College Applicants Are Ruling Out States Due To Political Views

One in four college applicants are ruling out colleges because they are located in states they think are not in line with their own political and social views. In addition, this weeding out happens early on in the college choice process, with 64% saying that they eliminated these schools when first deciding what colleges they were interested in. This information is from a recently released report from Art & Science Group.

Another interesting factor here is that the finding is across all political groups and no likely to be more of an issue with conservative than liberal students, or even moderates. The reasons differ, but the prevalence remains the same. The top reason for conservative students was a perception that the state was “too democratic” while the top reasons (the liberal students listed more issues as important that the conservative students did) for liberals were being too conservative on “abortion & reproductive rights,” “LGBTQ+ laws” and “too lenient on guns.”

So, what are these states? For the conservative students, they were California and New York. For the liberal students, they were Texas, Florida, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

What this might mean, and this is only a “might” since there are so many other factors in play, is that we could see more polarization of student political views in these six states in which California and New York have even an even larger proportion of liberal students and Texas, Florida, Arkansas, and Tennessee have an even larger proportion of conservative students.

What the report did not address is the home state of the high-school students answering the survey and if that might factor into college choice. Most students go to college close to home. Are the students who are considering state political views a factor living in more liberal states and would probably stay in that state for college anyway? That is, is the New York liberal-minded student going to stay in New York for college anyway, regardless of thinking that going to college in Florida is not for them?

Podcast With Harlan Cohen

Hey everyone, not an extensive blog post here but a link to a podcast I was on with my friend and colleague Harlan Cohen. He called it “The data behind understanding college success and happiness” and we talked about many things related to that and other ideas. I’ve know Harlan for about 20 years in the higher education sphere, and it was a pleasure to have this discussion. Hope you enjoy.

Rating the Rankings

New findings from Arts & Science Group’s studentPoll looks at how high school students are using college rankings. And it shows, well, that they really are not using them that much. In fact, it’s more likely that a student will turn to rankings for information about a college rather than for the actual ranking that the publication magically gives that college. In fact, only about 10% used the rankings for the rank, as opposed to about 30% who used the accompanying information in that publication (e.g., range of testing scores or admitted students, application deadlines, enrollment numbers, etc). And 40% never used rankings at all.

This mirrors findings from the CIRP Freshman Survey that I ran back when I was at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. When we asked incoming first-year students across the country about important reasons why they chose their college, rankings were always way down on the list.

Despite this, rankings keep making the news and influencing college policies and programs.

Who pays attention to rankings? In my experience it’s mostly college presidents, their communications people, and alumni. But high school students? Not so much.

College Graduates Have More Important Social Connections With Others

Loneliness has been declared an epidemic here in the United States, according to the U.S. Surgeon General of the United States. This was laid out in a widely circulated report in 2023 entitled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” It’s not hard to debate this, if you pay attention to the news or get on social media. Children, teens, and adults are all feeling more lonely and socially isolated.

I came across a very interesting report recently about social connections, and the results have been running around in my head ever since. It’s called “Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life” and it’s a remarkable look into how we are, and are not, connected in today’s world. It’s also about who is connected and who is not.

This study looked at the ways people have been, and can be, connected. Do you take advantage of public parks in your community? How about the public library? A religious group? Restaurants? Do you get out and walk in your neighborhood? Have conversations with your neighbors? Volunteer? Have guests in your home?

Then, what might happen that is connected to these types of social interactions? How many close friends do you have? Do you have someone who could take you to a doctor’s appointment? Loan you $200? Watch your kids for a few hours?

Do you have someone whom you could listen to your problems and support you?

Remarkably, all these categories have something in common: it is much more likely that college graduates experience these at a higher rate than people who did not graduate from college.

College graduates are more likely to go to a public park or garden (60%) than those who did not graduate from college (41%). They are more likely to go the library at least a few times a year (45% vs. 27%). They are more likely to meet people for coffee (49% vs. 34%) and walk around in their neighborhood at least once or twice a month (43% vs. 18%). People out walking in the neighborhood are more likely to have conversations with neighbors they don’t know very well and they are more likely to say they can generally trust people.

