Rising tuition prices and student debt loads — Americans now collectively owe some $1.4 trillion — have led policymakers to think about how to collect and publish better information that could guide college choices.
Tawan Perry is the author of the award winning college guide, College Sense: What College and High School Advisors Don't Tell You about College.
And it's the college guide and college-ranking industries, the latter inaugurated as a fateful gimmick, with massive consequences, by a second-tier news magazine.
As a librarian who has guided college students through the research process for more than 25 years, I would suggest that Edward Tenner misses the mark when he questions search engines, such as Google, for "making today's students dumber".
The National Commission on Colleges of Education (NCCE) and the National policy on gender are guiding college intakes to ensure that women fill the quarter allocated to them.
If you prefer the texture of the printed page, check out your local bookstore or public library: College Admission: From Application to Acceptance Step by Step, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, The Insider's Guide, and Colleges That Change Lives are just a sampling of my favorites.
So are the standard college guides, including the Fiske Guide to Colleges, by former New York Times education editor Edward Fiske ($23), and America'sBest Colleges from U.S. News ($8).
Ms. Mitchell especially recommends "The Fiske Guide to Colleges" and "The Insiders' Guide to Colleges".
Reading about different schools in college guidebooks such as The Fiske Guide and Colleges That Change Lives can be very entertaining (as well as useful).
Their apartments are not filled with SAT review books, the Fiske Guide to Colleges or alumni magazines from their parents' colleges.
