Counter-intuitive thinking about return on college investment

This morning, as I was catching up on an old podcast while shaving, an interesting insight came to me.

(Warning: exercise extreme caution while simultaneously handling a razor and an interesting insight. Failing that, have a bandage handy.)

This particular podcast, NPR’s “Planet Money,” covers a wide range of topics, from how LeBron James is the “most underpaid athlete in the world today” to Duke’s $30,000 tuition discount. If you’re looking for an interesting peek into the finances of a major private research university, I encourage you to listen to the latter—and I highly encourage you to listen to it while doing something safer than shaving, like fluffing pillows.

The Duke story centers on the notion that, despite its approximately $60,000 cost of attendance, students who attend Duke are getting a $30,000 off-the-top discount—the argument is that it actually costs $90,000 to educate a Duke student after accounting for physical attributes of the campus, financial aid, salaries, lab facilities for big-name researchers, and other items.

The accounting isn’t what caused me to jump. As someone who works at a private college, I wasn’t surprised to hear what I already knew: colleges and universities are extremely expensive to run. (This is true even for public colleges, which, through their states’ budget support, are also able to heavily discount their real costs.)

My “a-HA!” moment came in the closing two minutes of the podcast, where the hosts pose the obligatory summary rhetorical question: Is it worth it? Or more accurately:

If you’re a student… are you getting a massive discount on the cost of your education, or are you subsidizing a giant educational edifice that you as an undergraduate student will barely come into contact with? [The answer: it depends on what kind of student you are…]

The question—and especially their “it depends” answer—forced me to rethink my perspective on the challenge that families rightly have been putting to every college in the country with increasing frequency: what is the return on the investment I’m going to make in your college?

We colleges—Lawrence included—usually answer that question with some combination of the following:

  • profiles of alumni with either (a) cool jobs, (b) nifty titles, (c) jobs at nationally-recognizable entities, or (d) some mash-up of all three;
  • lists of employers, graduate and professional school placements;
  • percentages of recent graduates who are employed or in graduate school within six months of graduation.

These may be answers, but they’re not necessarily the right evidence for return on investment. They also suggest a simple input/output relationship: if you attend our university, then this can happen to you, too.

But here’s the other part—which brings me all the way back to my “shaving incident.”

The return on investment question is deceptively simple: “If I invest X, what might Y be?”

But X and Y are way more complicated.

Because X is not just your cost of attendance for four years. It’s also the degree to which a student takes advantage of what the college has to offer:

  • If the school offers research opportunities for undergraduates, will you take them?
  • If the school offers the services of its professors to help you craft a meaningful and relevant curriculum, will you use them?
  • If the school provides a rich extracurricular life—filled with athletic, musical, and other activities—will you participate in or support them?
  • If the school offers a city community beyond its campus as a place for work, play, and service, will you get out into that community?

Even if a student answers affirmatively to all or even some of the above, Y is difficult to predict—and Y becomes less predictable (and, presumably, more transformative) the more students engage all of the elements of X.

College isn’t—or at least shouldn’t be—a passive experience. You can act upon it. Different colleges will provide you different student communities, physical and cultural environments, and degrees of flexibility in which you can shape them—and be shaped by them.

What is the return on your investment in a college?

(You know where this is going.)

It depends on how you invest yourself—not just your money—in it.

ESPN has 30 for 30. Lawrence is going with 47 for 44(ish).

So it doesn’t have the symmetry of the title to ESPN’s signature documentary series, but that’s what you get with a prime number like 47.

On our application for admission this year, we posed a devilishly simple short answer prompt:

Why Lawrence? It’s a short question seeking a short answer. 47 well-chosen words—give or take a few—should work.

The answers we received were, as you might expect, fun to read. (And for quite a few applicants, we could tell they were fun to write.) On the Lawrence Facebook page, we’re going to post a bunch of the short answers (not all of them 47 words) over the next 44 days leading up to the May 1 National Candidates Reply Date. We’ll ask the authors permission to use them, but we’ll protect their anonymity. We hope you enjoy their work as much as we have.

We’ll start with one here:

If a scholar lacks for fun
Send him off to Appleton.
Bio, music, Russian Lit.
In Lawrence I have found my fit.
Lawrence lacks not for its fundin’
Evidence? Just see Bjorklunden!
Oh, let me be a racing cox
For Lawrence crew out on the Fox.
Offering just what I need,
Veritas est Lux, indeed.
Burma Shave.
Seriously. This applicant closed with “Burma Shave.” If you’re unsure why that’s awesome, check out the collection of Burma Shave roadside ads from the 1920s and on.

