Does This College Really Change Lives?

Parent Cafe
1

This may be a bit incendiary, but I was reviewing the State University System of Florida’s 2014-2015 Accountability Report and noticed some disturbing numbers with respect to NCF. Keep in mind that NCF is billed as Florida’s Honors College as well as being listed as one of the CTCLs.

http://www.flbog.edu/about/_doc/budget/ar_2014-15/2014_15_System_Accountability_Report_Summary_FINAL_2016-04-28.pdf

For the 2013-2014 graduating class (Bachelor’s Degrees), only 52.8% were employed full-time or continuing their education. All other Florida public schools showed rates above 70%, with the exception of FSU at 67.9%.

The median salary for the NCF graduates was $24,800, the lowest of all the Florida Public universities and more that 20% below that of the second lowest (FAMU at $31,100).

The average cost per Bachelor’s Degree for NCF was $79,250. The second highest on the list was FAMU at $44,520. I’m guessing that this is due to the small population of the school and maybe a larger percentage of OOS and international students compared to the other universities.

The CTCL profile states “If you are interested in learning for the sake of learning in an honors college that has no required courses, an evaluation-based grading system, and that produces winners wholesale, try New College of Florida in Sarasota. You’ll love it.” However, the picture looks relatively bleak for students once they graduate.

Do other CTCL schools compare so poorly to their peers?

2

Would not be surprised if these characteristics were common among small non-elite LACs. Consider:

a. Few or no pre-professional majors with good major-specific job prospects, so not that desirable for employers looking for specific in-demand majors, and probably has a student self-selection effect.
b. Small, so not all that desirable for general employer recruiting.
c. Small, so relatively expensive to operate.
d. Non-elite, so not attractive to elitist employers like management consulting and Wall Street.

3

Comparing NCF to FAMU is comparing apples to oranges. They are different types of schools.

LAC grads tend to have lower starting salaries, across the board. Few of the “best” LACs offer the professional programs that tend to attract higher starting salaries. With few exceptions the “finer” LACs tend not to offer: Accounting, business programs, engineering, health-care programs, etc. There are exceptions. For example Swarthmore and Union offer engineering. But they are exceptions for people who want to combine strong liberal arts education and engineering.

FAMU is not an LAC it’s a tech school that offers, among other things, engineering. That’s a degree that tends to pay better. This alone will raise the starting salary of its grads on average.

Usually it’s more helpful to compare majors to majors (engineering program at School A compared with engineering program at School B). On average history majors get less salary five years out than, say, engineers. But not each individual. An historian like Doris Kearns Goodwin might make a better salary than an engineer who hates her job. In other words, while much depends on the major, a lot more depends on the person who goes into that major–or for that matter who attends a given school.

Why do people bother with LACs if the starting salaries are so much lower? It’s sort of considered a slower start, compared with engineering, business and other programs, but it’s generally felt that at an LAC you learn to a) teach yourself, becoming a lifelong learner, and b) become a critical thinker and c) communicate more effectively and d) solve problems from multiple perspectives and e) apply ethics to dilemmas, and f) conduct research, so on. LACs don’t usually teach you a specific “job” but give you the tools to better handle whatever you decide to do later. Many people then go on from LAC degree to either 1) learn on the job a profession (such as interning with a museum or with a publisher or in politics or journalism or internet start ups or advertising and then working your way up the ranks) or 2) get a professional degree (such as attending law school, engineering school, med school, accounting, or education or nursing programs).

Does a school really change lives? I would say, that probably it depends on the school and on each student, but I’ve heard good stories about NCF. How much would a graduate earn? That entirely would depend on the person and their creativity, motivation and yes a little luck thrown in.

4

I concur with @ucbalumnus

We live in Florida, and both of my daughters considered New College of Florida. Ultimately though, neither of my daughters were interested in attending there & for a # of reasons… too small, lacks the true college feel or experience, no good matches as to the majors they were seeking, weak alumni networking prospects for internships and job opportunities, etc. Aside from NCF also labeling itself as the Honors College of Florida, it did not seem to offer any of the attributes my daughters were seeking… either as an undergrad or as a future alum.

I am sure that it is the right fit for a certain type of student, and there must be some success stories to point to among past graduates, but it was clearly not the right fit for our family.

5

NCF is a great school for the sort of student who likes Hampshire College or Bennington or Sarah Lawrence or other schools that give you creative license to pursue your own interests. Those schools are great if you are self-directed and can focus. If you can do that, wonderful things can happen. For examples of that, google Hampshre college and “notable alumni” or New college of Florida and “notable alumni” etc. You will find great filmmakers, actors, novelists, the head of the Federal Reserve and computer geniuses, artists, famous cartoonists, great academics, screenwriters, etc. If you are not focused or directed, you can get lost.

