Campus life
Cut College Costs: Be a Resident Assistant
Want to lower the cost of college?
How does eliminating all your child’s room and board costs sound? It’s possible if your child becomes a resident assistant.
A resident assistant serves as a surrogate mother hen to the kids in the dorms. RAs help settle disputes and make sure kids aren’t doing dumb things like hauling beer […]
America’s Best College Dorms
When I visited college campuses with both my teenagers, the college dorms were often a big selling point. It seems the tour guides were always raving about the newest dorms on campus and clearly universities are using their new dorms as a recruiting tool.
While there are still plenty of dorm rooms on college campuses that […]
Renting Cheap College Textbooks
Here’s a way to find cheap college textbooks: rent them.
This seems so logical, but it’s taken an awfully long time for the idea of renting used college textbooks to take root.
At least a couple of companies are now renting cheap college textbooks to students who are eager to shrink their book tab.
A […]
Lowering the Cost of College Textbooks
You don’t need to read this blog post to know that the prices of college textbooks are obscene.
Amazon.com, however, is aiming to change this. I wrote a post about Amazon’s efforts to crack the electronic textbook market with its launch of the Kindle DX at my other college blog at CBSMoneyWatch.com. On that post I […]
Student Health Insurance at College
If your child is heading to college this fall will he or she be covered by your health insurance?
Unfortunately, it’s no longer a given that students will be protected by their parents’ health insurance policies. In fact, the federal government has estimated that roughly 20% of students don’t have college student health insurance.
Here’s one reason […]
Top Party Schools of 2009
When I was in college I owned a fake ID. One of my friends, who worked at the DMV in St. Louis, gave it to me as a birthday present.
So I wasn’t exactly a prude in college though I don’t remember ever making a fool of myself at a kegger. But now that I’m a […]
Living in a Palatial Dorm
When I think back to my dorm days at the University of Missouri, what I remember most vividly is getting scalded in the shower. I lived in Johnston Hall, which was named after a woman Latin professor when it was built right after World War II. The girls’ dorm was known for being centrally located […]
3Feb2009 | Lynn | 1 comment | Continued
Cutting the Cost of College Textbooks
My daughter called me yesterday to complain about the cost of her college textbooks.
One of Caitlin’s upper level Spanish books was going to cost her close to $200. She was thrilled, however, when she found a used older textbook edition — missing the CD — for a mere $15 online. Ironically, it’s the frugality of […]
College Students and Credit Cards
To make money, some universities are offering up their own students to the credit card industry as sacrificial lambs.
Credit card issuers have happily been paying schools for access to their students. Consequently, it’s been common to see credit card marketers at tables stacked with cheap bling on campus quads. They will gladly give students a […]
The Secret to Studying for Finals
My daughter Caitlin called the other day to tell me how she thought she fared on her Spanish final. She said her hands were still shaking — not because she was nervous about the exam — but because she had been gobbling up chocolate-covered coffee beans to stay awake.
I concluded that getting pumped up with […]