So, college graduates are more likely to be socially engaged in their communities and neighborhoods. Seemingly as a result of this, they are more trusting of people and are more likely to have people they can rely on. Nine out of ten college graduates have at least one close friend, compared to only 76% of those who did not graduate from college. Tellingly, college graduates were more likely to have someone who would listen to their problems and support them than non-graduates (75% vs. 57%).

This is a survey and a correlational study, so it would be going beyond the data to say that college graduation causes all these more positive interactions. But it’s not far to speculate that the college experience might influence the college graduate’s experience interacting in new social situations and understanding of why it is important to get involved in the community. After all, that is one of the first things we tell college students: get involved! Research that I and my colleagues at UCLA and Gallup and other researchers across the country have found time and time again that students who get involved with the college community have better experiences in college and better outcomes such as wellbeing and engagement with their jobs.

What if another benefit of the college experience was being less lonely and isolated? I’d say that is something we should get behind.

Hopeless High-School Students: Youth Risk Behavior Survey Results 2023

Two out of five high school students in the US in 2023 experienced “persistent feelings of sadness or helplessness,” according to the most recent report by the CDC. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is a comprehensive survey of various risk in areas of mental health, sexual behavior, alcohol and other drug use, suicide ideation, and more that is conducted every other year.

The data on sadness and helplessness showed a slight drop from 2021, when it was 42%, to 40% in 2023. But we saw a huge jump in 2021 from years before, with data from 2013 - 2017 hovering about 30%, then jumping to 37% in 2019, and again in 2021 up to 42%.

As we have seen in many other youth surveys, girls are more likely than boys to report feeling hopeless and sad, as in 2023 53% of girls reported such persistent feelings compared to a much lower 28% of boys. In a somewhat hopeful trend (although still way too high), however, this 53% figure for girls is down from 57% in 2021.

Another alarming difference is seen in the LGBTQ+ population, with 65% of high school students identifying as such telling us they have such persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness compared to 31% of students not identifying in this way.

While the YRBS does not ask about why this might be the case, other research tells us that there can be many areas that can impact this. Several fairly recent books have looked at this and postulated reasons such as a lack of connectedness (Lisa Damour), anxiety fueled by social media (Jonathan Haidt), and the toxic achievement culture (Jennifer Breheny Wallace). I have certainly argued in my research and writing that the college choice process needlessly drives youth (and parent) anxiety due to misconceptions people have about the differential impact of college and .

This is a multifaceted issue and will need multiple approaches to help young women and men feel more hopeful and less sad in their daily lives.

How Many First-Year College Students Don’t Return?

There is new research out from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center on first year retention and persistence.

Students who started college in fall of 2022 were a little more likely to return to college in the fall of 2023 as sophomores, the study found. Overall, 68.2% of college first-year students returned to their college the next year, up from 67.2% in the previous year. That is just those who came back to the same college, which we call retention (because they are retained at the college from which they started). If we could those who returned to college, but went to a different college, that number goes up 8.3 percentage points to 76.5%. So 8.3% transferred to another institution.

These numbers are going in the right direction, but not fast enough. For one out of four college freshmen to leave after one year is really not ideal at all. Think about all the time and effort to get into college. And then after one year (or less), it’s over. You have no degree, and likely have some debt from that first year.

Why do students fail to return? There are a few reasons. When I was director of the CIRP survey program at UCLA we created a survey module that looked at this question and received these answers from students who planned to leave at the end of the year. A major reason is not feeling like you belong at that particular college. Another is funding, as students and their families struggle to continue to pay tuition and other costs of college. In particular, people leave when they do not see the relevance of what they are learning and compare that to the cost of college. For some, they were not academically ready for college, and struggle academically.

Stress About College Choices

New research by HCM Strategists (whom I have worked with in the past on other projects) examines concerns about going to college from high-school graduates who had either never attended college or who had attended but subsequently left without a degree. The findings are based on results from 4,848 people.

