This Scorecard Could Help Make College More Affordable for Millions of Americans

When it comes to important decisions in a young person’s life, picking the right college (for both educational and financial reasons) ranks right at the top. So it makes sense to do some research beyond the rankings from the folks at U.S. News & World Report.
That’s where President Barack Obama’s College Scorecard comes in, as he says, to help you discover “where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.” The U.S. Department of Education grades universities by alternative criteria like graduation and loan default rates, which are arguably more important than the number of Nobel Prize-winning professors a school employs.
Potential applicants might be interested to know, for example, that Harvard is the best deal for a top-10 school (the average student pays $14,445 annually) or that Columbia University in New York City has the highest loan default rate amongst all the Ivy League schools (2.9 percent, which is still far lower than national average of 14.7 percent).
“We know students and families are often overwhelmed in the college search process, but feel they lack the tools to sort through the information and decide which school is right for them,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says. “The College Scorecard provides a snapshot about an institution’s cost and value to help families make smart decisions about where to enroll.”
The site has drawn some criticism as being overly simplistic — it currently shows only four criteria — in grading something as intangible as the value of a liberal-arts education (although you can measure faculty degrees and student ratios). And others have called for data that would be directly relevant to at-risk students, like demographics and outcomes for racial minority, low-income or first-generation students.
Sure, the scores aren’t perfect, but the scorecard has started a conversation about college and affordability. It’s a start, providing plenty of interesting data. Here’s some findings we gleaned from the site, among the top 50 national universities:

  • Georgia Institute of Technology (#35) is offering the best deal on a four-year degree from a national university. The average net price (meaning the cost students pay after scholarships and grants are deducted) is $9,116. Four years at Georgia Tech will get you just one at the country’s most expensive school, New York University (#32), where the average net price is $37,656.
  • Harvard (#2) students, as you may expect, are most likely to don a cap and gown. They have the highest graduation rate — 97 percent — among the top colleges. Case Western Reserve University (#36) in Cleveland, on the other hand, has the lowest. Only 77.8 percent earn a diploma within six years.
  • Alumni from Duke University (#8), in Durham, N.C., generally have the smallest bill to worry about after graduation. Families typically borrow $8,000 in federal loans, which works out to a repayment schedule of about $92 per month over 10 years. High-priced New York University again bottoms out the list. Families take out an average of $32,090 in federal loans, which means they’ll be paying about $369 a month for a decade.
  • Graduates of Stanford University (#4), near Palo Alto, Calif., top the list in their ability to manage student loans. Only 0.7 percent default on their federal student loans within three years of beginning to pay them back. (No surprise, considering that Silicon Valley’s not too far away.) Happy Valley in Pennsylvania, on the other hand, isn’t nearly as lucrative. Eight percent of students from Penn State’s University Park campus (#48) default on their student loans.

Half a million unique visitors checked out the scorecard last year, but the government thinks it can reach an even wider audience: not just high schoolers and their families, but also nontraditional students older than the age of 25 (a demographic that accounts for half of all college students). Before next fall’s application season begins, the department plans to release long-promised data on employment rates and starting salaries, and there’s talk of eventually tying some of the federal government’s $150 billion in financial aid and state government’s $70 billion for public colleges to school performance.
Now more than ever, as unpaid student loans total an unbelievable $1.16 trillion, it’s a valuable tool to find a degree that’s worth more than just ink on paper.
MORE: How Do Young Men Become Better Fathers? They Attend This Boot Camp

Watch Our Q&A with City Year

The cofounders of City Year, a nonprofit that serves communities by bridging the divide between what schools and teachers can offer and what students actually need, have big plans for growth.
“We currently serve around 150,000 students,” says Michael Brown, City Year CEO, explaining that his goals include doubling the percentage of students on track to graduate, reaching a majority of students deemed as off track and expanding to new cities.
“We want to serve 850,000 students over the next 10 years, and we’ll need a corps of over 10,000 City Year AmeriCorps members to do it.”
As part of a series of live Google Hangouts On Air featuring service opportunities, NationSwell interviewed Brown and his cofounder, Alan Khazei, along with a current corps member and a City Year alumnus. 
While City Year is creating thousands of opportunities to serve, this country lacks the expectation of service — something the organization hopes to address. Like the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute, which is looking to mobilize a million young people to serve, City Year envisions a future in which “the most commonly-asked question of an 18-year-old will be, ‘Where will you do your service year?’”
“It’s so important for young people to serve because it really connects us to the greater world,” says Lan Truong, a City Year corps member based in Boston, explaining that service connects us to something bigger than ourselves. “We get to make our country better and make our people better.”
“A year of service changes you,” adds Marissa Rodriguez, who went from City Year to become the Training & Operations Manager at Boston Scholar Athletes (which works to improve academic performance through sports). “For us to be able to sort of find the way that we can continue to make an impact is so key and will continue to grow the opportunity that a year of service provides.”
Khazei says that recapturing the service ethic in America would change our country in profound ways, adding that the Greatest Generation was that way because they served together. “If we had a year of service as a common expectation, every generation would become the Greatest Generation,” he says.
Watch the video above, then click the Take Action button to learn how you can join NationSwell and The Franklin Project to spread the word on service year opportunities, and make sure to tweet your thoughts and questions using the #serviceyear hashtag.
 

