Scannell & Kurz Enrollment Management Blog

In early summer Kathy Kurz wrote a blog about the media frenzy surrounding student loan debt reaching $1 trillion. Now that fall has arrived and new statistics are available, I thought I would share a few. According to the Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), here are some interesting statistics on student debt for the Class of 2011, those who graduated from four-year public and not-for-profit colleges and universities: 1 in 3 students graduated with no student loan debt. That’s $0 debt. For the two-thirds who did borrow, average debt compared to the class of 2010 increased 5.3%, from $25,250 to $26,600. Unemployment for college graduates, a contributing factor to the concern…Read more

The Chronicle’s annual Almanac came out this year at the same time as NACUBO’s 1962-2012 retrospective. In looking at the trends reported in these two publications, I took note of a few that I wanted to highlight in this week’s blog. From the Chronicle of Higher Education 2012 Almanac: For students who started college in fall 2006, the most common transfer destination for students who started at a four-year institution was a two-year institution. Looking specifically at students who started at private non-profit schools, slightly more than 40% of those who transferred went to two-year publics. Slightly less than 40% went to four-year publics and only about 20% went to other four-year private not-for-profits. These statistics surprised…Read more

I was just looking at the final version of the Department of Education and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “Shopping Sheet” and wondering how many of our clients are planning to use it. My biggest concern with it is that the “what you will pay” section includes total cost of attendance minus gift aid, rather than direct costs minus gift aid. When I was a financial aid director, families found the whole concept of indirect costs versus direct costs very confusing, so I finally listed only direct costs (tuition, room, board, and mandatory fees) at the top of the award letter, with an estimate in a later paragraph of the other costs they would have for books, transportation, personal expenses, etc. That solved the problem, but doing…Read more

I just finished reading DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, by Anya Kamenetz. Although it was published in March of 2010, it is still very relevant today as the consumer rebellion against rising college costs that she predicted has started to come to fruition, especially this year. In addition, all of the recent press about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) was foreshadowed in her assertion that the availability of free course content on the web (via iTunes U, YouTube…) plus social media platforms to make high tech also high touch (e.g., 2for platform, online gaming…) has the potential to transform the delivery of education. She observes three reactions to these opportunities: A movement…Read more