Reflecting back on their high-school experience, while they felt academically prepared for college, they felt less prepared for the social and emotional aspects of the college experience. As high-school students they were unsure about how to approach choosing a college and were anxious about making mistakes in the process. They were unsure how to choose a major and how their choices might impact employment after college.

A survey by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) in 2023 found that half of young adults who had applied to college felt that completing their college application was more stressful than anything else they had done academically. And three quarters of them felt that any small mistake on their application could limit their acceptances.

All too often students (and parents) stress about college choice because they get information from the wrong sources. Popular beliefs about what matters in college are often mistaken and based on personal beliefs that do not reflect reality. Researchers (including myself) need to do a better job of getting our research findings out into the public eye so we can combat this stress.

Graduating College?

As college acceptances are in and people are considering where to go, they are thinking about where to spend the next four years of their lives. Few of them realize that more often than people know, it takes longer than four years to graduation from college.

It’s a bit of a shocker, right? They are called “four-year colleges” for a reason. It’s supposed to take you four years to graduate. In fact, when I ran the CIRP Freshman Survey and we surveyed hundreds of thousands of freshman arriving at hundreds of colleges across the US, 88% thought they would graduate in four years.

In reality, only 49% graduate after four years. It’s such an issue that the US government routinely looks at the six year graduation rate as a benchmark. At six years, 62% graduate from college.

That extra 2 years for 13% of college graduates has a cost. First of all, tuition and related expenses for two more years is a big deal. Most likely you and your family only budgeted for four years. Second of all, the opportunity cost of being in the job market for two years has an impact as well. Not only are you using more money to go to school those extra years, but you are not making as much as you could if you had graduated and been working.

And by now some of you have done the math and figured out that if 62% graduate in 6 years, 38% do not. Close to 1 out of 3 students who start college do not get a degree. For those who have student loans, this is a big concern. We know that college graduates can command much higher salaries than those whose highest degree is a high school diploma. The people who are worst off are those who took loans for college, but left without a degree, and this cannot take advantage of that wage bump.

So it is really important when deciding where to attend college to look at how many people graduate within four years. It can make a huge difference in a place that supports a life long benefit, or that becomes a liability.

More About Majors

My colleague Jamie Merisotis, president at the Lumina Foundation, wrote an interesting article in Forbes recently. Lumina was a major funder of the Gallup-Purdue Index, which I was the lead researcher on and have talked about on this blog before, so although we had known each other previously, we were on the road together speaking about those findings.

The article makes a great point about majors. Majors should not be seen as defining what area your career will be in, but as a starting point to learn about learning most of all. Some majors do point towards careers in that field, like engineering and business. Other majors have broader applications, such as English. In the article Jamie writes about how an English major used the skills he learned in that major, such as effective communication, to get a job in a field not ordinarily seen as connected to English.

College students need help recognizing what skills they have acquired through their college classes that go beyond the subject matter knowledge. I spoke about this a bit in my TEDxUCLA talk. Career Services can help college students articulate what career skills they have from not only the classroom, but activities and teams. Unfortunately, many students do not realize this, and do not take full advantage of the resources in Career Services. A good piece of advice is to visit Career Services early on in your college years. Don’t wait until spring term of senior year. Go in your first year of college so that you can frame your experiences through a lens of future employment.

What Matters Is What You Do, Not Where You Go

Since college admissions decisions have come out, I’ve been talking with high school seniors about their choices. Most people have great options, although they don’t always feel that way if they have been waitlisted or did not get into the college they really wanted to go to. That’s when I emphasize that it’s not so much where you go, but what you do in whatever college you attend, findings from the project I was lead researcher on for Gallup: The Gallup-Purdue Index.

When I am asked what is important to do in college I fall back on the BIG SIX as well called them. These are the college experiences that are most likely to lead to what we called the Great Job and Great Life, based on Gallup’s outcomes measures in wellbeing and employee engagement.

Here are the BIG SIX, and people who strongly agreed with these statements were more likely to have the Great Job and Great Life:

• I had at least one professor at college who made me excited about learning.

