college costs, college planning, financial planning

5 Reasons why College Costs So Much

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college

There is one thing you can be sure of in life: college tuition will rise every year. Prices rise and fall all around us, but tuition never seems to go down.

College tuition prices are a lot higher today compared with two decades ago. For instance, the average cost for tuition and fees among ranked public and private National Universities – schools that are often research-oriented and offer bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees – has risen significantly since 2001, according to U.S. News data.

From the 2008 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings to the current 2022 edition, in-state tuition prices among public National Universities grew by almost 79%. Experts say state schools have typically had more room to increase tuition levels compared with their private counterparts, and finding a bargain price at the state level is becoming harder.

The economic downturn resulting from the coronavirus pandemic may also affect tuition costs in the years to come.

In just comparing the 2020-2021 school year to the current 2021-2022 academic year, tuition rates at both private and public National Universities have increased by at least 2%, according to U.S. News data.

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college health, student health

4 Self-Care Tips for college freshmen

self-care tips

One of the biggest obstacles when starting your freshman year of college is figuring out how to manage a healthy balance between your academics and social life– but don’t forget that practicing self-care is a key piece to that balance. Making yourself a priority during the hustle and bustle of your first year of college will help you create and maintain healthy habits for the rest of your schooling to come. 

Imagine being on an airplane, you get your luggage stowed, you buckle up and the video in front of you starts to play informing you of all the safety measures to take in the event of an emergency. One of the biggest tips they stress is when the oxygen masks come down, always put yours on before helping the person next to you. You cannot help someone if you cannot get air yourself! This goes for life, and even freshman year. If you do not make time to take care of yourself, everything else will start to fail too. But you know the best part of that? It is easier than it sounds!

Here are a few self-care tips for you as you take on this new journey!

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college guidance, parenting

Why Grandparents Make The Best College Mentors

grandparents

Grandparents are a fantastic resource for college-age students. They have a wealth of knowledge that allows them to provide perspective as young people go through education and get professional careers. But the benefits go beyond this. Grandparents tend to have a greater perspective on life that allows them to put everything the student does into context. 

In this post, we take a look at some of the reasons why grandparents make great mentors and how you can use them. 

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homeschooling, parenting

Expert Homeschooling Tips

homeschooling

Nowadays, more people are educating their children from home because of the advantages of flexibility, productivity, and bringing out your child’s unique talents. But if you haven’t homeschooled before, it might be difficult to know where to start – read the expert tips below. 

Stick to a routine 

Whether you home school your children part-time or full time, it’s important to stick to a routine. Traditional schools are excellent for creating formal structures and routines for students to follow, which frames their psychology for learning. However, when you don’t have a strict routine to follow, there is a tendency to cut corners and take breaks here and there – this doesn’t make for the best homeschooling environment. 

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college health, parenting, student health

Teaching Your Teen Healthy Habits

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Healthy habits are the best way to take care of your body. After all, our body is a gigantic system with so many different processes, each of them working in harmony to create a strong and healthy body. However, when one of these systems or processes is interrupted, it can slow everything down to a crawl. This is not where you want to be, hence why it’s important to take a holistic approach to health and also why it’s important to educate your children on this.

So what can you do to encourage your child to take a full body approach to their health? Here are a couple of suggestions.

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academics, college health, parenting

3 Tactics to Manage College-Induced Stress

stress

College stress happens to just about everyone – if you’re not stressed while in college, there’s probably something wrong! It’s just a combination of responsibilities and things that all add up to make you feel super tense and overwhelmed. Especially as you’re not used to living college life at all – it’s the first time you’ve ever been away from home, you have to be more independent when studying, and the course content is a lot harder than in high school. 

With all of this considered, what can you do to manage college-induced stress? Here are three tactics that seem to work really well:

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college prep, life lessons, parenting

Teaching Your College-Bound Teen Essential Car Maintenance

car maintenance

Starting college is an exciting adventure for almost everyone. Yet, it can be difficult for parents to ensure they’ve adequately prepared their young adult children to navigate the worldindependently. 

Most parents know that college-bound teens will need to know how to do laundry, cook simple meals, and where to go if they need medical attention.

However, if your child is planning to take their car to college, it’s also necessary to teach them the basics of car maintenance. From changing a tire and checking fluids to basic safety techniques while doing the maintenance, these skills serve them throughout their lives. 

Whether your teen is taking the hand-me-down vehicle or you did your research and bought them a new or used car through Edmunds, it’s essential to know what you should cover and what your options are if you don’t feel equipped to teach these skills?

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study tools, tutoring

Why Social Studies Matters

social studies

Social studies is concerned with a wide array of disciplines that impact and affect human society on different levels. At the school level, social studies is a commonly taught subject and can include geography, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and so on. Social studies is inherently important to any school curriculum because it teaches children the value of good behavior, ethic, and civics and molds them into better more productive citizens. Not to mention it is invaluable for any democratic society with global values. 

When your child goes to school and then grows up further, they will undoubtedly need to interact with other children from other cultures or will read about them. Social studies provides a kind of map that can be followed for children to know how to live and behave in society and understand its underlying mechanisms. 

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college prep, parenting

Involved Parenting Paves the Way for College

involved parenting

Getting the best out of your teen is easier than you think. A lot of the time, there are solutions that we don’t think of because they are too simple. Instead, we try to complicate things when there really is no need. In this article, we’re going to be taking a look at some involved parenting to get the best out of your teen and help them grow towards independence before college.

Show Up

The first, and arguably most important thing that you are going to need to do is to show up. Kids and teens live by example, so if you are not showing up, why would they? Your kids need you to show up, be there, support them and do everything that you say you will. You don’t realize it at the time, but your teens are constantly watching you and learning from you. When people talk about having a mini me, this is literal. Your kids are either going to follow what you do, or go in the complete opposite direction, depending on a number of factors, though the former is the more likely of the two options.

If you show up, your kids will know that you care. It really is as simple as that. Showing up is the most important part to your teens, so make sure that you do this. 

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college costs, college housing

Saving Money While Living Off campus

saving money

Have you been thinking about some of the things that you can do when it comes to saving money while living off campus? There are plenty of options here that you can consider. In this article, we’re going to be looking at a few tips that will always help you to save money when it comes to your off campus home, so keep reading down below if you would like to find out more. 

Grocery Shopping

The first thing that you are going to save money on is your grocery shopping. If you are only ever buying named brands, why? Have you tried the cheaper alternatives? A lot of them taste just as good as the larger brands as they are made from the same things. We’re of course, not saying that this is always true, but even if there is a little taste variation, there is a huge price variation. The last thing that we want is for you to be spending money unnecessarily when there are cheaper options that you do actually like. If you try the alternatives and decide you don’t like them, that’s completely fair enough, but you have got to try them first. 

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Helping parents navigate the college maze