How a Two-Week Bootcamp is Getting Vets Ready for Higher Learning

In 2008, Chris Howell began thinking of life after the military. He was serving in the Australian Army, Special Operations Command and was eager to head back to school, reinforced by some timely advice from his younger brother, David. “He said to me, ‘look, you can blow in a door and attack a room, but you need to learn how to read and write an essay.'” David, a top student at Sydney University at the time, took it one step further, putting together a crash-course of materials to help Chris prepare for college life. Five years later, this informal boot-camp became the basis of the Warrior-Scholar Project.
In 2012, Chris Howell partnered with Jesse Reisling and launched the project from Yale, offering a two-week intensive bootcamp for veterans returning to school. In addition to offering classes at Yale this year, they were also available at Harvard and the University of Michigan. By next year, the group plans to hold classes on 10 campuses.
Editors’ note: Since the original publication of this story, Jesse Reising, founder of the Warrior-Scholar Project, has become a NationSwell Council member.

This Stamp-Sized Medical Lab Could Bring Hospital Services to Our Poorest

Your smartphones and laptops aren’t the only gadgets getting smaller and sleeker as progress marches on—behold, the postage-stamp-sized medical lab.
That’s right, Harvard-affiliated biotech startup Diagnostics for All has a tool in the works that looks like a computer chip but can diagnose diseases using just a drop of blood, reports Forbes. Once it’s ready for public use, the tool will be perfectly suited for populations who live in regions lacking hospitals and electricity. What’s more, the “lab on a chip” is so inexpensive to make and use that its cost shouldn’t exceed 10 cents in developing countries.
To start, DFA is targeting the liver, with tests that allow HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis patients—whose regular medications can damage the filtering organ—to determine whether their drugs are breaking down liver cells. Slightly further down the road are tests to flag milk spoilage and pregnant cows, which it will test in an East African dairy collective, and another to spot aflatoxin, a poisonous mold that afflicts corn and other crops.
Strange as it is that everything in our lives seems to be shrinking, sometimes—as DFA evidences—that can be a very good thing.

This Organization is Sending Business Students on Road Trips for Change

Casey Gerald and Michael Baker’s new venture, MBAs Across America, sounds a bit like the Amazing Race meets non-profit business consulting. The organization will be sending eight teams (each made up of four MBA students) on cross-country road trips this summer. Over the course of six weeks, the teams will provide free business consulting to six entrepreneurs in six locations.
Gerald and Baker are both second-year Harvard MBA students, but if you’re picturing stodgy, suit-clad men sitting in corporate corner offices, think again. They’re more like business adventurers, changing the face of business education while speeding down the highway.
The idea for the venture came from a road trip the two took last summer with fellow Harvard MBA students Amaris Singer and Hicham Mhammedi Alaoui. In eight weeks, the students drove 8,000 miles and visited eight cities, including New Orleans, Detroit, and Albuquerque. They worked closely with six entrepreneurs, each of whom, despite having an innovative business idea, needed help.
In Asheville, North Carolina, they partnered with the Highland Brewing Company, a family-owned craft brewery that wanted to learn more about engaging with local customers. In White Sulphur Springs, Montana, they teamed with Red Ants Pants, a rural company that makes workwear for women. The partnerships paid off, for both the entrepreneurs and the MBA students, reported Business Education.
Gerald believes that the program adds something essential to business education. “Our classroom becomes cities. Our professors become entrepreneurs. Our tests become the impact we can make, not just over the course of the summer, but over the course of our lives.”
This summer, Gerald and Baker hope to see that impact grow. Eight teams — from Stanford, Columbia, Babson, Michigan Ross, Haas, and Harvard — have been chosen to participate in the cross-country road trips. The teams can pick where they travel, though they must visit at least one rural city.
Currently, Gerald and Baker are choosing entrepreneurs to participate in the program. To be selected, they must be located in a place that has an interesting story, and they must have a compelling vision for the future of their business. Additionally, they must have a positive impact on their communities.
As for its own business model, MBAs Across America is a non-profit, funded by business schools (Stanford and Harvard are each sponsoring their teams this summer), corporations, and individual donors. Gerald says sponsors have been eager to support local businesses while helping to train the next generation of business leaders.
Though the road trip will undoubtedly be full of adventure, Gerald and Baker emphasize that MBAs Across America uses the summer as a launch for continued collaboration between business students and entrepreneurs across the country. Of the newly selected teams of entrepreneurs, Gerald says,“They’re engaged, and we’re engaged, for a lifetime.”