Most students and their families enter the college admissions process fully expecting to take out tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. Does earning a degree really have to cost that much? Amy and Mike invited college cost advocate Mark Salisbury to elaborate on when borrowing for school is a bad idea.

 What are five things you will learn in this episode?

1. Why are student loans particularly burdensome, especially for young adults?
2. What choices can increase or decrease the cost of college?
3. What are ways to earn college credit?
4. How can students attend college without borrowing too much?
5. What are the long-term benefits of graduating without substantial debt?

MEET OUR GUEST

Dr. Mark Salisbury has spent 27 years in higher education. His first decade was as a soccer coach and admissions counselor. He then returned to school and earned a Ph.D. in higher education at the University of Iowa, studying college student access and success as a researcher on the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education and a member of the Teagle Scholars. Since then, he has published both academic research and more mainstream writing on higher ed, including commentaries for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, interviews with NPR, and the blog, Delicious Ambiguity. From 2010 to 2018, he was an Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Institutional Research and Assessment at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL.

In addition, Mark has done consulting work for colleges and universities over the past decade on how to use data to improve in areas like recruiting, financial aid leveraging, admissions, student retention, graduation, and post-college outcomes. He started the TuitionFit project in the summer of 2018 and continues to be an enthusiastic advocate for the benefits of price transparency for both students and colleges.

Mark first appeared on this podcast in episode #19 to discuss COLLEGE PRICE TRANSPARENCY.

Find Mark at https://www.tuitionfit.org/ or [email protected].

LINKS

Mark’s TEDx talk

How TuitionFit works

CLEP

RELATED EPISODES

THE TRUTH ABOUT STUDENT LOAN DEBT

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STUDENT LOANS

THE PRICE YOU REALLY PAY FOR COLLEGE

ABOUT THIS PODCAST

Tests and the Rest is THE college admissions industry podcast. Explore all of our episodes on the show page.