The Types of Financial Aid Available to College Students

Prospective and current college students should be aware of all financial aid options to further their educations.  The following infographic provides information about the types of assistance available to these students. Continue Reading

57% of Employers Offer Tuition Reimbursement

Even as tuition rates continue to escalate, the number of working adults re-entering the classroom to earn college degrees is on the rise. Many employers have picked up on this trend and are seizing the opportunity to offer a valuable benefit to their workforce. TheBenefits USA 2012/2013 survey results found 56.6 percent of employers now offer tuition reimbursement to all employees, which is a significant increase from 34.9 percent reported in 2009.

“Enrollment rates are expected to continue rising, and companies offering tuition reimbursement to their employees are putting themselves in a competitive position,” said Amy Kaminski, director of marketing for Compdata Surveys. “Not only are employers creating a stronger workforce, but they are arming themselves with a valuable tool in employee retention, as reimbursement benefits are becoming increasingly important to their employees.” Continue Reading

STEM Scholarships Awarded Total $4.2 Million

A huge investment in STEM scholarships may be a sign that these career fields will represent the jobs of the future.

The Buick Achievers Scholarship Program, funded by the General Motors Foundation, yesterday announced scholarships totaling approximately $4.2 million to 1,100 recipients during the NBC News Education Nation Summit in New York City.

The students, who come from all 50 states, were honored for excelling in the classroom and the community. They will receive financial resources to pursue a college degree within the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), or other related fields of study. Continue Reading

Scholarship Opportunities for Multicultural Women

Here is an opportunity to help women who are multicultural pursue their dreams of careers in healthcare.

Tuition hikes at colleges and universities across the nation are putting the squeeze on many young people and forcing families to find new ways to pay for higher education or consider forgoing college altogether. In an effort to ease the burden to students during these rough economic times and increase the number of underrepresented minorities in medicine, the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women(TM)and Macy’s, its national sponsor, offer the Go Red(TM) Multicultural Scholarship Fund. Continue Reading

Financial Aid: Where is the Money coming from?

It is no secret that a college education can be expensive, especially in a tight economy.  However, the good news for college students is that financial aid such as scholarships and grants has increased over the last decade.  Take a look at the following graph, which highlights financial aid to full-time college students individually. Continue Reading

Partnership Between FindTheBest and CollegeRecruiter.com Puts College and Scholarship Data into Context

FindTheBest and CollegeRecruiter.com have partnered to help students find not only the best colleges and graduate schools for their educational needs, but also the right scholarships to help pay for that education.

FindTheBest, a data-driven comparison engine, has created six customized comparisons for CollegeRecruiter.com—the leading job board for college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

Comparing Options

The comparisons are divided into three categories: colleges, graduate schools and scholarships. Each of the comparisons provide students with key filters and sorting functionality needed to narrow options, as well as a comparison feature that allows students to view their options side-by-side.

The Colleges comparison allows students to find and compare colleges and universities based on key factors like location, tuition, programs, school size, ranking and more. Continue Reading

The price of a graduate career: attainment, opportunity and exclusion

David Hoghton-Carter, Programme Director at Minerva Pathway

Last week, the British government’s “social mobility Tsar” Alan Milburn* published “Fair Access to Professional Careers”, an update to the 2009 “Unleashing Aspiration” report. The same day, I attended Gradcore’s Graduate Employment Conference, and had the chance to hear Steven Rothberg talk about the impact that the high cost of getting an education has for American graduates. The US experience resonates with me; a UK graduate with two degrees and plenty of student debt, I’m building a new social venture called Minerva Pathway to address the nightmarish state of the British graduate economy after years of frustration in trying to develop my own career.

Though the UK has only recently started to follow the USA on the downward slide to exclusionary University tuition fees, we’ve been seeing the consequences of badly thought-through education and careers policy for years. As highlighted by Milburn, cities and nations which can offer plenty of graduate jobs do best nationally and internationally. In today’s world, a strong knowledge economy is essential to innovation and economic development. But market conditions often exclude individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds from the graduate economy; the high cost of an education, the internship dynamic and poor economic and industrial policy-making mean that access to opportunity is often limited to individuals from wealthy backgrounds. Britain has the potential to reap a significant economic dividend from graduate attainment, but only by opening up opportunities in social mobility. So far, it’s failed to do so, and failed badly. Continue Reading

$6 Million in New Scholarships to Assist Nontraditional Students

Certain college students could benefit from new scholarships designed to ease the financial burden of furthering their educations.

Stevens-Henager College, a leading provider of on-campus and online higher education, in May announced in 14 new scholarship programs worth $6 million annually. All of the new scholarship programs may be awarded on a quarterly basis to recipient students at each Stevens-Henager campus and the campuses of its sister schools, CollegeAmerica and California College San Diego.  The number of scholarships that each campus may award per quarter will be based upon the campuses enrollment size. Continue Reading

Video Interview in U.K. Immediately After Keynote About U.S. Job Market for College Grads

Last week I had the good fortune to fly over to Leeds, England to keynote their annual Graduate Employment Conference. CEO of Graduates Yorkshire and Gradcore Martin Edmondson asked me to deliver a presentation about the U.S. job market for college and university students and recent graduates. Many of the issues we’re facing are similar to those they’re facing. They’re experiencing some of them before we do and we’re experiencing some before they do.

One issue that I knew was important but didn’t realize just how important it would be to them was the high cost of attending just about any type of post-secondary school. The cost of attending a higher education institution is far higher in the U.S. than it is in almost any other country and FAR higher than it is to attend an equivalent school in the United Kingdom. But their recent implementation of austerity measures threatens to put their schools on a similar path to that which our schools have long been on. Without exception, every attendee and organizer with whom I spoke greatly appreciated my urging that they do not follow our lead as we are making higher education impossible for many and soon, I fear, for most. As bad as that would have been decades ago, it is even worse moving forward as we cannot and should not hope to compete against other nations to see which can manufacture goods at the lowest possible cost. Unless we want our citizenry to again have third world standards of living, we need to ensure they have first world standards of work. And that means that we need a workforce which uses the muscles between their ears more than the muscles on their backs. Continue Reading

Cost of Private Colleges Falls Even As Costs Skyrocket for Public Colleges

Here’s the average sticker price and average net price for tuition and fees at public and private colleges in the U.S. over the past 15 years:

Continue Reading