Thursday, September 2, 2010
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Q: What is the mission of COLLEGE PARENTS OF AMERICA, and how would you define your long-term goals?
A: Our mission at College Parents of America is to empower parents to best support their children on their path to and through college. And our goal is to become the premier national organization representing parents in three key areas: advocating for them in Washington and state capitals in matters of interest, particularly pocket-book issues as they relate to college; secondly, providing them timely and relevant information that supports them as their child prepares for and attends college; and thirdly, arranging for discounts from companies that sell products and services relevant to their needs as college parents.
Q: In what ways has your career path given you the special tools to head COLLEGE PARENTS OF AMERICA?
A: My position as president of College Parents of America combines various aspects of my career and of my personal life, and allows me to utilize what I've learned and what I'm experiencing with my own family to get the best information across to other families. Having worked on Capital Hill at the beginning of my career, coupled with my work in higher education at Sallie Mae, the nation's largest student loan provider, I feel I am now at the right time and in the right place where I can make a contribution.
Q: What do you see as the most urgent issue facing college parents today?
A: Meeting the cost of college. And that really affects all income levels of parents. For the neediest families whose parents are either out of a job or in a low-paying job, there is a lack of awareness of the financial aid options available at colleges and universities. These families may have seen stories on television about the high cost of college, and fear there's no way they can afford it for their son or daughter, and discourage their children from going to college. That fateful decision could perpetuate a sense of poverty for that family, because a college education is critical today in order to attain a higher paying job.
For middle class families, with the cost of college becoming what it is today, there is a real dilemma in that financial aid resources are for the most part still made available on a need basis. But they should be aware that the definition of need may be different from a family's perspective then a school's perspective. And with public colleges and universities costing an average of $15,000 for tuition, room and board, and private schools $35,000 per year, you are looking at a significant expense for these families to meet.
Q: If the cost of college is the most significant issue for parents, what is the most urgent issue facing their college children?
A: preparedness for school, coupled with the fact that there is so much emphasis on the admissions process. Students need to realize that getting in is not an end in itself; it's succeeding in college and then utilizing that college degree to do something meaningful with their career. Preparedness means being educated in a public or private school system that's teaching children effectively so they can have the basics to succeed in college. It's also students acquiring good study habits and personal dedication, so that when they are thrust into a college environment, are ready to swim in that very difficult sea and able to survive.
The statistics tell the story. Only about two-thirds of high school graduates go on to college right now. It's grown every year since 1970, but it's only growing very slightly each year. And then of that pool that goes on to college, only 50% of those students have graduated within five years. And another 13% is still going to school, and will likely graduate, within six years. But a full 37% has, after five years, not attained their degree and won't ever go back and finish. So those numbers show dramatically that it's not just about getting in, it's about staying in and succeeding.
Q: Since preparedness is such a key issue, at what age should parents begin to talk about it with their children?
A: Parents and their children should start talking about college preparedness in the middle school years, sixth, seventh and eighth grade -- earlier than that, even better. That's when students can develop good study habits and patterns of behavior that will serve them well in the middle and high school years. But it's in middle school, seventh grade really, when it starts to count in terms of grades. That's when those grades become part of their permanent record. Not only is the student building a personal record but he or she, by choosing certain tracks of learning at school, is beginning an academic journey that will continue through high school and may eventually determine whether that student is college-bound and if he or she can get into the college of their choice.
Most high schools have a three-tiered track of a so-called core curriculum and then honors curriculum and the highest level being advanced placement or sometimes called "I B," or international baccalaureate curriculum, and the most selective colleges are looking for a student who not only has good grades but who has taken the toughest possible course load during his or her high school years.
Q: In what ways can COLLEGE PARENTS OF AMERICA be of help to parents as they begin to talk to their children about college preparedness?
A: College, as we know, is a very important event in the lives of families. Sadly, the public school system in this country is broke, so when it comes to supporting parents as they prepare their children to move on the path to and through college, there is no help there. COLLEGE PARENTS OF AMERICA can fill that gap by supporting families from the 7th through the 12th grades by providing critical information about preparation, the application process and the financing process for college, and deliver it in a just-in-time manner through our Decade of Decisions quarterly email reminder. When our subscribers sign up, they tell us the high school graduation year of their child. At that point we know where the student is as he or she moves along the process and we can deliver to the parent timely and relevant information exactly when needed.
Q: What kind of lobbying does COLLEGE PARENTS OF AMERICA do on the Hill in Washington, DC, and for what sort of issues?
A: Right now we are concentrating on pocketbook issues related to the cost of college and how parents can meet that cost. We are involved in three efforts: one is -- as part of the Student Aid Alliance made up of most of the major college and university groups in the US as well as the US Student Association -- actively supporting in the Federal Budget, a dramatic increase in the Federal Pell Grant, the foundation grant for students to attend colleges and universities, and also continued and increased funding for college preparedness programs such as Gear Up and LEAP. Then since those programs never totally cover the cost of college, we also support reform and improvement to the student loan program such as eliminating the origination fee on student loans which is a 3% kind of "surprise tax" on the borrowers that they end up covering as part of the repayment when they graduate from school.
