Five shifts among college freshmen: For one, they're more studious

A survey of college freshmen reports an uptick in study time and a bit less partying. Here's a look at ways first-time freshmen depart from previous freshman classes.

4. Less help from grants and scholarships

Butch Dill/AP/File
Students attend graduation ceremonies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in August. The number of borrowers defaulting on federal student loans has jumped sharply, the latest indication that rising college tuition costs, low graduation rates, and poor job prospects are getting more students over their heads in debt.

Some 69.5 percent of freshmen reported having some grants or scholarships to help finance college, down from 73.4 percent in 2010. Those receiving more than $10,000 in grants or scholarships also dropped a few points, to 26.8 percent. 

The percentages receiving financial help from family and college loans held relatively steady from last year, though they have grown substantially over a longer time frame. Since 2001, the percentage of students taking out more than $10,000 in loans has more than doubled, to 13.3 percent. 

4 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.