donations to the colleges usually parly in admission for the children of wealthy donors. Hm.

Big Tobacco Loves Hookah

Guy — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:38:47 EDT

This caught my eye the other day and I meant to blog about it earlier. So I figure to start my Friday morning off I'll go ahead and share.

As most college kids I've fallen in love with smoking Hookah either at home or at a hookah lounge. I've often struggled with why I love smoking hookah so much and often day dream of getting a new bowl ready, lighting up the charcoal, and inhaling some wonderful tasting smoke. As the room fills with the wonderful aroma, everyone settles in and prepares for a nice session of random chatter and hookah.

The Next College Scandal

Thomas Coen — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:53:06 EDT

The New York Times reports today that colleges have been engaging in back-door tuition increases through the use of student fees. Students have been charged separately for everything from library usage, technology, health, and energy to athletics. This has hurt students who haven't planned for these unexpected fees as well as those who receive scholarships that cover tuition, but not the exorbitant fees. At UMass-Amherst the fees are five times more than the cost of tuition. These fees are simply unfair to students trying to plan for the already ridiculous costs of a college education.

The Morality of College Endowments

Thomas Coen — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:59:09 EDT

Harvard University announced the other day that it posted a 23% gain in its endowment for the 2007 fiscal year, raising it from $33.5 billion to $41 billion, or to about the total annual GDP of Luxembourg. $41 billion dollars can go a long way, like giving $10,000 college scholarships to 4.1 million students. Thankfully, Harvard is starting to recognize its potential to equalize all the inequities in higher education. Students from families now earning less than $60,000 a year attend the school for free, which resulted in a record 22,995 applicants this past year. I guess all we need now is for all well-endowed schools to start giving back to middle and lower class students who can’t afford the same education that the wealthy can.

What's The Matter With College?

Jesse Singal — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:53:45 EDT

The New York Times Magazine is running a contest that may interest CP readers. All you have to do is read an essay by Rick Perlstein entitled "What's the Matter With College?" and write a response to it. What are you waiting for? Get to it.

It's open to all college students. More details here.

The Ground Truth screening with CP and AU.

ODUMarc — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 08:13:25 EDT

On Monday, April 23, Campus Progress and American University will join forces on the AU campus to show the screening of "The Ground Truth," to highlight the true costs of the war in Iraq.

It's also supported by the United Methodist Chaplaincy.

The idea is that if we highlight the truths about the war in Iraq, and its cost and effects, more people would take a stand on the war. This is an effective way to raise conciousness about the war, as well as mobilize and motivate student activists to act and takea a standa against the war.

The "Wear Some Black" campaign was started by Emily Willard at American University. The idea behind that is to wear a button that says, "Wear Some Black Until the Troops Are Back," (or any sort of black at all) as a way to get the conversations moving and started about the deep wounds of war, its fiscal and human tolls.

A great deal of other schools have jumped on board with this, to include Old Dominion University. While the College Democrats here are the leaders in putting this together, some College Republicans members have also shown interest in making this a bi-partisan campaign.

The vision for this is to reach across party lines and work toward a dialogue and open-and-honest discussion about the Iraq war. It is my hope that every school in America will be on board with this campaign. If such anti-war sentiments change America's visions in the '60s, such changes are also possible now.

Anyhow, you're invited to this event. If you're interested in "Wear Some Black" campaign, we also need you.

The link to the facebook invitation is below. If you don't have facebook, shoot its organizer, Emily Willard, an e-mail at emily.willard@american.edu

College Affordability

alimae — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:49:28 EST

Today I had the pleasure of attending my first Senate hearing regarding college affordability. Imagine my progressive giddiness as I watched Senator Kennedy enter the hearing room. Camera’s flashing, the G.W. College Democrats behind me talking of tossing G.W. Dem’s underwear at him, and that school girl flustered feeling inside me from just seeing Kennedy in person, someone I hold at a high level of rock star status. Unfortunately, that first impression faded quickly as I realized that Senators Kennedy, Enzi (ranking member from WY), and Isakson (republican from GA) were the only ones in attendance, eighteen others were missing. Is college affordability that unimportant to our senators that they could not show up for a 90 minute hearing? I was especially let down by my own senator, Sherrod Brown (OH), as his 2006 campaign platform was packed with promises regarding the issue at hand.

Witnesses at the hearing were Suze Orman, host of The Suze Orman Show, Tamara Draut, author of Strapped: Why America’s 20-and30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, Dr. Jon Oberg, former Department of Education researcher, and Dr. Sandy Baum, Senior Policy Analyst for The College Board and Professor of Economics at Skidmore College.

Senator Kennedy opened the hearing saying that “any individual, any student, young and old alike” should be provided with “help and assistance” from the federal government to obtain a college education. Each of the panelists agreed, but had differing ideas on how to reach the ultimate goal of college affordability.

Orman stated the only way to combat what she referred to as a “perfect storm” is to educate both students and their parents in financial aid issues specifically those regarding borrowing and repaying loans. Draut proposed moving from our current “debt for diploma system” to a system where grants will cover three-quarters of the cost of college for those who qualify as low-income. Oberg strongly urged the committee to read his report and pay particular attention to the footnotes and advocated federal loan auctions. Baum felt transparency was best, that providing predictable aid quotes to students and their families at a young age would help them plan for the financial burden of college.

On my way out of the hearing room I thanked the man who not only invited, but snuck in myself and about 20 other college students. This, he told me, was only the first of many hearings on this issue of college affordability. I urge you to contact your senator, especially if they are on this committee, and tell them that as a voter you expect him/her to support this issue. I agree with Orman, this is the perfect storm. The average debt of a four year college graduate has almost reached $20,000. It’s too late for me, as I will graduate in May, but with college tuition rising at an exponential rate, I fear for the future students of this country.