pre-college

The times they are a changin may be a song from the baby-boom era, but it is also a phrase that aptly describes how colleges are beginning to treat parents.Until the beginning of the 1990s, it was rare for any college or university to think of parents as anything other than good targets for fundraising. A typical pattern for schools was mail tuition bill, receive tuition payment, and send solicitation for annual fund.

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it is the best of times and it is the worst of times for American higher education.A college education is more widely available than at any time in our nation's history, with well more than two-thirds of high school graduates attending college in the year following high school, and more than 80 percent beginning their higher education within a few years.

The provision of need-based financial aid, at a need-blind school, may be frustrating sometimes in its outcome, but at least it is fairly easy to understand for parents and straightforward to administer for the college or university.

Since September 2003, with your support, I have been steering College Parents of America's advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., supporting legislation and rule-making that reduces the complexity of the education planning process and makes college more affordable for families. If your family members, friends and neighbors can be convinced to join you as a member of our organization, then our advocacy efforts can become even more effective, as they will be "on behalf of" an even greater number of people.

It’s not exactly a newsflash that one of the many ways that U.S.-based businesses are gaining productivity – and saving money – is through outsourcing of certain functions. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some colleges and universities, in searching for ways to keep their own expenses down, are also looking to outsource. […]

Dear Parents:When your children leave home for college, they will face a host of new experiences and responsibilities. As a parent, you recognize that now they will be "on their own" to tackle life's basic functions - at the same time that they are adjusting to a new environment and new freedoms. To help your student in this transition, he/she should know the "financial facts of life" before opening that first checking account or making that first purchase on credit.

Gearing Up for the Road Ahead As you take steps towards college, work, consider what you value and design a process with few steps on how to get there. It is best to be ready for failures, for rejections, and to keep moving forward. In order to find the programs that will benefit you and […]

Moving your student to college is often filled with stress, sweat and emotion.  So being prepared is vital to making the most of this moment and leaving your student on campus both confident and secure.

For current college parents, the twelve days of Christmas don't end with a partridge and a pear tree.In fact, the year-end holidays don't seem to end at all. Increasingly, colleges and universities are scheduling longer and longer periods of time between the last day of fall finals and the first day of spring semester.Beginning as early as mid-December, those of you who are current college parents began to have your sons and daughters come home for the holidays. And their rooms were probably still waiting to be cleaned from the mess they left at Thanksgiving.

Although we serve all college parents at all stages, many of our most devout readers are parents of freshman in college and, you may be picking up your son or daughter at the airport, train station or appointed car-pooling spot as he or she returns from school for the Thanksgiving holiday.  You probably will be […]