Also, if you’re looking for college as job training per se, it’s probably best if you don’t attend an LAC, especially one that’s as open ended as this group of schools. Instead go into a professional or pre-professional program – or an LAC that’s more professionally focused.

Note though: you can major in anything at all if you want to become an attorney.

Note also that the lack of “true college feel” that WWWard mentioned, might be exactly the college feel that others are looking for. Namely: no football games, no frats, and a focus on studying. This is the “true college feel” that our family looks for: actual learning in small enough classes that you have one-on-one attention from the professors, and no TAs. That’s an advantage for small LACs

6

But don’t Hampshire College, or Bennington or Sarah Lawrence have a tradition and a renown? And an active alum network likely to support their own? That would be to me an upside to these LACs. Unlike NCF, which is (I suspect) only known in Florida and doesn’t have decades worth of alums scattered around the country.

7

New College of Florida is well known among the same folks who know Hampshire, Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, Bard, Goddard College, Evergreen State etc. – schools which are not the traditional LAC but for some students, are a perfect fit. We considered New College of Florida for one of our kids.

8

I agree, NCF is not a traditional LAC and I would also say that CTCL schools in general have quite the variety, It is not an apples to apples list by any means. All have qualities that have the potential to change lives, for the right student but are not remotely all the same in approach or environment.

Evergreen, which is similar to NCF, Hampshire, etc, is an instate option for us. It is night and day different from the CTCL schools my S is considering in almost every way. It has a very low graduation rate and there are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which is an older student demographic. Which doesn’t mean that those kids don’t graduate, it just means that it’s a huge CC transfer option for in state kids and those kids are not counted in the 4 year rates.

My S17 is applying to 4 CTCL schools and considered others, including some mentioned above. From a pure stats standpoint, you will find a wide variety of graduation rates and starting salaries at the CTCL schools. These schools are not for everyone but they are the exact college feel my child is looking for which is not a huge rah rah football school. Some of his schools do have greek life, all have some level of sports and several have lovely campuses.

Which doesn’t make it less of a fit for the overall CTCL school list but I think it is quite important not to lump them all together, or to lump all non highly selective LAC’s together. The CTCL schools on my students list (for the most part) compare favorably, or exceed in several cases, the well regarded public universities and private universities on his list, and with the exception of one school, exceed the graduation rates of our highly regarded and competitive flagship. But as my student says, all that really matters if YOUR child graduates in 4 years. The rest really is a bit irrelevant.

Allegheny
Retention Rate 83%
Accept Rate 72%
4 yr Grad Rate 71%
6 yr Grad Rate 75%
Economist Median $49,200

Ursinus
Retention Rate 92%
Accept Rate 83%
4 yr Grad Rate 74%
6 yr Grad Rate
Economist Median $51,500

University of Puget Sound
Retention Rate 87%
Accept Rate 79%
4 yr Grad Rate 72%
6 yr Grad Rate 78%
Economist Median $51,500

Goucher
Retention Rate 77%
Accept Rate 76%
4 yr Grad Rate 57%
6 yr Grad Rate 69%
Economist Median $45,599

9

CTCL is a group of schools that markets their schools together. A guy wrote a book, and it caught on, and the schools find it works to market together. If they have convinced you they are special and right for your child, then the marketing has worked. If you’ve been introduced to a school you’d never have considered, then the marketing has worked.

The issue really isn’t if the schools all are the same size or graduate the same percentage of students in 4 years, but whether they are trying to attract the same type of students at school fairs and presentations. If one school is looking for an entirely different type of student, it is wasting its time and money to hang with the other schools.

My kids went to high school in Florida but no one ever mentioned NCF to them, and they never received any marketing material. It makes no sense for NCF to market to the same kids that UF or FSU are chasing. They have similar tuition and weather, and that’s about the extent of their similarities.

10

My opinion…ALL colleges change lives.

11

Apparently, some make it worse.

12

Poor NCF gets hammered the state of Florida Performance funding system…

As you can see below, the graduates tend to wait awhile before applying to grad school, which hurts the 1 year results.

https://www.ncf.edu/admissions/outcomes/

Once again, taking that “year off” hurts in this metric, which is also based on 1 year after graduation (and only tracks students working in Florida).

No clue where this number comes from . All 12 of the Florida public universities charge about the same rate for tuition and fees (around $6.5K a year). The COE isn’t particularly high, and they do offer (as compared to the other publics in Florida) decent merit and need-based aid for in-state students.

