Parents who began saving in 1993 for their newborn's college education might wish they had Warren Buffett as their investment adviser: That son or daughter who entered one of Tennessee's public universities this fall is paying tuition and mandatory fees that are 340 percent higher than in the year they were born.

By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up about 220 percent and the U.S. Consumer Price Index has risen 57 percent since 1993. And more tuition increases are on the way. Last month the Tennessee Higher Education Commission proposed a budget plan for the 2012-13 school year that projects tuition hikes of 5 percent to 8 percent next fall at the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; 3 percent to 6 percent at all other universities and community colleges, and 5 percent to 10 percent at state technology centers. The amounts within those ranges are pegged to whether the state legislature increases state funding for higher education or cuts it again, and by how much in either case.

Declining state appropriations are the biggest factor behind the large increases in tuition and fees on Tennessee's public college campuses in recent years. Students and their families are shouldering a much larger share of the costs of running the state institutions, while the share funded by taxpayers has plunged.

Through the mid-1980s, the state paid about 70 percent of what its public colleges and universities cost. But that share has been trending downward ever since, through both Democratic and Republican control of the state Capitol.By 2000, the state share had declined to 57 percent of the costs of running its universities and 68 percent of the cost of its community colleges. In the current school year, the state share is down to 34 percent for the universities and 40 percent for the community colleges, according to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.

The tipping point when students began paying more of the costs than taxpayers occurred in 2004 at the universities and just last year at the two-year campuses, THEC says. At the U of M this school year, students taking 15 credit hours per semester are paying $7,696 in tuition and mandatory fees (fees paid by every full-time student), compared with $1,748 in 1992-93 when this year's freshmen were born.

At UT Knoxville, students taking at least 13 credit hours are paying $8,396, up from $1,898 18 years ago. (UT students pay a flat rate for a full course load of more than 12 hours. U of M charges on a per-hour basis across the board.)

Those numbers don't include costs of residence halls, meal plans, books and supplies.

U of M estimates the total cost of attendance this year for in-state undergraduates living on campus at $21,816, including transportation and personal expenses. At UT Knoxville, the estimate is $23,571.

The current year's tuition and fee bill alone at U of M is $706 higher for a student taking 15 hours than it was last year, after a 10.1 percent increase in July. The proposed 8 percent increase in tuition alone would add $516 next year. "Speaking as a student at the University of Memphis, we're going to feel that because most students work while they go to school," Quintilianus Carger, a junior majoring in business management, said. "It's money you have to come up with."

Carger, 20, works about 30 hours a week in the university center. "I see it more and more. They've raised the price of food and now are going to raise tuition again, after raising tuition last year and the year before. It raises the question among students: When is it ever going to stop?"

No time soon, state officials say. Gov. Bill Haslam has held out hope that future tuition increases won't be as large and that the state can begin increasing its share when state revenue starts rising.  "Higher education has been taking cuts for several years. They also have a huge (construction) need. I think there will have to be some tuition increase. My hope is that we can fund them at a good enough rate where it's not anything close to what it was last year."Tennessee has 261,000 students in its public universities, community colleges and technology centers.

There are multiple reasons for the slower growth -- and in recent years, actual declines --- in state aid to the campuses. But the primary one is "extraordinary growth in costs of the TennCare program compared to the more normal growth in state tax revenues," said John Morgan, chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents system. Morgan has a dual perspective on the issue; he was the state comptroller and previously deputy comptroller for several years prior to his current role at the Regents system.

"TennCare was crowding out other needs, and since higher education had an additional funding source -- tuition -- budget makers made the choice to not increase higher-ed funding."But another major factor, he said, is the structure of the state tax system itself. "Our state tax system -- unless we raise tax rates -- only produces revenue growth about 85 percent as fast as the economy grows. Therefore unless we raise tax rates or levy a new tax, something has to give."

The state's last general tax increase was in 2002, when lawmakers raised the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent. That was 10 state fiscal years ago. Prior to that, state sales taxes had increased about every eight years. But with state and local sales taxes combined at nearly 10 percent, virtually no policymaker believes Tennessee sales taxes can be raised any higher.

Revenue aside, Tennessee is failing to keep pace in its support for higher education even by its own standard -- the complex and long-running "formula" for calculating how much public higher education costs and the amount the state should spend on it

The last year the state fully funded its share of the formula was 1987, THEC says. In 2000, it was funded at 89 percent and in 2008 at 86 percent. But then the Great Recession struck and state revenues declined. In the current school year, the state is funding only 58 percent of what the formula says it should: $732 million in public funding, out of the $1.25 billion the formula says is needed.