 

Homemade food, old friends, great conversation, and environmental economics

If you’ve visited Lawrence University over the past few months, you may have spotted me behind a sliding glass window right off the main lobby of the Admissions Office in Hurvis Center, staring intently at my dual monitor.  But last Thursday evening I found myself in the mustard-colored Greenfire house laughing with old friends, their faces glowing in the warmth of funky lights.  And what made the night truly lovely was the special guest I encountered when I got there.

gfiya

As a student I was very involved with Greenfire, one of the main environmental clubs at Lawrence.  The house, where a handful of club members live and cook and are merry (and where I lived all of my senior year), happens to sit right across the street from Hurvis Center, which means I have no excuse not to frequently visit my friends who still live there and consume their fresh food creations (and, okay, wash some dishes while I’m there).

When I stopped by Thursday for a group meal, held in the house four times a week, I walked into the living room and saw Professor of Economics, David Gerard, sitting on the couch with his plate in his lap, in deep discussion with two students.  (Professor Gerard taught me Environmental Economics during a particularly beautiful spring term at LU.  The morning we had class outside, I remember feeling almost overcome by the scent of blooming lilacs while we analyzed the value of putting a price on carbon pollution.)

On Thursday the Greenfire club was kickstarting a series of lectures held in the comfy old house.  When I saw Professor Gerard digging into broccoli mac and cheese, he was gearing up for his talk on the economic viability of carbon sequestration.  What always amazes me is just how deeply interested Lawrence professors are in their areas of expertise, and how willing they are to share that expertise with their students.  Professor Gerard enjoys discussing the economics of natural resource extraction so much that he gave up his entire evening to do just that with a bunch of millennials.

During dinner, the atmosphere was no different from the nights when the house is not hosting a VIP.   We reminisced, filled our plates with seconds, talked about our weekend plans, traded ideas for why the candied walnuts in the salad tasted so perfect.  And that’s something that makes my alma mater so special.  It’s not difficult to come across homemade dinners (besides Greenfire, there’s the Sustainable LU Garden co-op and the McCarthy Co-op), friends, mindfulness–even professors–all in one place.

~Caitlin Buhr (Lawrence 2013), Data Operations Assistant

 

 

Financial Aid Season: Just Do It

You may recall from my previous blog posts that I am a crier.

I am also a world-class worrier.

It should come as no surprise that, almost immediately after my son started getting into colleges, I shifted my worry gears into how we would pay for him to go to college. Like many families, my husband and I had given this some attention (along with some thought and, yes, worry) since the day our son was born. But now it was REAL.

Before I go on, there are some personal factors I should share so that I might adequately set the stage for my level of angst:

  1. Education is highly valued in my family – always has been, always will be.
  2. Somehow, my parents (both educated, but living a very middle income life) successfully sent 6 kids off to liberal arts colleges. I don’t remember a single conversation that started with “we can’t afford this school.” (So this was new territory for us.)
  3. Both my husband and I work in the field of education (a noble profession, I like to think, but not one that lends itself to large bank accounts).
  4. The schools to which my son was admitted cost—on average—more for one year than the nicest car I would have ever dreamed of owning. The cost for 4 years would be… well, let’s not go there.
  5. My son was heading off to college at the height of this country’s recent recession.

To make myself feel better, I tried very hard to listen to the advice I had been giving families over my 30 financial aid seasons:

  1. You’ll never know the true cost of a college until you submit all appropriate paperwork to your schools.
  2. Every school handles scholarship and financial aid dollars differently. The same student may look very different in different colleges’ applicant pools.
  3. Scholarship decisions are not equivalent to the worth of a child in their mother’s eyes (if only!!!!)
  4. Financial aid officers are human beings. Many are parents themselves. Most tend to have a pretty high level of compassion to go along with their expertise. They know that families are anxious about this process AND they know that each family’s financial situation is unique. They will answer your questions. They are (along with admissions officers) your best source of information.
  5. This means that the well-meaning, “been there, done that” parent in the line at the grocery checkout is probably not your best source of information about this.

When late February rolled around, we arrived at the moment where we had to stop worrying and get to work. It started by NOT waiting until April 15 to file our tax return. We got that thing done earlier than we ever had done it. (I wish I could tell you that the process and paperwork was pleasurable, but it wasn’t so awful that we didn’t get it done – we did. We even got it done on time.)

If you have been avoiding the heavy lifting involved in this part of your child’s college search process, I would encourage you to follow a certain athletic company’s advice and “Just Do It.” Only when you do will you learn the real numbers and real costs at individual schools.

