http://www.nationalreview.com/education-week/361456/meet-blue-collar-ivies-john-zmirak
While the price of tuition has been skyrocketing, jobs for new college graduates have become ever scarcer, with most starting annual salaries less than the amount each graduate owes (and many new graduates unable to land full-time work at all). I won’t barrage you with facts and figures, but here’s a sobering one: According to the Project on Student Debt, students from the class of 2011 who borrowed to gain their bachelor’s degrees — that’s two-thirds of graduates — emerged with an average of $26,600 in student-loan debt.
The good news is that there are more affordable options where, with the right guidance and a little initiative, a student can get a true education. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute scoured the country to find the best low-cost educational options in America. In the latest edition of our Choosing the Right College, we provide detailed guidance on how to get a good education at each of them.
Some Blue Collar Ivies we profile offer full-tuition scholarships to students, sometimes in return for full-time work on campus. They are worth a careful look. But because these colleges can afford to be extremely selective, and some have income restrictions on whom they admit, we also profile at least one public university in each of the 50 states. Paying in-state tuition, a student can attend at one-third or even one-fourth of what others would pay.
The advantage of such a cost savings is obvious. And there really are excellent opportunities at most state universities. In these profiles, we point you to honors programs at state schools that often are nearly as rigorous as the options at elite private colleges. Some public institutions even offer Great Books programs; we tell you which ones. We highlight options for honors housing, which lets serious students escape the zoo atmosphere that pervades too many state-college dorms. We also tell you about schools that have set up internship programs with local employers or enable science students to work closely with senior faculty in research.
Even outside these programs, the Blue Collar Ivies have many dedicated professors — frequently people whose own degrees come from the best schools in the country. Such teachers are often frustrated by the mediocrity and ideological pressure that prevails at state universities, and they uniformly report that they are delighted when eager, intellectually curious students seek them as mentors. You will find in every college profile some names of such professors.
While spotlighting outstanding programs at state universities, we also call attention to land mines you should avoid. We flag programs and departments that are directionless, underfunded, or flooded by radical activists (as many liberal-arts departments sadly are), and we try to steer students to the strong ones. The good news is that state universities are so big, there is almost always some worthwhile path a proactive student can forge through the trackless forest. We find you that path, combing through each school’s catalogue to select a solid core curriculum of classes that will guarantee a basic liberal-arts education to any student, regardless of major.