Even as large as the tuition increases have been, they have not made up for all of the cuts in taxpayer funding, nor covered the amount the institutions need. So the campuses have had to cut spending.

Administrators say that it's misleading to compare the costs of running universities to indexes that measure broad economic activity like housing, food and gasoline. "Higher education is a labor-intensive enterprise, and a large share of the workers are very highly educated relative to the average worker," said Morgan. "For higher education to compete effectively within that pool of workers, salaries had to try to keep up."

There's also little market pressure to hold down the sticker price of higher education. Because of federal financial aid, student loan programs and later the Hope Scholarship program, higher education was able to raise tuition without a large effect on enrollment trends, Morgan said.

"But we are likely going to see that change. Some of our institutions believe that last year's tuition increase resulted in some lower enrollment numbers," he said. For many students, the lottery-funded scholarships have blunted the impact of the steep tuition increases. But even those students who qualify for the base $4,000-a-year Hope Scholarships are now paying more out of pocket than their older siblings did before the scholarship program began in 2004.

There's more bad news: A legislative task force has proposed tightening eligibility for the scholarships and cutting the amount of the grants, to deal with a potential deficit in the program 10 years from now. The full General Assembly will act on the proposal after it convenes in January.

About $300 million in lottery-funded aid is flowing to about 100,000 students at public and private schools in the state. Low investment returns and higher tuition also prompted officials this year to shut down new enrollments and new purchases in a prepaid tuition program created by the legislature in 1997, the Baccalaureate Education System Trust, or BEST program..

Tennessee's separate need-based scholarship program -- not funded by the lottery -- is helping 31,400 of the state's neediest students this year. But many more students who are eligible are not served because the $56 million in state funding runs out early every year.

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Where did you go to school?

I missed so much school in Grade 8, I had to make a choice. Would I continue with the traditional system or would I find a school that was willing to accommodate me? I went to a school called Mary Ward [Catholic Secondary School] in Scarborough, Ont., and it has an alternative learning system and I pushed the system to the max. The curriculum was designed where you could progress at your own pace as quickly or slowly as you wanted, write tests whenever you wanted. Classes were on Mondays, lecture-style. It was the best of both worlds: You still had proms, had the socialization aspect. Everything of the traditional high-school spirit, but I could still travel, see the world. I could go online and listen to lectures no matter where I was, halfway around the world.

Did you walk to school?

For high school. I had to take two buses for about an hour and a half. I got my driver’s licence pretty quickly!

Are you computer literate?

I live and breathe on a BlackBerry and computer.

How involved digitally is your Free The Children charity?

We are the No. 1 charity in Canada when it comes to Facebook. We have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers who are addicted to tweeting us.

What do you think of online schooling? It’s being tried in rural areas where the area is vast and transport costly and difficult. It is unclear whether the prime motive is innovative education or cost reduction.

I have mixed emotions on it. We need innovation and technology in schools. A lot of it has to do with intent. If the intent is to make students more technologically literate and to complement traditional education, fantastic. If the intent is cost-cutting, it makes me nervous.

Critics of online schooling have called it “high-tech home schooling.” Is that a fair assessment?

Online resources have high tractability to see how students are doing in their studies, additional resources to complement what a teacher offers. I think we need to layer on the education to improve the technological ability of the student, and to use technology to improve the offering to students, but solely online home schooling, no. The socialization aspect of high school is so critical.

Could charitable fundraising be done exclusively online, or are the old axioms – “meet and greet,” “press the flesh,” “face time” – still vital?

As a charity, we have almost two extremes in how we operate. We have speaking tours that go into schools – you can’t get more old-fashioned than that – and we are also one of the leading online communities on Facebook. We embrace both because you need both. Students need both. They live on Facebook and Twitter. Technology needs to be a tool to engage them. But yet you still need to bring people together in person to see they are part of a community and shared experience.

Given dwindling budgets and vast distances, beginning in rural districts, won’t money speak and education inevitably go increasingly online?

I think of all society’s priorities, for the greatest possible return on our investment, education is No. 1. If online can deliver a higher quality of medicine to rural areas, fantastic. If online can bring communities together for greater cultural understanding, fantastic. If online resources can ensure that students connect with peers around the world, deliver better technological skills, have additional support and resources available, fantastic. But the idea of having a screen replace a classroom, friendships, teachers, socialization, that is a scary thought. It should complement the offering, never replace it.

