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Daily Aid 31: How to cut your cost of college education in half

October 29th, 2008

Daily Aid 31: How to cut your cost of college education in half

Student Financial Aid News

From all over the place - lenders are curtailing credit cards by increasing credit requirements and reducing available credit, including student credit cards. Defaults have been rising across the board on all forms of lending, but credit cards have been hit especially hard since the housing bubble burst. If you’re thinking about getting a credit card, you’ll want to do that sooner rather than later.

From NASFAA and USA Today:

“For months, the Wall Street credit crisis has made many families nervous that the widespread availability of student loans will dry up,” writes Michael Dannenberg in USA Today. “But no matter how many banks fail, there is no danger that families will be deprived access to federal student loans. None. The real danger during bad economic times is that tuition often skyrockets. Here’s why: A bad economy depresses state tax revenue. To meet state balanced-budget requirements, states cut funding for higher education. To make up those cuts, public colleges hike tuition. Competing private colleges see the increases and feel empowered to increase their tuitions markedly as well.”

Commentary

Expect tuition to rise across the board, at both public and private universities. Public schools will indeed take a bigger hit from declining state budgets, but private universities are certainly not immune. Plan on significant tuition increases - around 10% per year - over the next 3 years, and budget your financial aid plans accordingly.

Scholarship Update

Do Something Grants. Do Something is a directory of grants available for students who pursue social change and lack funding to do so.

Details at our free college scholarship search site.

News You Can Use

As part of my research into online degrees, I’ve stumbled across the CLEP, or College Level Examination Program, a program administered by the College Board that lets you test out of undergraduate coursework and receive credits for your exam results. About 2,900, or more than half, of the colleges in America will grant course credit for sufficiently high CLEP scores.

CLEP exams are $70 each whether you pass or fail. When you compare the cost of a CLEP exam to its equivalent credit hour cost at even a public university, a CLEP exam is a bargain as long as you pass, ideally on the first shot. Take a look at the list below; each of the subjects is between 3-12 credits, assuming a one semester course is 3 credits.

Now take the rough cost per credit hour - from $75 at community colleges to $600 for top schools - and you begin to see the massive cost savings that testing out of courses can yield. If you’re a very talented, smart student, you can rack up significant savings by testing out of as many courses (especially generic course requirements at liberal arts colleges) as your school will allow. Could you finish a 4 year degree in 3 years? Absolutely. Could you pay 25% - 50% less for a college education? Absolutely.

The catch, of course, is that you have to be able to pass the CLEP exams for each of the subject areas, and your school has to honor CLEP exam results with course credits. If you can do that and your school is willing to grant credits for CLEP results, then an incredibly affordable college education is easily within your reach. Consider using free services like iTunesU to supplement your reading and work towards CLEP exams.

Ask around at your college’s administration for how your school deals with CLEP credit. If you’re not in college yet, make that one of your admissions requirements - acceptance of CLEP results as course credit for as much course credit as you can rack up.

Composition and Literature

+ American Literature
+ Analyzing and Interpreting Literature
+ English Composition
+ English Literature
+ Freshman College Composition
+ Humanities

Foreign Languages

+ French Language (Levels 1 and 2)
+ German Language (Levels 1 and 2)
+ Spanish Language (Levels 1 and 2)

History and Social Sciences

+ American Government
+ Human Growth and Development
+ Introduction to Educational Psychology
+ Introductory Psychology
+ Introductory Sociology
+ Principles of Macroeconomics
+ Principles of Microeconomics
+ Social Sciences and History
+ U.S. History I: Early Colonizations to 1877
+ U.S. History II: 1865 to the Present
+ Western Civilization I: Ancient Near East to 1648
+ Western Civilization II: 1648 to the Present

Science and Mathematics

+ Biology
+ Calculus
+ Chemistry
+ College Algebra
+ College Mathematics
+ Natural Sciences
+ Precalculus

Business

+ Financial Accounting (New in 2007)
+ Introductory Business Law
+ Information Systems and Computer Applications
+ Principles of Management
+ Principles of Marketing

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