Teaching the Value of College

I recently read an article in the publication, Mathematics Teacher, describing a program that teaches teenagers how to determine the true cost of attending college. In the October 2011 issue of that publication, Laura Crowley, a math teacher at the John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri, wrote about a project she devised known as the “College Project.”

During this project, Crowley has her students pick a college of their choice and determine the real costs of attending: tuition and fees, room and board, books, transportation expenses, recreation costs, and everything else from haircuts to football tickets. Crowley explains that she has the students use “recent growth rates to predict the increase in tuition for each year that they will be in college.” The total usually shocks her students.

Next, Crowley has her students devise a plan to pay for everything, including jobs, scholarships, loans, savings, work-study, and how much mom and dad can kick in. Crowley’s students are required to make a formal presentation of their findings to their parents as well as preparing a paper showing their calculations and a poster for class discussion. During lively class discussions, the students discuss monthly payments and total cost of any loans they would have to take, and how much money parents would have to save each month of their child’s life to be able to fully pay his or her college costs once that child turns 18.

To top it off, Crowley has her students fill out a self-evaluation form and asks parents to complete a feedback form. She shared some of the self-evaluation comments from students:

• “I better appreciate my parents now.”
• “I’m debating now whether it’s worth it to go to a private college versus a state school.”
• “I never thought of all the extra costs college will entail.”
• “I’d better start saving now so I can afford to send my own kids to college.”

My feedback after reading Crowley’s article is: Wow! What a great project. Crowley’s students finish this project truly understanding the monetary value of college. Such understanding is a crucial step in being successful once they get there. My guess is that her students will carefully assess all expenses they face during their college years. How beneficial it would be to require such a project in every high school. I believe it would be a valuable tool in making the decisions of when to go to college, where to go, and how to make it possible.

Read the article here: http://www.nctm.org/publications/article.aspx?id=30924