I believe the purpose of education is to prepare a young person to assume his or her role as a citizen in a country. That requires the education experience of working with peer groups, of forging bonds. For Canada to be successful economically, we have to prepare students for a world where a job can be subcontracted to India. We have to prepare people with the innovation and people skills that come with the classroom environment.

There seems to be no coherent national strategy for developing online education. It is being experimented with mostly in rural school districts, as much for cost-cutting as innovation. Is that a poor way to go about it?

My concern is that it is experimental. We need innovation beyond a one-size-fits-all education for students. If it is driven purely by cost savings, then the students will be lost. The intent has to be, first and foremost, what is best for the student.

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12:15pm | Despite California state revenues being up, the press conference held yesterday by Governor Jerry Brown dealt a devastating blow to higher education institutions across the state. With a $2.2 billion shortfall on estimated revenues, an additional $1 billion will be cut by enacting so-called "trigger cuts," a term used when a cut is automatically instituted because state leaders' original budget projections came short.

Employing a Latin phrase to emphasize his point, Brown put it succinctly when he stated, "Nemo dat [quod] non habet; it means, 'No man gives what he does not have.' The state cannot give what it does not have."What the state does not have: $300 million for the three higher education systems within the state, consisting of the Universities of California (UC), the California State Universities (CSU), and the Community Colleges (CC).

The CSU and UC systems have already had a $650 million budget cut this year. The 23-campus CSU system, the nation's largest public higher education with 412,000 students and 43,000 faculty and staff, will now receive a total of $2 billion this year from the state. This is 27 percent below last year’s funding, bringing it to the lowest level of state support to CSU since 1997-98, although the system now has 90,000 more students. Chancellor Charles Reed, already under scrutiny from students and the public for the CSU Board's controversial recent vote, has publicly stated, "It is disheartening to say the least when your budget is cut by an initial $650 million, but to face an additional $100 million reduction mid-year makes things extremely challenging. We were aware that this was a possibility, and our campuses have been planning accordingly. However, the uncertainty of the overall fiscal outlook for the state is not encouraging, and the CSU has run out of good options."

The 10-campus UC system, comprised of about 230,00 students and over 200,000 faculty and staff members, will also face an additional $100 million cut. "The University has consistently objected to additional mid-year cuts," stated UC President Mark Yudof in a public statement, "and while we certainly understand the ongoing fiscal challenges the State faces, we are requesting that this latest reduction be considered a one-time cut to UC’s budget and not made a permanent reduction. We will ask to have this funding restored to UC at the beginning of the next fiscal year." In order to avoid a mid-year tuition hike, the university will look to draw reserves from its employee health care services fund — which is used to provide for a possible substantial increase in the cost of health care — to account for the cuts, according to UC spokesperson Steve Montiel.

The K-12 system, which possibly faced an overwhelming $1.4 billion cut, was given a far less detrimental blow with a $328 million, or what amounts to $55 per student. This cut was passed via Proposition 98 and Brown broke it into two parts: about $80 million for basic school funding, and on what educational expert Kathryn Baron calls "fuzzy," an enormous $248 million reduction in home-to-school transportation. Los Angeles Unified, the state's largest district, was given a monumental $38 million cut, which it claims will effectively shut down the school's busing program and leaving 35,000 students with the inability to get to school. LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy said the district will be suing the state in "support [of] our students in school and [to] act aggressively to halt the devastating cuts."

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Like charter schools, Arizona school districts are turning to for-profit online companies to run their virtual classes or provide the learning software and curriculum. The districts are eager to provide students expanded online course offerings to increase enrollment and compete with other schools.

The financial deals that districts strike with companies vary widely, depending on negotiations and the level of online services they want. Some districts have turned over 95 percent of their per-pupil state funding to a national online school chain to provide classes. Others have paid much less to use just the learning software and curriculum. Sometimes the arrangements don't work out, so districts bring in a new provider or provide the courses themselves.

Take Benson Unified School District, located southeast of Tucson. It rushed to open a statewide online school in August 2010 for grades 5 through 12 because it was losing 20 to 25 students a year to online schools in Phoenix and Tucson, said Angela Grizzle, a district administrator who was principal of the new school last year.

