Alex Chediak

Helping young adults thrive at college and beyond

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Relevance is the Strongest Predictor in Whether Someone Thinks College is Worth It

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People often ask “Is college worth it?” A research study from Strada Education has found that the best predictor for this question is relevance.

Meaning this: If you think the courses you took at college were relevant to your life and work after college, you’re also likely to think you received a good education (quality) and that it was worth the cost (value).

It’s not about how much you paid. It’s about whether you think what you learned was relevant. But the sad truth is that only 26% of working U.S. adults with college experience strongly agree that their education is relevant to their work and day-to-day life.

The challenge for educators is to develop curricula that is both perceived to be relevant by current students, and actually deemed relevant by former students. This isn’t an argument for ditching liberal arts or other “non-applied” subjects. It’s an argument for caring deeply about the future lives of our students and connecting instruction to the kinds of people we’re trying to help them become.

The report can be downloaded at no cost. Or listen to the author discuss the findings.

Blog Hibernation Over?

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Dear Whatever Readers Are Left,

I’m sorry for letting this blog go dark for almost three months. I love blogging, but my plate has been exceedingly full this fall. In August I returned to full-time teaching and administrative responsibilities after a year-long writing sabbatical in which, by God’s grace, I published a book and completed a 60,000 word manuscript for another. These recent months I’ve also been fulfilling a few speaking engagements, doing a few online interviews related to my previous books, and working with my editor on the latest manuscript. This new book releases, Lord willing, December 2015. I’ve also been enjoying more time with my family, among other things helping my kids learn to ride their bicycles–the older two no longer require training wheels! Good times.

I hope to bring the blog back, focusing on issues related to education, faith, and the challenges young adults face transitioning out of the home and into the world.

Thanks for any interest,
Alex

Under 40? Got Student Debt? Good Chance You’re Poor

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About 4 in 10 U.S. households headed by someone under the age of 40 have student debt, the highest level ever, according to a study. The median debt level is about $13,000.Walter Hamilton writing for the LA Times:

College graduate heads-of-household under 40 with student debt have a median net worth of only $8,700, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center. That’s a fraction of the $64,700 the same group without college loans is worth.

They’re not  all drowning in student debt–the median student debt for this group is about $13,000–it’s that “because of the other loans they’ve taken out, the median total indebtedness of college graduates under 40 with student loans is $137,010…compared to $73,250 for their counterparts with no college debt.”

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The Myth of Working Your Way Through College

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Svati Kirsten Narula, writing for The Atlantic:  “the average student in 1979 could work 182 hours (a part-time summer job) to pay for a year’s tuition. In 2013, it took 991 hours (a full-time job for half the year) to accomplish the same.”


Read the whole thing.

FYI – My new  book has tips on saving for college, lowering the costs of college, and earning money during college.

Should We Become a Cashless Society?

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800px-Credit-cards.jpgConfession: I hate carrying and spending cash. Always have. I like the convenience of putting everything on one credit card, being able to have an instant record of my spending, and (of course) earning 1 percent cash back. I’m not prone to impulse purchases, and I’ve always paid my bill in full and on time. But Derek Thomas has a provocative article in The Atlantic on the downsides of our becoming a cashless society.

Thomas writes: “In the 1970s, fewer than 20 percent of the adult population owned a credit card. Today, between 70 and 80 percent of the adult population does.” So what? Thomas goes on to argue:

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