21st Century Scholar

Only six days until 529 day! 5/29 is 529 day … and May is actually 529 month—so as someone who writes about financial aid, I shouldn’t end the month without at least mentioning them. What is a 529? It’s a college savings plan that can begin for kids from the day that they are born [...]

So here is a real e-mail that I received last week, I thought my response to it might be worth posting, so here it is. I’ve changed the name of the sender for privacy. Dr. Venegas: I am an English and AVID teacher at TW High School. I recently read your profile on the USC school [...]

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with a student I’m mentoring from my hometown of Detroit. This young man was an average high school student and bombed in his first attempt at community college. After dropping out he returned home to work at a nearby Burger King. He indirectly complained to me about the nature [...]

After many months of brainstorming, working with students, designing, developing, iterating, creating art and music, researching and oh yes, PLAYING … we are ready to share Collegeology Game’s latest game: FutureBound. You’ve read my posts about Application Crunch and Mission:Admission—two games targeted at high schools students and designed to cultivate college application strategies. This latest [...]

So, I’ve been trying to figure out what cool amazing thing to write about financial aid for this week’s post. At first, I wanted to give advice on financial aid offers. But I found this great piece from The New York Times, which tells me that it would be a waste of time to repeat [...]

A group of four students sit huddled around a lunchtime table at a Los Angeles high school close to USC. It’s the middle of fourth period. I’m zipping through the quad after just finishing a fast-paced playtest session of the new game we’ve been developing with our collaborators from USC’s Game Innovation Lab. The new [...]

I’ve had some really cool opportunities lately to share tips on financial aid. Last week, I did a talk for academic advisors at the NACADA Region 9 conference. This week, I spoke with Bob McCormick for the Money 101 program on KNX 1070. Looking back on the messaging that I’ve done over these two weeks, [...]

It is that time of year when high school seniors around the country anxiously go to their mailbox, hoping for a great big package. They have probably already felt the searing sting that comes with the dreaded thin envelope that woefully announces disappointing news—“despite your impressive credentials, we had an especially talented pool of candidates [...]

On Being Nice I saw this piece in Inside Higher Ed this morning on Academic Jerks. It’s about how some colleagues in academe act like jerks to get ahead. They talk over people, refuse to change or try to force change, and generally just behave poorly. The blog considers whether or not this is a [...]

My administration will release a new “College Scorecard” that parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria—where you can get the most bang for your educational buck. –President Obama, 2013 State of the Union About the Scorecard Indeed higher education is buzzing about the new White House College Scorecard officially [...]