Category Archives: college freshmen

College Students & Money: No new car, caviar, four star daydream

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It’s handy having a international expert on financial literacy around when counseling first-year college students about managing their resources. Iowa State professor Tahira Hira is recognized for her work on consumer spending including debt and bankruptcy. As our graduates leave campus with some of the highest student loan debt in the nation, I feel an obligation to discuss personal finance during our first-year seminar.


Dr. Hira’s three main principles for college student financial well being:
  • Live within your means.
  • Spend less that you make.
  • Be mindful of borrowing, including consumer credit or students loans.
Spending plans are key to managing finances and Hira shares these tips for students:
  • Give yourself an allowance that fits your budget.
  • Balance your checkbook regularly.
  • Leave your credit cards at home to avoid impulse buying.
  • When going out for an evening, take only as much cash as you can afford with you.
  • Eliminate casual shopping.
  • Reduce stress with exercise, hobbies, or community service; versus shopping.
Our financial aid office partners with a great online tool called CashCourse that offers financial planning tools and economic tips. I utilize CashCourse for a personal finance assignment in our seminar course.

Quarters

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Twenty-five cent coins met their demise in our Residence Halls several years ago when laundry room washers and dryers moved to digital payment via student ID cards. Students no longer hoarded rolls of quarters before moving to campus or worried about jammed coin dispensers. Now students are able to monitor machine availability and check if the wash cycle is finished, all via the internet.


Quarters used to equal the gold exchange rate in the residence hall. How will students shed the dreaded first-year fifteen if not running up and down stairs to check the nuclear baking cycle of the dryer? Will student engagement suffer when no one is negotiating over the next available washer? Sadly, it appears quarter status has been relegated to drinking game only.

Declining access to higher education?

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I am fortunate to administer an endowed scholarship that flourishes even in these financial times thanks to careful foundation oversight and recent gifts from our generous donor. It is a partial tuition scholarship and most students also receive significant institutional and federal aid. So, I have concerns when I read that many scholarship providers are pulling back support.

Full cost of attendance at my university this fall (tuition, fees, room, board, books/supplies, personal expenses) is $18,370. The average financial need (cost of attendance minus expected family contribution) of my new class of 100 scholarship recipients is greater than $15,500. More than half of the students have need within 1% of the full cost of attendance.

With less money thrown off by endowments and contributed by donors, scholarship providers must make difficult choices. Should current scholarship recipients have their awards renewed, at the expense of new applicants? Should scholarship amounts be reduced so that the same number of students can benefit? Should the size of awards be protected, but their number cut? ~Jonathan D. Glater

Access to higher education becomes even more important in challenging economic times. Here’s hoping that scholarship providers can keep their focus on priorities.



Higher Education Priorities

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Just squeaked through crunch time of awarding $1 million private scholarship dollars to students entering our university this fall. The award is equal to one-half tuition and fees for four years. Most of the students receiving this award have significant to full financial need in meeting the cost of attendance for resident students, so getting this envelope in the mail is a reason for celebration.

So why am I not celebrating?

Analysis of financial aid packages for these students show that those with stellar grades who are scrambling for outside scholarships may meet about half of their expenses through grant and gift aid, leaving $8,000 to $10,000 in loan or out-of-pocket expense. Considering that the Iowa median income is $47,000 and most recipients of this award fall below the median, how is a student to afford an education at a Midwest public research university?

Our students graduate with some of the highest student loan debt in the nation and have amassed a 58% increase in loan debt in the last decade. Our state legislature disburses 85% of the state’s $3.4 million of need-based grants to students enrolled in private, not-for-profit colleges reserving only 6% for students enrolled in public colleges and universities.

Slow economic recovery and higher student loan default rates will not improve anytime soon. Tuition freeze? Loan forgiveness? I don’t have all of the answers. But it is time to prioritize the opportunity of higher education for all students.

Dreamed a dream of a college education

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The meteoric celebrity rise of a 47-year old church volunteer to online sensation lends credence that there are many diamonds in the rough waiting to be discovered. Much as Susan Boyle inspired the world last week by defying an unsuspecting talent show audience and its snarky judges, I meet students each year who despite amazing obstacles before them are able to achieve admission to a research university, and then piece together enough financial resources to actually attend.

Each April, I work with a team of scholarship application reviewers to identify 100 students in need of assistance to attend college. Most people never know the challenges these students surpass on their quest for an education. They are frequently the caregiver of younger siblings while mom or dad work extra jobs to make ends meet, giving up basketball or the debate club for family needs. They have faced catastrophic illnesses or disability, including cancer or the loss of a limb. They have survived the death of a parent, and sometimes both. They have overcome losing homes to flood, tornado, fire or financial difficulties. They have witnessed the tragedy of family substance abusers in all forms.

Here is an excerpt from one essay I featured in a discussion of college students in poverty.

