Budget Woes and Blows to the University of California System

The University of California system is taking a beating due to the sagging economy and the state’s budgetary woes (the state really needs a new constitution or a major overhaul of the map of its legislative districts–which is a textbook case of the evils of gerrymandering).

Most commentaries have focused on the access to the University of California, including the budgetary implications on on financial aid and tuition increases.

But what parents and students need to keep in mind is that access is not the only issue here: as budgets shrink, educational quality will start to shrivel up, too. While you may still have access to UCLA or UC Irvine, the quality of the education offered there will decline unless the healthy budgets return.

An article in today’s Inside Higher Ed leads with the fact that the UC schools are having a hard time recruiting top quality faculty, because they can no longer compete by offering competitive salaries. They are losing bidding wars with private colleges around the country–whose budgets are not dependent on taxpayer dollars and whose endowments may allow them to attract top-flight faculty.

Many other public universities are feeling the same pinch:  as budgets are trimmed, so are student services.  Class sizes will increase.  Depth and breadth of course offerings will diminish.

So today’s consumers of higher education services need to think carefully about the relationship between cost and quality.

If your family needs help finding the right balance between cost and quality, don’t hesitate to give me a shout.  Remember, the first conversation is free!

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

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Menlo College: A Tiny, Focused Business College in Silicon Valley

Last week I was able to visit Menlo College in Atherton, California.  I was part of a tour organized by the Independent Educational Consultants Association. Our tour began with a fine lunch in the dining hall—where the food is organic and the head of dining services has a commitment to serving local products, when possible.  It’s hard to know whether the food is always as good as it was that day, but I was happy to stoke up on a couple of nice Asian dishes over rice.  Lunch was followed by a tour, and then a brief presentation and question-and-answer session with the College’s Provost (the fancy term for chief academic officer).

Here’s a bit of what I learned.

  1. As the Provost said, Menlo is not a small college, it’s a tiny college.  With each entering class made up of about 125 students, the total campus population is just under 600.  The campus is pleasantly verdant and compact, and classes take place in only two buildings, one of which is dedicated solely to business courses.
  2. The focus at Menlo is on business.  Most students are majoring in some flavor of business administration, though some pursue degrees in psychology or other liberal arts disciplines.
  3. Most Menlo students hail from California, with a smattering of students from other Western states.  Fifteen percent of students come from abroad, with most of those coming from Hong Kong and China.
  4. Menlo is a teaching college, where each faculty member is expected to teach four courses per semester.  While some faculty complain about the work load, the Provost gently reminds them that with the tiny size of the College and the small size of classes, most instructors teacher fewer than 50 students per semester. Thus faculty members are able to build close connections with faculty—because such relationships would be unavoidable.zi6_03481
  5. Menlo has only 30 full time faculty, and is trying to expand that number to 50. The Board of Trustees has given the Provost the directive to pay competitive salaries to attract and retain top faculty.  In addition, because of Menlo’s location in Silicon Valley, the College has access to an excellent pool of experienced and qualified adjunct instructors to teach in its business programs.  Twenty-one faculty members actually live on campus (and all faculty and staff may eat in the campus dining hall free of charge all year long!).
  6. Menlo’s location also gives students the opportunity to pursue part-time jobs, internships, and summer employment in the high-tech industry of Silicon Valley.
  7. Despite its tiny size, Menlo competes in NCAA Division III sports, and 40% of the students participate in varsity athletics.
  8. Historically, Menlo has had a strong set of services for students with learning differences. While the College is happy to serve students with a wide variety of learning styles, it is refocusing itself and has made the decision not to be a school that specializes in serving the needs of students with learning differences.zi6_0349
  9. Menlo’s President and current leadership team seems to have a strong, unified vision of how to transform this small college into a focused, ambitious little place—like the choo-choo train in the story, The Little Engine That Could.

I was pleased to finally visit Menlo.  I had met Bob Wilms, Menlo’s amiable and able director of admission, on several occasions.  While Bob is a great representative in extolling the virtues of Menlo, there is no substitute for walking the campus and meeting the people that form the core of the College.

Mark Montgomery
College Consultant

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St. Mary's College of California–Solid Liberal Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area

Yesterday I was glad to be able to visit St. Mary’s College in the Bay Area of Northern California.  As regular readers know, I spend a lot of time visiting colleges, and every time I think I’ve seen it all, I’m reminded of the huge variety of colleges in this country.  St. Mary’s has several aspects to it that help it to stand out.smc-1

St. Mary’s is a LaSallian Catholic college set on a beautiful campus with whitewashed, Mission style architecture and beautiful grounds.  In addition to a pleasant campus tour with a bright and enthusiastic young woman (“I just love St. Mary’s…I just can’t stop talking about it…”), my colleagues and I were able to hear from Michael Beseda, the Vice President for College Communication and Vice Provost for Enrollment.

As a good communicator, Mr. Beseda hit upon three key points that distinguish St. Mary’s College.

The first is the Collegiate Seminar program, which is a core curriculum based on the Great Books.  This is a four course, four-semester sequence required of all students.  Students get a solid introduction to the classics of Western Civilization.  The four courses are (1), Greek Thought, (2) Romans, Christian and Medieval Literature, (3), the Renaissance, and (4) thinkers of the 19th and 20th century thought. This Collegiate Seminar is a hallmark of a SMC education, and it not only does it solidly ground students in the classics, but the small classes and common curriculum give students academic confidence.  The Collegiate Seminar is an inquiry course in which professors and students explore human questions together.  Faculty do not provide answers to the tough questions of humanity—which are addressed by the Great Books—and trains students to be the sort of people who are comfortable asking questions and challenging ideas

In addition to this Collegiate Seminar, students are required to take a course on the Bible as literature, as well as one other religion course (which could be Catholicism, but could also be Hinduism or Islam).  So students get a sold background in the classical liberal arts tradition, as well as a view of the importance of religion in society (it’s important to say that only slightly over half of the students at St. Mary’s College are Catholic).

smc-2Second, St. Mary’s College offers a January Term, in which students pursue one of 120 different interdisciplinary courses that may include travel or internships. While the two primary semester are dedicated to a very traditional education, the January Term is much more experimental and experiential. Thus St. Mary’s College balances the Great Books with a non-traditional, month-long exploration of real-world problems.