• My professors at college cared about me as a person.

• I had a mentor who encouraged me to pursue my goals and dreams.

• I worked on a project that took a semester or more to complete.

• I had an internship or job that allowed me to apply what I was learning in the classroom.

• I was extremely active in extracurricular activities and organizations while attending college.

The key is to get involved. We saw this in the survey program I ran at UCLA as well. Involvement is what matters. If you get involved, wherever you go to college, that is the differnce.

Decision Making in a Crisis

In times of rapid change, we often are in a quandary about making decisions. This is because the information we have had in the past, through our experiences and studies, doesn’t necessarily apply in these new situations.

I’ve always been about information-informed decision making. The current health crisis reminded me of a much smaller and less harmful situation I was involved with back in 2002 at Dartmouth College. An outbreak of conjunctivitis was spreading rapidly through the campus and we just did not have the information we needed to deal with the crisis. The Center for Disease Control came to campus to try to help when we quickly realized we needed more information.

In 2002 it was still not commonplace to conduct web surveys. In fact, the CDC had never seen it done before. I, however, had been experimenting with this mode of surveying since the mid 1990s. We quickly created a survey to help us understand what faculty and student behavior was like in the crisis and how they were feeling about it. Armed with the rapid results from a web survey we were able to identify issues that we could impact to improve the situation. I wrote an article about this that was published in the Journal of American College Health.

I recently also worked with a college that evacuated in the face of a hurricane, examining through surveys what the student experiences were like, what they feared, and how they continued to learn as the were forced off campus.

In the days and weeks ahead we will need more information to move nimbly through this unprecedented change in our lives. Based on my experiences gathering helpful information for decision making in education in both crisis and in everyday situations, I am actively creating tools and processes that will help organizations make the best decisions possible.

Stay tuned.

Is College Important?

My former colleagues at Gallup have released data that indicates that fewer Americans believe that a “college education” is “very important.” When asked about the importance of a college education in 2013, 70% of Americans thought it was “very important,” but that percentage dropped to only 51% in 2019.

The landscape of higher education has changed a bit from 2013 to 2019, but I would say more has changed in what the public considers a “college education.” More people now see how varied “college” can be. For instance, there is much greater visibility of online education (the good and the not so good) now than in the past. In addition, there has been much greater uncertainty about the impact of college, driven by the lack of transparency from most institutions concerning data that shows impact coupled with the higher levels of debt that in most cases accompanies a college education. And the media has certainly showcased many instances in which students leave college before graduation, ending up with very little to show for besides increased loan balances.

Just asking about a “college education” is too simplistic. It’s like asking if restaurants are good: there are a lot of good ones, a lot of adequate ones, and some truly horrible ones. In some cases a college education can change the life trajectory of a student. That certainly happened to me. In other cases it might seem to have few benefits. And in those cases of students leaving with no degree and high debt, it can be a big step backwards.

The positive side is that we have much more information about options now to be able to make better choices. The negative side is that most of this information lies in the heads of those of us who study higher education, and does not reach those who are facing life changing decisions about if, where, and how to go to college.

Keep an eye on this space for that to change.

College 2040

I was interviewed recently for an article on how universities will evolve over the next 20 years by Paul Rogers of LA Weekly.

Here are some of my thoughts, somewhat expanded from what made it into the article. But please go read the article, as you might like what others said more than what I had to say.

“We will continue to see multiple choices for post-secondary education that have evolved from the traditional campus-based residential four-year experience. While this will still be an option, it will be less so that it is now. Online universities will continue to improve and grow as an option, especially for people who live in rural areas or who want to work. Working as you learn will become more prevalent, with people working full time while pursuing degrees. In addition, credentials will become more mainstream, where people obtain smaller certifications of focused talent. Stackable credentials will also be used to add up to a degree. Some of these will be offered by community colleges and four-year universities as they expand their purview to the growing number of adult learners, but also will be found as coding academies become more widely recognized and available as places where learners can focus on particular skill sets such as data analytics and project management. “ 

“The ability to learn online is a huge technical achievement that is adapting and improving every day as we learn about the best ways to deliver online education. It can bring education to those in “education deserts,” which are areas currently hours away from brick and mortar institutions.  This dovetails with how more employees are also working remotely, so as one learns in the online environment it prepares them to work in an age of email, Zoom conferencing, and file sharing. The education of the future will mirror the workplace of the future.”

