There once was a time when angst about the college decision was limited to getting into your dream school. That was a simpler era.
The No. 1 worry most commonly cited by parents and students about college is the level of debt a student might take on, according to Princeton Review survey of more than 10,500 students and parents released Tuesday. In 2006, the concern most commonly cited by students and parents was that the applicant wouldn’t get into their top school.
The findings add to the growing body of evidence that students and parents are becoming increasingly concerned with a college’s ability to set its students on a pathway toward the kind of financial success that will enable them to pay off the debt they accrued while in school. Over the past few years, organizations, including the federal government have launched rankings and lists devoted to helping families figure out the return on investment of a given school.
Parents and students are also getting bolder about demanding information from a college about its job placement and financial outcomes, said Robert Franek, the editor-in-chief of the Princeton Review. “Students and parents have become vigilant about asking questions that would have been taboo five years ago,” he said. Those include, ‘What’s going to be the return on my investment?’ ”
In some ways, this focus on finances has actually intensified the pressure for students to get into a name-brand school, Franek said. Though there were some differences in the top “dream schools” listed by students and parents, the lists both shared some of the usual suspects, like Stanford University, Harvard University, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That may be in part because families believe these schools offer students their best shot at a secure financial future, Franek said.
“The perception and the brand of these schools has such great weight on the minds of students and parents,” he said.
Though name-brand schools do often set students up for success, Franek said he wishes families would widen their lens a bit to focus on other options. Research indicates that graduates don’t need degrees from top tier schools to be successful in STEM and other fields. What’s more, there are many non-selective schools that do more than Ivy League schools or other top tier schools to propel their students toward higher earnings than they would have had otherwise.
Franek, who has worked in higher education for more than 20 years, said he’s noticed schools of all types are more prepared than ever to prove to families that they’re a worthwhile investment. Small liberal arts colleges in particular, which have come under fire for the “real world” value they provide to students, have been emphasizing their career services centers on tours and in marketing materials, said Andy Lockwood, a Jericho, N.Y.–based financial-aid consultant.
“There’s been this slow perceptible change of bringing (career services) out from the cold and into the main administration building and plunking them down right in the same area where all the other important departments are,” Lockwood said.
Students and families looking to make sure a school offers a good return on investment should visit these centers and ask representatives who recruit on campus, what kind of resume and interview support they offer to students and the types of places where students usually intern, Lockwood said.
He also suggests arranging meetings with academic department heads even before your application is accepted (or not), he said. It’s relatively easy, he noted, to schedule these types of meetings because most prospective students don’t make that effort. What’s more, department chairs aren’t trying to sell the school the same way admissions officials and other college representatives are, so they will likely be honest.
“Sooner or later all of those college tours blend into each other and the best thing you can do is talk to career services, talking to department heads, talk to upperclassmen and ask them a whole bunch of questions,” he said. “That’s the way you find a good return on investment.”