What college catalogs don't reveal

TownHall.com ^ | Tuesday, April 1, 2003 | by Phyllis Schlafly

[JohnHuang2]

The catalogs and magazines from colleges and universities are impressive: slick paper, full color, attractive layouts and lots to read. But several items of useful information are usually missing.

Getting a bachelor's degree now takes five or six years instead of the traditional four. That drives up the already exorbitant cost another 25 percent to 50 percent more than you may have budgeted. Yet your degree isn't worth one penny more.

Only 31 percent of students at state institutions and 65 percent at private institutions graduate in four years. The primary reason for this slowdown is the easy flow of taxpayer money for grants and loans that make the extended stay pleasant for students and profitable for the institutions.

Don't count on college counselors to guide you to the courses that will

enable you to graduate in four years. The counselors are working for the college, not the students, and they know which side their bread is buttered on.

In addition to the out-of-pocket costs of tuition and housing, be sure to count the cost of lost employment for a couple of years. A University of Texas administrator estimates that each additional year in school costs students $50,000 in additional college costs and lost income.

When Pennsylvania last year promised $6 million bonuses to colleges that graduate at least 40 percent of their in-state students within four years, not a single state institution qualified. Some colleges have tried various inducements to increase their four-year graduation rate, but none can match the attraction of having tuition paid by taxpayers.

According to the General Accounting Office, 64 percent of college students graduate with student-loan debt, and the average student-loan debt is $19,400. After they join the work force, their monthly payments take at least 8 percent of their income.

This burden is even higher because more than half of student borrowers take out the more expensive unsubsidized loans. Surveys show that students often underestimate the total cost of their loans, forgetting about the interest, which over time can almost double the amount of the loan.

The use of credit cards by mostly unemployed college students is another current phenomenon. The average credit-card debt of undergraduate students is $2,748, and of graduate students is $4,776. The average student is carrying three credit cards, and 32 percent have four or more.

Some colleges give the credit-card companies access to lists of students and then get a kickback of a percentage of charges on the cards. It should come as no surprise that bankruptcy filings have reached a record high, and the fastest growing group of filers are those younger than age 25.

College publications brag about their women's studies departments, but they fail to warn students that there are few job opportunities for those with a degree or a concentration in women's studies, except at the declining feminist organizations and their nonprofit bureaucracies.

The Independent Women's Forum surveyed 89 women's studies majors and discovered that all but 18 were earning less than $30,000 per year, and 8 reported no personal income at all. In interviews with prospective employers, many found it useful to conceal or de-emphasize their women's studies majors.

Maybe women's studies majors didn't really expect to get a good job because they have been taught to approach life as a whining victim who will never get equal treatment. Women's studies courses openly teach the ideology that American women are oppressed by a male-dominated society and that the road to liberation is abortion, divorce, the rejection of marriage and motherhood, and unmarried sex of all varieties.

The career feminists, however, have achieved some successes in their agenda to punish the men whom they disdain as the oppressor class. Feminists in the Clinton administration misused Title IX to force universities to abolish 171 college wrestling teams and hundreds of other men's teams in gymnastics, swimming, golf and even football.

Another fact of campus life that college publications fail to reveal is the large number of students who are not capable of college work and are enrolled in high school-level remedial courses, although that word doesn't appear in the catalog. An astounding 29 percent of current freshmen at four-year colleges are taking at least one remedial reading, writing or math class; at two-year colleges, the figure is 41 percent.

What IS in college catalogs can be even more deceptive. Courses may have traditional titles, such as English 101, but the content of the course is better described as oppression studies.

Courses listed in college catalogs may be taught only once in 10 years. Colleges brag about their famous tenured professors, but they usually duck the large-enrollment courses, which are often taught by recent hires or graduate students.

It's time for overpriced colleges to give students some truth in labeling so they can spend their college dollars wisely. It's time to show students the option of getting a bachelor's degree in just three years (as two of my sons and I did at top-rated universities).

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer and conservative political analys

[jriemer]

Colleges and univesities are only required to report crimes that occur on their immediate property to a Federal crime database and this information is incredibly difficult to obtain as a prospective student or their family. Off-campus crime statistics involving college students on non-campus property is nearly impossible to differentiate from non-student involved crime.

This type of information can be quite important for students and their families thinking of attending large and urban colleges and universities.

[MortMan]

Women's studies, or Studying Women? There's a tad of a difference, you know:-)

[ventana]

I think the thing about undergrad is you usually don't go to the med school associated with your campus. So, it would be unlikely he'd go to Strong/UR. OTOH, he would have a hospital right there at which he could volunteer. V's wife.

[kidd]

Thanks. I will look into these.

Rice is tough to get into if you are not a Texas resident. I was accepted at Cornell, Duke, Brown, Washington and the U of Minnesota, but was rejected by Rice. I do agree its an excellent school.

[jude24]

lol....

nah, this guy is in "women's studies."

I think too many of the Women's Studies women are, shall we say, a little too interested in women....

[FreedomPoster]

>>In our day, about the only reason people didn't finish in four years was the draft, pregnancy or finances

I was at Ga Tech a little after the time of your college carrer, late '70's/early 80's.