“While some students will continue the pathway of high school to four-year college, others will take different pathways to combat the high cost of college by working and learning simultaneously. We have also seen companies foster the education of their workforce, such as partnerships between Starbucks and University of Arizona, and the new program at Google to provide education internally to employees on a wide scale basis. As working and learning become more entwined, look for workers to stay with the same employer for longer periods of time, as more of their needs are met through these partnerships that enhance the experience.”

“Education will become less seamless and more continuous throughout the process. With physical and financial barriers breaking down, the pathways to learning will become less codified and more adaptable to one’s life situation.”

“The future of education is that it will truly become a lifelong process that people can dive in or wade in at points in their life that allow them to do so in the way best for them. “

The Flip Side of Student Loans

We’ve all heard about the large amounts of student loans people have, and the negative impacts they can have on graduates, and especially those who took out loans but did not graduate.

A new study, though, shows the negative side of not borrowing enough. In this examination of a program designed to inform students about their loans, those receiving these educational messages ended up taking less money in loans to support their college experience. You’d think that would be good, right? Given what we hear about student loan debt.

But the worst result of student loans is those students who have loans but still drop out. They do not get the wage bump that comes with being able to look for jobs that require a college degree, but they still owe money.

The students who took less money in loans ended up performing worse in college. They ended up failing classes. This could be because they needed to work longer hours in order to support themselves without that loan money.

It’s true that student loans are sometimes hard to pay back. But if you could just borrow a little bit more (the students in this case took only $400 less in loans than the other students) you might have a huge payback in terms of being successful in college.

Top 5 College Choice Tips

Thousands of people are looking at college acceptances this month and trying to decide where to go. Based upon my 25 years of experience studying higher education, here are my top 5 tips.

1. Cost

   Look very carefully at your financial aid letter. Make sure that you understand how much you are getting in actual aid versus loans they expect you to take out versus the costs they expect you to pay outright. If you are unsure about what the language means, then ask or look for help. And remember to factor in costs of travel to and from school.

   About 1 in 5 students get into their first choice, but decide that it is just too expensive to go there. That’s an OK choice. My research has shown that students who attend their second, third, or fourth choice can be just as satisfied with their freshman year as students who go to their first choice.

   And it turns out that what matters more than where you go to school is what you do when you are there. You don’t need to make great financial sacrifices to have a great college experience.

2. Graduation Rate

   Not many people know this, but about 1 in 4 students do not return for their sophomore year. And, on average in the US, only about 2 out of 3 actually make it and graduate from that school. This also varies a lot from school to school. You can use the College Navigator website to find out the percentage of students who graduate and see how the schools you are looking at do in this. You want to maximize your chances of getting that diploma!

3. Major

   Make sure that the school you are looking at actually has the major you are thinking about. At one of the colleges I worked at every year we would get students arriving who were ready to major in business. But we did not offer a business major! Look through the majors and see, and while you are there look at other majors that are offered, as many students end up changing their major by graduation.

4. Location

   Some people want to go to college close to home, and others want to go as far away as they can get. Regardless, think about things like rural versus suburban versus an urban location. If you are from a big city and think it might be fun to experience the country, think again about if you would really like that much of a change while also trying to balance all the other things a college student needs to balance. Think about climate. It can get pretty cold (or hot) some places.

5. Fit

   How did you feel when you visited the school? Saw the students there? A campus visit can be very important to help you figure out if this school is right for you, as I have previously posted. If you absolutely cannot visit, talk with students in your area who go to school there and try to find out as much as you can online about the culture at the school.

Obviously there are other things to consider, but these are good places to start when you are making this choice. And, finally, relax. Most colleges and universities are really great places to learn and live!

Good luck! It’s going to be great!