The second area relates to tax policy. Middle class families in particular have benefited since 2001 from tuition tax deductibility, meaning that in this tax year for instance, a family can deduct up to $4000 of tuition and higher education expenses. This is a way of at least helping to alleviate some of the costs of college by taking that as a deduction.
It's not a credit, just a deduction, so the bottom line advantage to the family is more in the hundreds of dollars. But that deduction, while appreciated by families, is only $4000, with a limit of $130,000 in income for joint filers. The ability to take advantage of the deduction is $65,000 per single filers, therefore eliminating an entire group of taxpayers from being able to take advantage of it. It also sunsets this year on December 31, 2009 unless Congress extends it.
We have an online petition on our website (www.collegeparents.org) that encourages families to sign our petition. It suggests to Congress that they eliminate the sunset on this law so that families can depend on the deduction going forward, and secondly that the income ceiling limit be removed so that all taxpayers can take advantage of this deduction, in much like home mortgage deduction can be seen as important to America and its economic development. And third that the amount indexed to follow that cost as it rises so that a family who chooses to send their son or daughter to a private school and is paying more than that, wouldn't get an additional deduction. But for the family sending a child to a public college or university, which is 80% of the students of the US, they would be able to get a deduction which mirrors the actual cost of attendance.
Q: How does your own role as a future college parent influence the organization and in what ways?
A: It inspires me to have two boys in my household, Griffin and Tucker, who are in the 12th and 9th grades respectively. As a family we are squarely in into the Decade of Decisions. And since I will be a college parent into my sixties, it not only inspires me but on a practical level, it allows me to see the impact of government decisions or school policies, and learn about the companies that are providing useful products and services to parents. I always have that hat on as a parent as well as a professional.
Q: On a personal level, as a future college parent, are the money and preparation issues of special import to your family?
A: Yes. The money issues, because from a personal standpoint I was part of the first generation in our family to attend college – my sister attending a public university, Western Michigan, and me attending a private university, Northwestern. We both benefited from student aid policies that were in place thirty years ago and which, while somewhat shaky today in terms of their support, still exist and still are there to serve families. But I find that a lot of families with financial need are not necessarily aware of the benefits that could allow their children to attend college. The same policies thirty years ago that allowed me to attend Northwestern University through a combination of grants, work study, scholarship dollars along with student loans, allow a student of any financial means, with the academic achievement necessary to be accepted into a college or university, to receive the aid that will allow them to attend.
Q: From COLLEGE PARENTS OF AMERICA's vantage point, how important is the higher education of our children to the future of this country?
A: Since I went to college there's been a shift noted by higher education journals and others, and that is that higher education has increasingly been seen as an individual responsibility as opposed to a societal responsibility, and part of the reason for that is the direct academic benefit to an individual attending college. Various studies have shown that over the course of a career, that benefit could be somewhere between $1 million and $1.6 million dollars in greater income .
While that's all well and good, what policy makers need to be reminded of is the general economic good brought to the country with a more educated workforce. This has become increasingly important as more jobs are outsourced to other country. There is also an important societal benefit to having an educated citizenry in terms of how people can best support each other.
The issue of access to college has been a focal point for the last 20 years and a greater percentage of students attend college each year. But in the not-too-distant-future, a college degree in itself will not prove that valuable; it will be seen as a stepping stone with even more focus on the cost. Imagine that a family is paying, as in the case of a private school, well over $150,000 for a piece of paper and all of a sudden that piece of paper doesn't prove to be especially valuable in terms of a young person entering the work force; instead it becomes just a ticket to be punched on the road to even more expenditures in graduate school. Then Americans will put even more pressure on an examination of the higher education system and question if it is serving the purpose for which it was created.
Q: In shaping of COLLEGE PARENTS OF AMERICA into what it is today, what are you most proud of?
A: In the advocacy arena, College Parents of America has filled a vacuum. It's hard to believe that with all the interest groups in Washington, there was no one representing the interest of college parents before, and we are filling that void. But when it comes to information, there's anything but a void – there's a glut: dozens, hundreds of sites on the Internet devoted to college-related information, books filling the shelves of Barnes and Noble, pages and pages of books available via Amazon.com. So College Parents of America has stepped up to serve as a virtual, trusted advisor for families sifting through all the information that's on the Internet and presenting them with the best of it.
Also, with our Decade of Decision newsletter we are packaging critical and pertinent information and timing it for release so that parents are receiving it just at the point they need it most.
And finally, on the discounts front, the simple notion is to harness and leverage the size of the college parent marketplace and demand from those who are providing products and services to that market, the ability to purchase those products and services at a fair price.
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