Here are some important resources to help get you through this:

  • The official FAFSA website is:  www.fafsa.gov (Not fafsa. com… run away from that one.)
  • The official CSS profile website is: www.collegeboard.org/css-financial-aid-profile
  • StudentAid.gov provides information about federal student aid programs, eligibility, how to fill out the FAFSA, and what to expect after submitting the FAFSA, as well as guidance on repaying student loans.
  • StudentAid.gov/fafsa gets into the real nitty-gritty about the FAFSA: find details about dependency status, who counts as a parent, how to figure out when the IRS Data Retrieval Tool will be available for an individual applicant, or how to report same-sex marriages on the FAFSA.

I’ll say it again (recognizing my own professional bias): admissions and financial aid officers on college campuses everywhere are terrific sources of information, expertise, and worry abatement.

And really… worrying is overrated.

Take it from a world-class worrier.

Carin Smith, Lawrence University Regional Admissions Director

A Southerner’s First Wisconsin Winter: Or How I Learned To Love (or Tolerate) the Polar Vortex

On January 6 at 5:01pm, in the midst of the worst polar vortex in recent US history, a terrible thing happened: My nose-hairs froze.

If you’re reading this and originally hail from the North, this probably isn’t a foreign concept to you (albeit a little graphic, and for that, I apologize). But if you’re from where I am – a magical land of year-round beach going and endless supplies of fresh oranges – you probably think I’m nuts. And let me tell you, cotillion certainly did not provide me with a more lady-like way to express what happened to me above. (Sorry, Mom.)

When I told my parents I would be moving away from the South for the first time in my life in favor of a job in Northeast Wisconsin, they took the news with all the excitement of a root canal. (And like a bad root canal, this one seemed to come to them without enough Novocain.) Though I know they tried to be as supportive as possible, there was obvious doubt I could survive what from that day forward will forever be known to my family as The Great Frozen Tundra.

Lawrence in the snow

Perhaps naively, I didn’t think it would be that hard. After all, I’m a millennial… I can do anything! (Insert generational commentary here,) I’d buy a coat, start my new career, and get on with it.

I made the brilliant (read: lucky) decision to move in August – you know, sweater weather time. I loved Lawrence instantly and proudly volunteered for Welcome Week, where I courteously provided directions (likely wrong) to other newcomers like myself.

But as time tolled on, I realized there were quite a few differences I may not have been prepared for. So, with all the wisdom that comes with exactly 5 months and 5 days of living in Wisconsin, here is a brief list of things you may be comforted to know in advance: 

  1. The Weather. It’s cold here. Don’t buy your coat in the South, because it doesn’t count. Don’t buy your jeans there either. Your nose hairs will freeze and you’ll have to carry mittens everywhere and your poor 6 pound Yorkie will fall straight through the soft snow. That all being said…
  2. No seriously, the weather! Snow is kind of a blast! People don’t actually just stop going outside here when it’s cold. (I’m looking at you, Texas.) There’s sledding and snow shoeing and snowman building – there’s even igloo building for the advanced, future civil engineer snow-architects.
  3. It’s easy to make friends. Southern hospitality is simply called “Midwestern Nice” here. Try going to a grocery store here and NOT being smiled at or greeted by 100 strangers. I dare you.
  4. How about them apples? Did you know ‘Red’ and ‘Green’ aren’t the only types of apple? And they have different flavors? This is a weird one you’ll grow to appreciate, and you’ll establish alliances based on your preferences. (Because there is a limit to how many people will edit this post, I’d like to take this opportunity to announce Honeycrisp as the Lawrence Admissions Office’s apple of choice.) Plus apples go well with…
  5. SAY CHEESE! It really is everywhere. Just accept it. Fried cheese curds may be the best thing to ever happen to you.
  6. Watch your language. If you tell someone “bless your heart,” they will think you’re being nice and not realize there’s at least a 50% chance it’s an insult. On a similar train of thought, all phrases referencing ticks, armadillos, wet towels, wet mules, and/or hot tin roofs will not be understood. Understand y’all?
  7. Predator-free aquatic recreation. Wisconsinites spend a lot of time taking advantage of our 15,000 lakes without ever worrying about a shark, crocodile, or alligator! (Ahem, I was born in Florida.) Also, Wisconsin has more lakes than Minnesota. Did I wish I knew that last tidbit ahead of time? Probably not. Is it fun to taunt Minnesotans and their 10,000 lakes about now? You betchya.

So maybe I do still wear a puffy coat when it’s a balmy 27 degrees and sometimes mistake the names of fancy apple breeds for 90s pop stars… I still maintain that when all is said and done, Lawrence makes it all worth it. And if I – and my 6 pound puppy – can do it, so can you.

 

Gaelyn Rose is a recent addition to the Lawrence Admissions staff. Arriving in Appleton by way of Houston, Texas, she shares her experiences dealing with the regional changes of all things weather, language, and critters.