At Tech, 4 years was unusual, but it was because passing 200+ quarter hours of a difficult technical curriculum was just damned hard to do in 12 academic quarters. IIRC, most majors required around 203-206 quarter-hours, which is almost 17 hours per quarter on average. And many classes had 3-hour labs, which counted for 1 quarter hour and required substantial out-of-lab write-ups.

But your point is well taken, I don't think much of the reason for longer time-in-school to graduate today is due to academic rigor of the curricula.

[MortMan]

Well said, and outside my direct sphere of knowledge (I went to RIT). Good luck to your son V (&V's Wife), wherever he ends up.

[Incorrigible]

Of the Universities you mention, I would totally endorse Carnegie Mellon.  I didn't go there but I know people who did.  I visited Pittsburgh frequently while they attended.  I don't know about their pre-med program but the engineering is top notch.  Perhaps he'd be interested in a Bio-Med Engineering program?  Almost all the NROTC guys I went to school with were engineers.  (Marquette Univ, BSEE, 1987)  I'll put a plug in for Marquette as well and note that they have a very good NROTC program.

The other benefit is that he'll be farther from home.  I left New Jersey to go to Milwaukee.  I almost went to school in New Jersey but going to school more than 1,000 miles away added to the level of maturity I attained

Cornell???  What are you thinking???!!!  :-)

[July 4th]

I think the most important thing a new student can do to get out in 4 years is to quickly pick a major and know all of the rules that go along with it.

I finished in 4 years at Wisconsin with a dual Poli Sci/Int'l Relations degree, because I would sit down for several hours before registration, and map out all of the classes I could take that would count for both majors. I had my majors done by the end of the 1st semester of my senior year. The one time I saw a counselor was at the end of that semester, and I asked, "I'm done, right?" My final semester was then full of all of the classes I had wanted to take, but wasn't sure if I could spare the time.

[newgeezer]

Going over the resume and ... Hmmm, Degree in Women Studies[.] Oh, so you're a lesbian?

Mrs. Schlafly is a Christian and a conservative.

[YourAdHere]

The line about English 101 being oppression studies really hit home. My first day in 101 at the University of Maryland, my female professor walked in, introduced herself, welcomed us to her class, then proceeded to tell us that she had been artifically inseminated so that she and her lesbian lover could be parents. I'm not joking, it was that fast, all in the same sentence.

[B Knotts]

A thread about college catalogs, and no one has mentioned this?

Black Guy Photoshopped In

You guys are falling down on the job...

[Incorrigible]

Dude!  The Onion was late to the game on that one.

The photoshopped cover really happened at the University of Wisconsin.

UW-Madison doctors photo to stress diversity

Photo/UW-Madison news & public affairs The original photo shows Badger football fans cheering during a football game at Camp Randall Stadium.   Photo/UW-Madison news & public affairs In an effort to show what a diverse campus UW-Madison is, UW officials doctored a photo that appears on the cover of the Wisconsin 2001-'02 admissions application to include a black student in it.   Photo/UW-Madison news & public affairs This photo of Diallo Shabazz was added to the cover of the admissions application. Shabazz was originally with ethnic minority students meeting each other at the PLAYFAIR icebreaker activity for new students during Wisconsin Welcome, a University of Wisconsin orientation activity. The photo was reversed to make it work within the context of the other photo.

[CatoRenasci]

Your advice is good if a student really knows what they want to do when they start. Unfortunately, most students change majors, once or twice, but sometimes more. I suspect PoliSci/IR was relatively easy to double major, as there should be lots of overlap in major courses, i.e. courses that not only fill elective requirements for one or both, but dual listing of courses for the major. In our daughters case coming up, looking at BM Music Performance/BA History or English, there will be less overlap, but electives for one can sometimes be the required major courses for the other.

I didn't double major, but I have to say I was always careful to make sure I had my requirements fulfilled or waived early on. The most important thing a student can do is to get the current college catalog and read it carefully. Everyone concentrates on the viewbooks and fluff, but the meat is in the catalog.

[nebulas]

Looking at colleges for my daughter. She's strong in math and science and has talked about Air Force Academy. She wants to be a pilot (fighter) but I'm not sure she will qualify physically (she's 5' nothing). If anyone has any alternate suggestions I would appreciate it.

[Slings and Arrows]

Going over the resume and ...

Hmmm, Degree in Women Studies

Oh, so you're a lesbian?

This is an inaccurate stereotype. I once knew a Women's Studies major, and she estimated that as many as 15% of the students were heterosexual. :-)

[B Knotts]

Ha ha! Yeah, I vaguely recall that. As always, truth is indeed stranger than fiction. I think maybe the Onion article was just kinda poking fun at Wisconsin for that, because the Onion is right there in Madison.

[Incorrigible]

map out all of the classes

I thought this was required of all UW students!  The campus was so big, you couldn't make your next class in four years nevermind graduate!

[Hatteras]

The Boy Scout motto? Always be prepared? That is why we gave our kids 3 and 4 letter names. If all else fails, they can always fit their names comfortably into that little oval patch on their work Dickies...

[CatoRenasci]

When I was in the Army, my roomate was a Georgia Tech graduate. He did it, in some sort of engineering, in 4 years, and was the driver of the 'wreck' for two of those years. Smart guy, hard worker, could party effectively.