Neither one of my parents went to college, nor did they graduate from high school. My mother had me five days after her 16th birthday. My dad is a laborer, so he never made much money. I have a brother four years younger than me; somehow we still had a childhood. Then the major problems started. My parents were both alcoholics and battled drug addiction with my dad ending up in jail. My brother and I both were taken from our parents and put into a foster home. Luckily we were allowed to move in with our grandmother, but with no steady income, we were moved to another foster home. Then we were again sent to live with our parents. Somehow dad went to jail again and then we moved in with our other grandparents. When dad got out, he came to find my mom and us. Together, their addictions got worse and it broke off our relationships with nearly everyone. Mom left and dad struggled to keep the up with rent at a house we got next to our grandparents. Dad got drunk just about everyday. I was forced to take care of my new one-year old sister. I remember missing a week of school to stay home and watch her since she was too sick to go to daycare and dad wouldn’t stay home. I still kept my grades up and took honor classes that year. I didn’t have one grade lower than a B. Mom came back to live with us, and all was good, until one night. Dad pushed mom and I jumped up and ran into the room to break up his actions. I was scared of him my whole life and now I stood up to him and was ready to take him on. I stopped dad from doing any more and I got my little sister. The cops were called and both of my parents were arrested that night. I made the decision to move back to our grandparents with my siblings.

Just like an unassuming woman from Blackburn, Scotland can rocket from obscurity to the headlines, I observe average students with little on their resume succeed in a college system that values star athletes and student council presidents. I watch as these students sometimes shine, sometimes stumble on the way to college graduation, amazing me with their ability, tenaciousness, and resiliency. I have seen them become teachers, college professors, attorneys, business owners, and engineers, whatever they set out to become. They remind me each year to always keep an eye on the underdogs as they frequently outclass their faster and flashier peers.

For many of the great, great successes of the world, the background they came from was their great challenge. I’m trying to find those people. Those who may not have the highest grade point or a perfect family background, but who can be successful. These are the ones who will lend the helping hands in the future.
~ Christina Hixson

Who is the next great talent on your campus? What have you done for them lately?

Facebook for Orientation webinar

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I am joining a panel of student affairs folks for a webinar titled Facebook for Orientation today. Each of us will share a little about how we utilize the Facebook network for linking with our new students at enrollment and beyond. The webinar is sponsored by the very cool people at SwiftKick, creators of RedRover and founders of the Student Affairs Blog. It will be at 12 noon CST. Join us to share in the discussion!

Register here.

Telephone Game

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My first-year students have been busy requesting recommendations for summer jobs and internships and seeking out resume and interview advice. Seeking new job search resources to share with my students, I began following former corporate HR exec Kerry Sandberg Scott on Twitter and at her blog. She shares this advice on telephone interviews.

  1. Find out how long the interview should take.
  2. Make sure it’s quiet.
  3. Use a real phone.
  4. Disable call waiting.
  5. Have a copy of your resume in front of you.
  6. Change your clothes (my favorite tip!)
  7. Don’t smoke.
  8. Pace yourself.
  9. Prepare some questions of your own.
  10. Relax.

You can read more on these and other great tips for your own job search at Clue Wagon.

Tattoo You?

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Feeling honored that I was on the campus must-see list for a student who picked up some new ink on spring break.

Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos.
~ The Joker, The Dark Knight

Self-handicapping behaviors of college students

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This NY Times article indicates that ego protection and lowered expectations are the reason some college students protect their failures through a behavior called self-handicapping. Using and creating excuses for poor academic performance allows students to plan for and evade success. If unchallenged, self-handicapping behaviors frequently carry over into the workplace, stereotyping individuals early in their careers. This is a great reference for students needing to take responsibility in their college education. Read more at The Student Affairs Blog.



Facebookgate: Power to the students

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A very interesting experiment in the power of social networks occurred on Friday. Several higher ed professionals uncovered evidence of a marketing scheme utilizing the very popular incoming freshman “Class Of” groups in Facebook and were sharing their findings on Twitter. Upon further digging they found hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the country with Class of 2013 groups created by the same small group of people. Additional detective work identified a college marketing group behind most of the pages, likely with the intent of mining students’ comments and posts on the Class of 2013 group pages.  Our university was the lucky recipient of two of these pages.





As we enroll a freshman class in the range of 4,500 students, it is not policy that we create and maintain official class pages for each new group of students. Instead we let the network of Facebook  groups develop naturally. The Class of 2012 group last year had more than 1,200 student members and hundreds of discussion board conversations.


Armed with information from the Twitter discussion with other higher ed colleagues, I was able to identify that the Class of 2013 group creators and admins were not prospective students. I posted links to the story on each page and highlighted the group admins that were attempting to pose as our students. Next, I messaged a couple of students who were engaged in the groups and encouraged them to take ownership. By Friday afternoon, the marketing groups had relinquished admin rights on one page and switched admins on the other. I emailed the new admin requesting that he name our students as admins. After a couple of snarky email replies, he gave up his admin rights by the next evening.  The students who took admin rights for the pages are now cross-posting on each group and building relationships with the other student admins.

We have no official obligation to monitor or engage students on Facebook or other social networking sites to protect them from indiscriminate sharing of information or spam marketing. But just as I would stop a preoccupied person from stepping off a curb into oncoming traffic, it felt appropriate to empower students with all available information regarding their decisions. Particularly if that decision may ultimately affect their enrollment and engagement with the university.

What’s your take on all of this?

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