What Influences College Choice?

Choosing a college involves many factors, such as cost, location, and the academic reputation of the institution. Increasingly important to people going to college for the first time, however, is the college visit. According to the newly released 2017 CIRP Freshman Survey results, 47.3% of students who entered college in the fall of 2017 indicated that the campus visit was very important in their decision about where to go. Although not the reason given by the most students (that the college had a very good academic reputation, at 65.6%), the college visit shows an increasing importance, rising from 37.6% just 15 years ago.

What is it about the college visit that makes it so important to almost half of college freshmen? Research by Longmire and Company indicates two factors: getting a “feel” for the campus, and how welcoming and friendly the current students seem.

Prospective students look for a college that seems to be a good fit for them.

In addition to being important in college choice, the importance of the college visit and this concept of “fit” is connected to retention. Research I conducted when directing the CIRP survey program indicated that students who placed high importance on the campus visit were also more likely to return to that college for the sophomore year.

Given that close to 1 in 4 students do not return for their sophomore year, the importance of determining a fit between the applicant and the college is paramount. Admissions materials that portray a glossy and idealized campus life might get students in, but if after attending the promises turn out to be hollow then we should not be surprised that some students do not return. Especially with college costs as high as they are.

What else do incoming students consider? First and foremost, as we found for years at CIRP, students go to college to be able to get a better job than they otherwise might (84.9%) and 55.7% of students choose their college because they believe that graduates from that school get good jobs.

This is not to say that this is all that is important: 83.6% also report that they are going to college in order to learn more about things that interest them.

What is not important? College rankings. For many years, 2017 included, few (17.9%) students tell us that this was important in their choice of where to go.

Expectations of college are high. Students more and more want to get that better job, to learn more about things that interest them, and to get into good graduate schools. Higher education needs to be aware of these expectations and, especially given the high costs of college and the increasing student debt loads, be able to demonstrate that they are meeting these expectations. Our student deserve no less.

Experiential Learning and Retention

About one in four college freshmen leave their school do not return for their sophomore year. So why, when faced with such a big problem, would I decide to talk instead about the importance of experiential learning in college at the Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience?

Because one of the big reasons why some students decide to drop out of college is that they don’t see how it is relevant in their lives in the twenty-first century.  If you are paying a lot of money (as well as taking on student loans) and also think you are not getting anything out of it, you might very well decide to focus elsewhere.

The number one reason why students go to college is to get a better job. If you don’t think college is going to do that, then you look elsewhere.  And there are more alternatives to college now than ever before with the proliferation of online learning in many forms (some free) and bootcamps such as General Assembly that provide immersive training in specific areas that is designed to get you that better job in less time and for less money than college.

Experiential learning programs can bridge that gap. Students with internships or coops are much more likely to see the relationship between what they are learning in school and what they are doing in the workplace. The research shows that these students also have greater gains both in college and after they graduate. They also have stronger ties to their alma mater after graduation.

Given the importance of helping students obtain internships and coops to retention, success in school and the future, as well as stronger alumni ties, you’d think that colleges and universities would be putting lots of support into this process. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

It’s time that higher education leadership recognizes the importance of this work, especially as potential students move towards alternate pathways to the better job that they are so focused on.   

Work and Learn Programs Demonstrate Long-Lasting Effects

Evidence has been mounting to show the positive outcomes for college students engaging in experiential education programs such as internships or co-ops. Such experiences have been designated “high-impact practices” based upon extensive research using the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and one of the “big six” college experiences that lead toward higher levels of engagement in your job and wellbeing by the Gallup-Purdue Index. Time and time again work and learn programs demonstrate powerful and long-lasting effects.

But, how well are colleges facilitating such experiences for their students? This was the focus of a survey that I conducted with the support of ACT’s Center for Equity in Learning: Characteristics of Experiential Learning Services at U.S. Colleges and Universities.

There are a number of take-aways from this study, and I encourage you to read the (short) report, but in this blog I want to focus on support for working learners, a topic the Center has explored previously.

