Survive on Your College Costs

College can be expensive, but it’s possible to both save on costs and make your money go farther once you’re enrolled. Here are 10 big and small ways to cut college costs.
  1. Stay in state—or nearby Going to an in-state college can amount to huge savings. The average tuition and fees for in-state students tallied $7,635 in 2011-2012, compared to $17,785 for out-of-state students, according to U.S. News data. If you don’t plan to stay in state, consider regional tuition breaks, which can cut costs, too.
  2. Consider community college When money is tight but college is a priority, a community college might be a good option. If you plan to attend a four-year university, consider taking community college courses during high school or the summer before college to start accruing credits early.
  3. Look local Scholarships are a great way for all kinds of students to get money for college, and local funding opportunities tend to be less competitive. Don’t overlook small scholarships in your hometown. Odds are, you’ll have a better chance of securing one, and every little bit helps.
  4. Stay on track Nothing can cause your college costs to overrun like having to stay in school an extra semester, an extra year, or more. Take full class loads, keep up with your graduation requirements, and focus on earning good grades in every course.
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Most Diverse Black Colleges

Teens interested in attending a historically black college can expect to be challenged academically and learn skills that will one day lead to a professional job. What they can’t expect is to always be surrounded by black peers. Some historically black colleges, or HBCUs as these schools are often called, are predominantly white, while others have more mixed student bodies. At Bluefield State College, for example, more than 85 percent of students were white in 2013. While Bluefield State, which was once dubbed the “whitest historically black college in America” by NPR, has an especially low percentage of black students, a number of historically black colleges have undergraduate populations that are racially mixed, according to U.S. News data. African-American students who attend a historically black school that isn’t predominantly black may be surprised if they are expecting the traditional HBCU experience, says Daniel C. Moss, the chief people person of HBCU Connect, which hosts boutique recruitment events and publishes information online and in print for black college students and alumni. Their campus’ culture, for example, may differ from schools that are historically black and the vast majority of students identify as African-American.
What students learn, though, should remain the same no matter what the ethnic breakdown is for the institution’s students.
“In the ideal scenario, a student will still receive a quality education,” says Moss, a graduate of Claflin University in South Carolina.
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A Brief History of Education

Education is the process of facilitating learning. Knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits of a group of people are transferred to other people, through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, or research.   Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves in a process called autodidactic learning. Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.  
Education is commonly and formally divided into stages such as preschool, primary school, secondary school and then college, university or apprenticeship. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.
A right to education has been recognized by some governments. At the global level, Article 13 of the United Nations’ 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to an education.     Although education is compulsory in most places up to a certain age, attendance at school often isn’t, and a minority of parents choose home-schooling, sometimes with the assistance of modern electronic educational technology (also called e-learning). Education can take place in formal or informal settings.
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Four Modalities of Learning

Learning modalities are the sensory channels or pathways through which individuals give, receive, and store information. Perception, memory, and sensation comprise the concept of modality. The modalities or senses include visual, auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, smell, and taste. Researchers, including Reiff, Eisler, Barbe, and Stronck have concluded that in a classroom, the students would be approximately:
  • 25-30% visual
  • 25-30% auditory
  • 15% tactile/kinesthetic
  • 25-30% mixed modalities
Therefore, only 30% of the students will remember most of what is said in a classroom lecture and another 30% will remember primarily what is seen. Visual learners are those who learn by seeing. They need to see overheads, diagrams, and read text books, etc. to understand a concept.
Auditory learners must hear what they are learning to really understand it. They enjoy listening, but cannot wait to have a chance to talk themselves. These students respond well to lecture and discussion.
Tactile/kinesthetic learners need to feel and touch to learn…these learners also learn better if movement is involved. They may be those students who are not doing well in school. Instruction geared to the auditory learner can be a hindrance to these learns, causing them to fall behind. One key reason at-risk children have trouble with school is that they tend to be these types of learners. About one-third of students do not process auditorially and are educationally deaf. Students with a tactile strength learn with manipulatives such as games, the internet, and labs. An effective means to reach all learners is modality-based instruction; this consists of organizing around the different modalities to accommodate the needs of all learners. Most students learn with all their modalities, but some students may have unusual strengths and weaknesses in particular modalities. For example, students strong in the visual modality will be frustrated or confused with just verbal explanations. The following chart describes each modality and can help you determine your learning style; read the word in the left column and then answer the questions in the successive three columns to see how you respond to each situation. Your answers may fall into all three columns, but one column will likely contain the most answers. The dominant column indicates your primary learning style.
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The Long History of Education

Education began in the earliest prehistory, as adults trained the young in the knowledge and skills deemed necessary in their society. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation. Story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be readily learned through imitation, formal education developed. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom.   Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid’s Elements published in 1607 Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, became the successor to Athens as the intellectual cradle of Ancient Greece. There, mathematician Euclid and anatomist Herophilus constructed the great Library of Alexandria and translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in AD 476.   In China, Confucius (551-479 BCE), of the State of Lu, was the country’s most influential ancient philosopher, whose educational outlook continues to influence the societies of China and neighbors like Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Confucius gathered disciples and searched in vain for a ruler who would adopt his ideals for good governance, but his Analects were written down by followers and have continued to influence education in East Asia into the modern era.   After the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early Middle Ages as centers of advanced education. Some of these establishments ultimately evolved into medieval universities and forebears of many of Europe’s modern universities. During the High Middle Ages, Chartres Cathedral operated the famous and influential Chartres Cathedral School. The medieval universities of Western Christendom were well-integrated across all of Western Europe, encouraged freedom of inquiry, and produced a great variety of fine scholars and natural philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas of the University of Naples, Robert Grosseteste of the University of Oxford, an early expositor of a systematic method of scientific experimentation, and Saint Albert the Great, a pioneer of biological field research. The University of Bologne is considered the oldest continually operating university.   Elsewhere during the Middle Ages, Islamic science and mathematics flourished under the Islamic caliphate which was established across the Middle East, extending from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Indus in the east and to the Almoravid Dynasty and Mali Empire in the south.  
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