College Tipsheet

Gary (00:02.85)
Hello college students and their families. Welcome to this podcast episode of Uh-Oh College. My name is Gary Stocker, and Uh-Oh College is for college students and their families. And we use the podcast to provide a balanced source of college related information. Instead of the usual one way hype colleges use to get students to enroll, we'll challenge their messages.

Well, challenge your messages in a way that you will provide you with an enhanced perspective and you'll learn what is good about college messaging and what is not so good about college messaging. Today, we're going to use some content that I sent out this past Friday on my regular Friday College Finances Q&A. I'll provide a link to that in the show notes. And what I did was I actually used chat GPT and asked them what, ask chat GPT what.

The top 10 questions parents and students should ask colleges as they're going through their decision process on choosing a college. And I'm just going to kind of quickly paraphrase those. You can read those on your own with a link I'll provide. But those 10 were asking about the overall cost, the financial aid options, is the campus safe and secure, about the academic reputation of a college, the student to faculty ratio, and what support services were available, the four-year graduation rate,

opportunities for internships and job placements, extracurricular activities, and then how is campus life? Those are not particularly novel questions, but they're good questions to ask for sure. They're basic questions. But really what I want to do is I want to go beyond that. And I want to give, I'm going to provide the listeners, your listeners, with some top and bottoms of our own. And the first one I want to ask is of all those questions,

Which of those should be at the top of your list to ask college admissions reps, colleges in general? And the top of the list should be graduation rates. We're paying tuition and fees and room and board and all that goes with the college expenses for that diploma. And as we'll talk about in a minute, too many colleges can't provide that bachelor's degree in four years. And you wanna ask.

Gary (02:24.39)
each and every college you're considering public or private, whether it is a good graduation rate above 50 percent, and that's being nice.

If it's below 50% four-year undergraduate graduation rate, that's a bad indicator. So the first question is, what's your four-year graduation rate? And I'll share with you, we tracked the last eight years of four-year undergraduate graduation rates in our college viability app. And I will share a link with you for that at the bottom of the show notes as well. The second question is, which of these 10 questions

that I briefly referenced and I'll give you the show link to. Which of these 10 questions should be at the bottom of your list? And in my mind, it should be the student to faculty ratio. It was a tough decision, but that's the one that I went with. And this is an age old adage, age old reference that suggests that the number of students per teacher is a big deal. And in large part of the ratio has been gamed so much.

that's not really a good measure for a variety of reasons, it doesn't matter. In the age of, go back to chat GPT and search engines and internet resources and more, students have access to content way above and beyond what can come from a single faculty member, even with a very specialized, highly skilled, highly knowledgeable faculty member about a specific topic. So the...

The lower the ratio, the better is not necessarily good. A lot of small colleges use that. They say come here because we have a small ratio. We have very few students per teacher and they think that's a good thing. I don't think so, that's for you to decide. Let's flip this a little bit and say, which of these 10 questions that I referenced at the start, do colleges want to share first?

Gary (04:22.258)
And colleges love to share how much financial aid, I think that was question two, how much financial aid they give out. The challenge with this one is that the terminology is so vague and so inconsistent that without a financial aid, probably a paid financial aid consultant, it's really difficult to assess. Too many times, too many times, a college's financial aid offer is heavily reliant on loans.

Gary (04:54.75)
Many of those loans, not all, but many of those loans have to be paid back at some point. It's important also, I think, to remember that most college scholarships and merit aid are simply unfunded discounts. In the case of scholarships, that's not universally the case. There certainly are, for example, the John A. Jones Nursing Scholarship that's funded with money that John A. Jones donated.

There is a Sally Smith entrepreneur scholarship that is subsidized by funds that person donated to the college. But almost all scholarships are just discounts, the same kind of discounts you and I get for our cars and food and clothes and all that kind of stuff, computers, all that. There's really, there is really no money transferring from one college account to another. So if a college says, I'm giving you $15,000,

They are, but it's a $15,000 discount. Now it's still real money, I will grant you that. It's good for the student, I will grant you that. But it is not necessarily good for the college because those discounts take away revenue they may need to pay faculty to keep the lights on, keep the technology up and all those kinds of things. So just remember those, while valuable to you, it's not always a good indicator that a college is willing to discount tuition 60, 70%.

many cases of colleges closing in the last few years, we can demonstrate that their tuition discount rates got way too high and they couldn't afford to keep doing it and they had to close their doors. And then finally, which of these questions do colleges want to share last? And I referenced this with the first question. And it's no question, it's in too many cases.

they don't want to talk about graduation rates. Stunning, stunning that colleges don't want to talk about graduation rates. Here's why. In 2021, the last year of data reported to the National Center for Education Statistics, I get this, in 2021, 817, that's 817 out of 1,305 as a percentage at 62% of private colleges had a four-year undergraduate graduation rate.

Gary (07:14.226)
at 50% or lower. One more time, 817 out of 1305, 62% of private colleges had a four-year undergraduate graduation rate below 50%. And those are starting to be called coin toss colleges for obvious reasons. If a college has not demonstrated a capacity to graduate HAPIT students in four years,

You just have to be concerned. And if you're still interested in that college, ask them why, why.

it's not a good situation. And so we like to do these Uh-Oh! College podcast quickly. And so we've come to the end of this podcast. I invite you to submit your questions or concerns about all things college to G, I'm sorry, to gary at coll That's gary at college viability. That's one word, coll

Our expertise is in the financial health and viability of public and private colleges, but we'll provide guidance or referrals on other topics as well. And also, I want to remind you that I'm going to provide a link in the show notes to the weekly webinars that will be starting in early February, where I'm going to discuss how to compare the financial health and viability of colleges across the country.

I'll share questions to ask college reps about their colleges along with some guidance on how to follow up on their responses. This is Gary Stocker with College Viability and the Uh-Oh! College podcast. We'll talk next time.