While most administrators told us in the survey that they provided a number of services and programs to undergraduates seeking a work and learn experience, there was a general lack of assistance specifically targeting how to be successful managing both school and work. Only a third reported offering personal counseling on how to balance school and work. Only a quarter reported that their office had extended office hours to accommodate working students. There was little support in helping working students balance academic deadlines. A logical conclusion is that we need to provide more help to working learners if they are going to be successful in school and career.

Many Career Services staff want to provide this assistance, but do not have the resources to do so. They need additional staff to both run these programs and to ensure that students see such resources as useful and supportive of their success. Many survey respondents told us that it just was not an institutional priority to further support this work. We must work to change this.

The mismatch here is that trustees, presidents, and provosts want and need the outcomes of such programs. They need to demonstrate that their graduates are going to be successful in their careers and other aspects of their lives. One way to do that, we know from research, is to promote the connection between learning in the classroom and the world outside the classroom. If college leaders align their institutional missions with greater support and funding for students to engage in experiential learning, everyone wins.

Average Student Debt is now $28,350

The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) released their annual report today on student debt, with the finding that the average loan amount upon graduation from a four-year college in 2017, for students with loans (65% of all graduates), was $28,350. Although from 1996 to 2012 we saw the average debt rise about 4% a year, this has slowed to where there was only a 1% increase from 2016 to 2017.

The TICAS figures are similar to ones collected with different methodology by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, which calculated the average debt at $29,650 for 2016 graduates (the national study is only conducted every four years).

There is, however, significant differences depending on what institution the student attended, as one might expect. On the low end of institutional differences the average debt at graduation was $4,400 but on the high end students were graduating with an average debt of $58,000. It matters a great deal financially where one goes to school.

In addition to the loans taken out, in 2015-2016, on average students and their families paid $6,600 out of pocket on top of scholarships and grants received.

Organizations like TICAS help us understand the actual situation of student debt to help students and families go beyond the hype as well as assist policy makers who are trying to make a difference.

Evacuating Campus

As a number of college campuses are currently evacuating ahead of Hurricane Florence, I thought it might be useful to report on some findings from a study I did last year on the evacuation process at a residential college.

I surveyed undergraduates who had been under a mandatory evacuation from their college. The idea here was to gather information about the process with an eye towards improvement. As such, I asked about three phases of evacuating: 1) immediately after the decision to evacuate was communicated, 2) the evacuation itself, and 3) the return to campus life.

Here are some of the themes we saw.

Advance planning is key. Although the college had communicated with students about the likelihood of a hurricane, and had very good policies and procedures to follow, few students actually had plans in place before the actual threat was imminent. As one student wrote: “[I was] scared because I did not have a plan in place for where I was going to evacuate to.” One recommendation was to incorporate an actual mock evacuation plan into first-year orientation.

Communication is necessary at all stages. Students appreciated frequent communication. The most useful communications they received, they told us, where from parents and other family and the college. They prefered email communication over other forms.

Be flexible. As the path of a hurricane can vary quite a bit from predictions, and the situations one can encounter on the way (e.g., traffic, full hotels, gas lines, etc.) are also constantly changing, many students changed plans. Some changed en route, with 20% telling us that they ended up at a different place than they have planned to be when they left campus. Half of them ended up staying at more than one place for the week that they were evacuated.

Keeping up with academics was a big concern. The biggest concern students had throughout the process was about academics, with 62% telling us they were either “extremely” or “very” concerned about this. Internet connections were spotty, and the general level of anxiety about being evacuated and what would be left to return to combined to make it hard to focus on school work that was required during evacuation. This continued to be a concern once back on campus, as 42% told us it was hard to get back into classes after returning, despite the fact that many felt that faculty were accommodating.

All in all, many students learned from the process. As one student told us “I realized how much independence I had gained, I realized I had the ability to communicate, and to get along with people I had not known previously.”

The survey helped shed light on the process…the good and the not as good…and the impact of evacuating. Evacuating ahead of a hurricane is an experience full of anxiety, but managing the process can reduce that anxiety for all involved.