About 20% are out of state with another 4% being international which is a bit high for a Florida public university, they do charge a hefty OOS tuition rate (almost $30K a year), and may not offer much in merit/need-based aid to OOS students. With it’s low enrollment (800+ students), it must have a lot of full pay OOS students.

I just checked NCF’s scholarship info, and “Out-of-state students enrolling in Fall 2017 will be awarded a $15,000 per year Presidential Scholarship”. Looks like it’s not competitive. That makes OOS tuition at around $15K a year, which is fairly low.

Graduation rate is lowish (71%), but that’s due to the high transfer rate (24%). It’s a bit too quirky for some students, others want to transfer to pursue majors not offered at NCF (like engineering).

13

The out of state rates for all Florida publics are much better than my in-state PA rates. It’s all relative :slight_smile:

14

@Gatormama HA! FAU (in lovely Baca Raton) and USF are both around $17K a year for OOS tuition and fees. That’s within spitting range of some of those ridiculous PA rates. :slight_smile:

and then when you consider most (other than UF) are likely to offer merit scholarships…

Looks like I’m turning this thread into a state of Florida recruitment ad, better get back on topic!

15

Chomp chomp, baby.
We have a tour skedded for next spring break at the Swamp. I’m no Gatormama-dummy :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

16

@twoinanddone I think you’re partly right in calling CTCL a marketing ploy, but I also think that’s a little cynical. The person who started the list didn’t consider it as branding or marketing at first, at least I don’t think so. Please correct meif I’m wrong, but he was first a NYTimes education journalist (i’m pretty sure), named Loren Pope, and he’d discovered on his travels several schools that were often overlooked, but had much to offer. They are not at all the same. Some are conservative, some are liberal, some have strict guidelines, others don’t, some public, more private. But they seem to have in common that they take into consideration teaching students first and they were, for the right audience/ student, collectively environments that could pull out the best learning and perhaps performance.

17

I didn’t say it was a ploy, just that it is a group of schools who market together because they want to attract the same type of students. Pope made money off the books (that’s his job, not criticizing him) and set up a webpage and the schools developed a road show. Pope’s opinion meant something to his readers and he built it into CTCL, but Pope is just a writer with an opinion, and not able to anoint these schools the only ones that change lives, or that a school that didn’t make his list unable to change lives.

It’s not different than any group of schools that share some characteristics and want to market together - Jesuit schools, NC schools, the Claremont schools. CTCL is a group of schools that finds it helpful to market together.

18

OP:

I commend you on putting 2 and 2 together and getting 4. The data you found about NCF is hard to dispute. I haven’t read each of the 14 previous replies to you on this thread but if any of them are saying anything other than hammer meet nail we have a winner, I’d be shocked.

The data doesn’t lie.

I don’t know a lot about NCF but one look at that data would make me think twice about investing in a degree from there. I live in FL for what it is worth and in this state, I’ve lived here most of my life, you can get a solid education without the elitism and high price tag at most of the public U’s if (1) you major in something practical and (2) if you apply yourself.

It has been said here before on CC in the PF that it is the students who make a college experience great or not. It has also been said, even though some people comically over think it, that one should look at return on investment type measures when making a college decision. Others go on and on about how you can’t apply ROI to education decisions.

Yes, you can and you should and if more people did there would be fair less noise here about debt levels and how unfair life is and how many bogus and worthless degree plans there are, etc. Do your homework. Think critically. You did. That is how you found that data. Now, don’t ignore it.

Good work, IMHO.

Also, the honors colleges at some of the public U’s are the best of both worlds. Go for it, if you find a degree plan you like. Regarding the privates, in this state, I consistently hear great things about Stetson in Deland and I am a huge fan of Rollins (I live a few miles away). I was at a conference at Stetson a few weeks ago and came away highly impressed by what they are doing in their business programs. In some cases, a private education is worth the extra cost. As far as small LAC’s, they get defended here all the time, but the market speaks a little louder so do your research and you will find the answers you seek.

19

“Graduation rate is lowish (71%), but that’s due to the high transfer rate (24%). It’s a bit too quirky for some students, others want to transfer to pursue majors not offered at NCF (like engineering).”

Evidence that students are transferring out of NCF to major in engineering? My guess is that you can count on one hand the number who fall into this bucket. But I’d love to be proven wrong by the data.

Folks love to post fallacious explanations for low graduation rates. But deciding by sophomore or junior year that you are going to get an undergrad engineering degree- after one or two years at NCF- seems extremely far-fetched to me.

And that goes for Hampshire, Evergreen, and a bunch of the other CTCL’s as well. Would love to see the metrics.

20

Pet about “colleges that change lives”. ALL colleges change lives.