We, as Americans, like to put decisions off as long as possible ... it's a strength ... it's a surprise to most experts that the desire to study in the US, for undergraduates, continues to grow worldwide ... relatively few American students study for a degree overseas.

Abroad, yes, but not for a degree. This is a very brief portion of an interview. Interesting but not deep.

Daniel F. Sullivan, president of St. Lawrence University, looks for the hidden costs of low retention rates, from the student perspective. He notes that four years of attendance at a public institution costs less than at a private institution -... however, given the higher risks of not graduating in 4 years at the public institution, the eventual overall costs might really be closer or even favor private colleges.

In this time of special financial stress for so many American families, the cost of college attendance may seem especially daunting. Prospective students and their families should, therefore, consider the implications of this analysis as they weigh the differences between public and private higher education options—and between high-four-year-graduation-rate and low-four-year-graduation-rate options, whether public or private. It is clear from all the scenarios presented in figure 1 that if a student manages to graduate in four years from a public institution, the total cost of attendance will be lower than at a private institution. On the other hand, the risk of not graduating in four years is much higher at a public institution. In the event that a student attending a public institution does not graduate in four years, but could have done so by attending a private institution, the cost savings of the public choice remain only if the student is non-aided and attending an in-state public institution.

To return to where I began, the single most important step colleges and universities—especially public colleges and universities—can take to lower the student and family cost of college attendance is to improve retention, thereby increasing the four-year graduation rate. With the exception of the rates for highly selective institutions (and these can be higher, with work, as well), the four-year graduation rates of both public and private colleges and universities in America are embarrassingly low.

Where can you find the very latest about academic programming and student learning at the United States' military academies? In the latest issue of Liberal Education, from the Association of American Colleges and Universities:

I wonder whether our military leaders will be the ones to help achieve a breakthrough public agreement that ensuring our nation’s future requires liberal education—and, therefore, that liberal education ought to be the curriculum of choice for everyone.

West Point: "Today’s military operates in contexts where uncertainty and ambiguity are commonplace. Human security challenges, when coupled with U.S. interests, demand an officer corps capable of responding promptly and effectively to a diverse set of issues in environments that require innovation, flexibility, and adaptability. The army needs officers who have benefitted from a liberal education."

Air Force Academy: "Although the academy’s commitment to liberal education has remained the same since the institution’s founding just over fifty years ago, the approach taken to fulfill that commitment has changed markedly. Over time, campus conversations have begun to focus much more on the achievement of agreed-upon outcomes for cadet learning and development."

Naval Academy: "The United States Naval Academy provides a top liberal arts education to all midshipmen, and one of the central elements of that liberal education is an understanding of global and cross-cultural dynamics."

But the university he presented in his 1984 novel, The Temptation to Do Good, confronted some key questions that face higher education institutions in today’s unprecedented financial downturn: Are current practices sustainable? Have we strayed from our core mission? Will the liberal arts survive increasing budget pressures?

College ought not to be merely a place where someone learns “skills” and racks up credentials, but rather an environment and an experience in which students learn, in addition to history and literature and mathematics, also how to begin to navigate the adult civilized world in an adult, civilized, and responsible manner. Their naïve assumptions about life and nature should be tempered by the rigors of discourse, debate, and discussion. Higher education should be training for life as it is — not as it is imagined by the child’s mind.

When colleges adhere to the “business model” they create dangerous expectations for their students and do no service to the larger community.

Currently the nation faces an economic crisis the likes of which most of us have only had nightmares about. We as a nation have the lowest savings rate and highest personal debt of any industrialized nation. We have been taught for more than 30 years that we are entitled to get what we want when we want it. The sub-prime horror has been a result of a sense of this entitlement which pervades society at all levels: the top, the middle, the bottom.

It is time that our colleges return to their traditional mission of educating the populace for the long haul. And that means teaching them to live and serve within a context of responsibility, prudence, and care.

The notion that students can ever again work their way through college at public colleges is entirely unmoored from the facts. At Oregon public universities, with which I am familiar, a student who could earn a year’s tuition by working 20 hours a week in 1965 would have to work 46 hours a week all year today to cover tuition. How, exactly, can students who spend all their time working or worrying about how and where to borrow more money be expected to focus on learning?

Yet there will be no more state subsidies sufficient to reduce the cost of public colleges. That era has been fading for fifteen years; in another fifteen it will be of interest only to academic historians. It is not that our elected officials lack good will: here in Oregon good will, and good decisions by elected officials, are easy to come by, even exemplary in recent years. Resources, however, are not easy to come by, and never will be again. The parents of today’s students are shocked at the cost of college, but the children of today’s students will live with it from birth and their parents, in school today, will have no illusions whatsoever.

We need more colleges of quality that are committed to offer their programs for very low fees, with an endowment that is designed to allow this forever and trustees who are committed to build and maintain such an endowment to that end. We need to recognize that government financial aid in meaningful amounts is over, as an effective large-scale policy. Governments are not going to have the money. That means that students will have to borrow increasingly onerous amounts or not go to college. Student loans in the amounts now required are not financial aid, they are financial oppression.

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.