Benson contracted with Virginia-based K12, Inc. to buy an online program for grades 5 through 8 and with Virginia-based EdOptions for their high school program. At year-end, it dumped both vendors. K12, Inc was too expensive, charging $2,500 per student, Grizzle said. EdOptions was much less, at $395 per student, but teacher had to do more teaching and grading because the lessons had more text to read and less video. Videos show teachers explaining key concepts or clips that engage students with images of people and places they're studying.

Now Benson uses Scottsdale-based e2020's curriculum, paying $250 per student. Grizzle said the online school, serving grades six through 12, has attracted about the same number of students this year as last year -- the equivalent of about 45 full-time. It is breaking even on expenses. The goal is to grow the school and make money in the future, she said.

When a for-profit company comes calling with a proposal, not all districts accept. Six years ago, Winslow Unifed School District bought some new software and online courses to help struggling district students make up credits and suspended students to keep up with their studies. In 2010, the state approved Winslow to become a statewide online school, said Superintendent Doug Watson.

"We just wanted additional ways to serve kids in our district and high school," Watson said. "We are not really interested in pursuing other students throughout the state."

About the same time, K12, Inc. bought out Winslow's software and curriculum vendors and tried to sell Watson on a deal this past summer. K12, Inc. proposed a a partnership with the district and promised to bring them more students from across the state.

"We listened, and we don't see it meeting our needs," Watson said. "They wanted $4,400 a student. For us, generally speaking, when you cut to the chase, we really don't get $4,400 a student."Watson said the district will keep its program small for now.

Ajo Unified District Superintendent Robert Dooley didn't much like what he saw in a deal proposed by e2020. Ajo was approved last year to provide a statewide online school. "I was really excited about this," Dooley said. Dooley said he saw great potential for an online school to bring high-level courses to rural students, add enrollment to the district and money to its coffers. The district was pleased with e2020, which it has used to help its own students make up credits or get ahead and graduate early.

The relationship went south when e2020 projected it could provide the Ajo district with 300 new statewide students and would take 50 percent of the money each student brought in. At first Dooley agreed, but afterward "felt like an idiot," he said. Dooley didn't like the proposed written contract.

"It's not like profit sharing, as if you and I opened a hardware store together," Dooley said. "Their contract was written in a way that every month they wanted to split the profits."The district and e2020 never reached an agreement, a contract was never signed and Ajo's online school never got off the ground.

Like Ajo, the Higley Unified School District joined the state's online program last year but opted out this year. Last year, the district contracted with a company for their online software and curriculum. The company, Kaplan Virtual Education, which has since been bought by K12, Inc., hired the teachers and received 95 percent of the state per-pupil funding for each student enrolled, said Higley Assistant Superintendent Mike Thomason.

He said the arrangement was a losing proposition financially and educationally. The district wanted more control over curriculum and testing. The company and the district mutually decided to end the agreement, he said.

"We lost quite a bit of money when you consider the manpower and labor hours of implementing the program. All of our systems information personnel had to work very diligently and put in long hours," he said.

This year, Higley is contracting with e2020 and is offering a blended online program that combines online with classroom learning. The services are open only students who live in the Higley district. "I see us moving very slowly (with online courses) to meet the needs of in-district students first," Thomason said.

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The price tag for a year at San Francisco State University is rising to $25,000. At UC Santa Cruz, it's $32,000, and private colleges cost more than $50,000. In 1985, students paid for 25 percent of the cost of their education at state colleges and universities; the state picked up 75 percent of the tab, according to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Today, it's about 50-50.

The College Board reports 56 percent of students who got a bachelor's degree from a public four-year college where they began graduated with debt. The average debt: $22,000.

What's a parent of a college-bound student to do?

This fall, about 20 parents signed up for a “paying for college” workshop at Cabrillo, taught by Steve Shapiro, a certified financial planner who runs Tuitions Solutions Now and a parent who sent two children to college.

He offered suggestions on how parents can reduce the impact of college costs. So did Pat Moore, the owner of Options Educational Career Counseling in Soquel, a consultant for 40 years and the parent of two college graduates.

FINISH IN FOUR YEARS

A major way to reduce the cost is to keep the degree from becoming a five-year or six-year project. That can happen, depending on availability of classes and whether a student needs to complete remedial coursework or changes majors.

At UC Santa Cruz, about half the students graduate in four years. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, part of the CSU system, it's 26 percent. At Stanford, a private university, it's 78 percent. The strategy for parents: Get your children into Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes in high school.