Third, St. Mary’s was founded by the LaSallian Christian brothers, who have a commitment—first and foremost—to teaching.  In addition, the Christian Brothers have infused the campus with a LaSallian commitment to diversity, social justice, and service to the community.  A significant number of students spend hours and hours engaged in the local and global community.

Beyond these three primary points, I picked up a few other interesting tidbits about St. Mary’s College.

  1. St. Mary’s is basketball powerhouse, and offers several other NCAA Division I sports.  With a small student body of 2500 undergraduates, this is one of the smaller D1 colleges.
  2. St. Mary’s has an well-developed music program, and bills itself as having a “conservatory quality” music program within the liberal arts tradition.  There are several performing arts scholarships (music, dance, theatre) worth up to $12k annually.  These renewable scholarships are based on an audition.
  3. The college offers generous scholarships upon admission.  These scholarships are based on clear and transparent criteria.  Students with a GPA of 3.7 and a combined SAT score (math + critical reading) of at least 1200 and/or a ACT composite score of 27 receive an automatic scholarship of $12,000.
  4. In addition, the College offers competitive Presidential Scholars Scholarships of $10,000 more.  These scholarships are awarded on the basis of an on campus interview, and the minimum requirements of a 3.8 GPA, and an SAT score of 1350 and/or an ACT composite of 31.  These are competitive, need a GPA of 3.8 with 1350 or 31 ACT composite.  All winners of this scholarship pile an additional $10k piled on top of the $12k from the “upon admission” scholarships described above.  So winners of the Presidential Scholarships receive a $22k annual, renewable scholarship.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit to St. Mary’s College.


Mark Montgomery
College Counselor



University of San Francisco–an urban, Jesuit college in the Bay Area

I seem to have been visiting quite a few Jesuit colleges lately.  I tend to like them for a lot of reasons. I need to write a post on Jesuit colleges generally.  But first, I offer this bit about the University of San Francisco, which I was fortunate to be able to visit yesterday as part of a tour for college counselors.University of San Francisco

Here are a few of the things that I learned while on campus.

  1. USF is different from the other Jesuit college in terms of its location and the composition of the student body.  USF is a school of minorities:  only 39% are white.  There are plenty of students from other ethnic groups, including Asian (21%) and Latino (14%) and Black (5%).  But get this:  30% of the students in the Gospel Choir are white.  USF is a place where students can get outside of their cultural constricts of their childhood and high school experience.  Students can “mix it up,” literally.  Thirty percent of students are the first in their family to go to college.  Socio-economically speaking, this place is also pretty diverse:  forty percent come from families who make $60k or less per year–and who are attending an institution that costs $50k per year.
  2. Who are the “majorities” at USF:  Catholics 51%, and women 60% (note that the strong School of Nursing pulls this average off, because 95% of school of nursing are women). Also, 75-80% come from the Western states, though there are representatives of most states, and a whole bunch of foreign countries.
  3. Like most Jesuit institutions, USF is a mission-driven college. They focus upon “education the whole person” and learning is considered a “humanizing social activity rather than a competitive exercise.”
  4. USF has 5,000 undergraduates, with another 3,800 graduate students.  Seventy-five percent of classes have 25 students or fewer.
  5. USF has a core curriculum, like most Jesuit institutions. But there are still differences.  Total of 11 core classes, plus a class that includes a service learning component (not just a “bunch of hours”)—service learning is integrated into the classroom, making it an integration of service and learning.
  6. USF admissions officers encourage phone calls from both students and counselors.  They do not have  “wall” between web users and the admissions staff.  The admissions office representatives said repeatedly, “Pick up the phone; we’re old fashioned.”  USF also lists all the phone numbers of faculty right on the website.  So if you’re interested in how good the biology department is, or what the major’s priorities are, you can just get on the horn with the chair of the department and ask.
  7. Twenty-five percent  of faculty are “of color;”  45% of faculty are women.  One of USF’s core values is diversity.
  8. If you are interested in the nursing program, you must apply separately, adn the nursing program is very competitive.  There are about 600 students in the nursing program.  This year there were about 550 applications for admission to nursing, and about half were admitted, with an eye to building a class of 100 freshmen.
  9. USF offers great scholarship for those it deems to be “high value” students:  those with a 3.8 GPA grades 9-11, a score of 1320 SAT (math plus critical reading only–not the writing component) or a  minimum of 30 ACT composite.  If you break these barriers, here’s what you win:  a $19,500 merit scholarhip, renewable for up to four years.
  10. Some students may opt for the Saint Ignatius Institute, an interesting Great Books program within both the Jesuit and the liberal arts tradition.  Students read the classics of Western Civilization (Plato, Homer, Augustine, Dante, Göethe, Kafka, Borges, etc.).  This program is open to all students, but spaces are limited.  For students who want the “Great Books” sort of program offered at St. John’s (but who don’t want the strict focus of St. John’s), this might be a great fit.

All in all I really enjoyed my time at USF, though I wish the weather had been warmer. It was blowing a gale, despite the fact that the sun was out.  I hear that Mark Twain had this to say about this fair city (and I’m not quoting directly):  “I spent the coldest winter of my life in San Francisco one summer.”

Mark Montgomery
College Counselor