“Then you have a fighting chance of finishing in four years,” Shapiro said. These classes, known as AP or IB, cover more challenging material than standard courses. Students will be assigned to do more reading, write more papers and work with other students on projects outside of class. At the end of the course they pay to take an exam, graded by outside evaluators rather than their high school teacher.

With a satisfactory score, students can earn credit toward a college degree. Usually that's a score of 3 for AP and 4 for IB, although some colleges require higher marks. Students learn what the pace of a college class is like and develop skills they need to be successful.

Another strategy for students: Take advantage of Cabrillo College classes, summer programs and winter sessions to accumulate transferable college credits.  “They can save their parents a lot of money,” Moore said.

Moore said local teens can take a class at Cabrillo while in high school, a situation known as concurrent enrollment, even though Cabrillo has cut back on its offerings and students complain they can't get into classes,

English 1A, for example, is a transferable college composition course that has been offered during the summer. Completion of this course with a grade of C can exempt high school seniors from the UC Analytical Writing Exam required for incoming freshmen. Yes, there's a fee for that UC exam. Another way to get out of the UC exam is to score a 3 in AP English or 5 in IB High Level English.

An unsatisfactory score on the UC writing exam will mean taking a remedial-level course as a freshmen, which could make it more difficult to finish a degree in four years. The CSU system requires two tests of incoming freshmen, English Placement Test and Entry Level Math.

Unsatisfactory scores mean taking remedial courses for which college credit is not granted. This can make it more difficult to complete the general education requirements, which are prerequisites for junior and senior courses.

Cabrillo offers a class specifically for high school students in the spring to expose them to engineering careers. It offers one college credit and meets one afternoon a week. “I took that class myself one summer,” Moore said. “I think every student who's going to declare engineering should take it.”

Another strategy for students: Take time in your junior year during the STAR tests in the spring to answer the extra questions in English and math for the Early Assessment Program. The results, which arrive in August, tell you if you are prepared for college. If the scores are not high enough, there is still time to take the appropriate math or English courses as a senior.

“I don't want a parent to have to pay for remedial work,” Moore said, recalling one client who took remedial math in college for four years and eventually earned a master's degree in social work. Moore invested in tutoring for her daughter in high school to improve her math skills. It paid off when her daughter graduated from college in three years.

Both Shapiro and Moore say teens should think about what they will study. That will make it easier to finish in four years; a change in majors generally triggers additional course requirements, which prolongs the time to earn a degree.

“It's a bunch of baloney to not know what you want to major in,” Moore said, suggesting students find time in high school to learn about different careers.

FINANCIAL AID 101

A strategy for parents: Apply for need-based financial aid by filing a form known as FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which can be done as early as January of the student's senior year.

This year, 80 percent of families filed a FAFSA, up from 72 percent the previous year, according to a survey by lender Sallie Mae. “Don't discount the idea that you're unqualified,” Shapiro said. “When I had two children in college, I qualified and my son got some free money.”Free money, such as a grants or scholarships, does not have to be repaid while a loan requires repayment.

The form requires parents to provide their adjusted gross income for the year that just ended, a daunting task if you file your 1040 tax form in April.

Shapiro recommends filing early with an estimate of income, then updating the number once the 1040 is completed rather than wait until April, when colleges may have committed all their money. The form requires adding back money deducted for a 401(k) requirement account “because they consider that a choice,” he said.

The formula to calculate the “expected family contribution” protects a part of parent savings, depending on age, and expects parents to contribute 5.6 percent of the rest for college. Students are expected to contribute 20 percent of their savings each year.

The form requires a personal identification number, or PIN, for the student and a parent to file online, so it's a good idea to apply in advance for the PIN so you'll have it in hand by the time you are ready to file.

“If you think a tax form is invasive, you have not seen a financial aid form,” Shapiro warned. Private universities require another form, the CSS College Scholarship Service Profile. This form requires even more information, such as home equity, which is not required by the FAFSA. “Do not be scared off by the sticker price,” Shapiro said, referring to the published cost of attendance of private colleges.

He estimates only 20 percent of students actually pay that amount. He recommends talking with your children about the price of college and what you can afford. “It's a good idea to have that conversation early in the process,” he said. Otherwise teens may assume their parents will somehow find a way to pay for their dream school and be surprised if it is not possible.

For example, Harvey Mudd, a private school in Southern California with an estimated cost of $58,000 this year, says 82 percent of students receive financial aid. That doesn't mean the college is promising to foot the bill, however.

A private college may offer enough financial aid to make the price comparable to public colleges, or it may offer less assistance than the family expected. Or the assistance may come as loans to be repaid rather than grants. If a private college wants a student, that student will be offered a better deal financially.

“The kids who get the most merit aid are the ones who can show why they're special,” Shapiro said. “Admissions staffers are reading 500 essays and giving them 15 minutes apiece, so your essay has to be effective.”

A strategy for students: Apply to schools where you will be in the top portion of the applicant pool, schools that compete against one another and schools off the beaten path. For example, Shapiro recalled the son of an MIT graduate who faced intense competition to get into his father's alma mater but he got into Clemson University in South Carolina.

A strategy for students: Be open to out-of-state universities, which may be a better financial deal than those in the UC and CSU system. “A lot of colleges are giving out scholarships for out-of-state students,” Moore said.

The number of high school graduates is much higher than it was 18 years ago, so there is greater demand for popular UC campuses such as UC Berkeley and UCLA but the UC system is accepting more foreign students, who pay higher tuition.

Students who worry they won't get into the UC campus they prefer may want to consider the 137 colleges in the 14 states besides California that are in the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

Students in these states, including Arizona, Oregon, Colorado and Utah, can request a reduced tuition rate, which is 150 percent of resident tuition, rather than paying out-of-state tuition. There is a limit to how many students get waivers so it's a good idea to apply early. Moore suggests students ask about fee waivers.

“The schools will tell you,” she said. Shapiro considers applying for scholarships offered by groups other than colleges to be a “fairly low return endeavor” but Moore contends “hundreds of scholarships go to waste because kids don't want to hustle” for them.

For those willing to pursue those opportunities, Shapiro recommends two books: “Paying for College Without Going Broke” by Kalman Chany and “How to Go to College Almost for Free” by Benjamin Kaplan.

FIND CASH, CUT TAXES

A strategy for parents: Improve your cash flow to cover college expenses and take advantage of the federal tax law. Shapiro listed examples of expenses that might be re-evaluated such as cable TV charges beyond the basic service, spa membership, $5 coffees every day.

For homeowners paying a mortgage with a high interest rate, it's worth asking whether it makes sense to refinance to take advantage of historically low rates. “It could be hundreds of dollars a month,” Shapiro said, suggesting borrowers consult a tax adviser or mortgage professional.

Congress has enacted a variety of tax benefits for education, such as the American Opportunity Credit, the Lifetime Learning Credit, the student loan interest deduction, tuition and fees deduction and student loan cancellation provisions. Details are in IRS Publication 970. “You're eligible unless your income is very high,” Shapiro said.

Tax information will arrive in letters or emails sent to the student, not parents, so parents must ask their children to share this information. “I got late notices,” Shapiro said. When he asked his son about it, his son confessed he had forgotten about the notices he got.

“Sometimes it's possible for a business owner to hire their kids,” Shapiro said. Last year, the tax code allowed employers, including small business owners, to provide up to $5,250 in educational benefits to employees. This could help a parent who is a small business owner, according to Shapiro, suggesting a conversation with a tax adviser.

TRIM COST OF LIVING

A strategy for parents: Cut the cost of living during college. Rentals in Arizona, for example, will cost less than in the San Francisco Bay Area. Moore said her daughter rented a house while attending Sacramento State University and rented out two bedrooms to more than cover her costs.

A strategy for students: Cut costs while in college by careful course selection and taking advantage of CSU's co-op program. Moore likes the Cal Poly system that registers students for courses rather than allowing students to pick.

“They might have to take courses at 8 a.m. but they don't take courses that don't count (toward graduation),” she said. She gives her clients a course catalog for them to keep and tells them to highlight what they have to take so they can figure out what they are missing.

Shapiro said students can save on textbooks by buying used books, renting them or using electronic books if available. Another place to save is on car insurance. If your child drove a car in high school but is not using a car in college, contact your insurance agent.

“It saved me $1,200 the first year,” Shapiro said. Moore said she is a big fan of the co-op program, which enables college students to go to work for an employer before they graduate.

“If it's a good match, they offer you a job,” she said. Her son followed her advice at Cal Poly and worked two days a week for the federal government in Port Hueneme in his junior and senior years. He earned $29,000 and never needed loans. Today he's a lawyer.
 

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A new initiative by the Canadian International Learning Foundation has set out to overcome what Canadians say is the single biggest barrier to becoming a volunteer: lack of time.

"Change the world in five hours a week” is the mantra of the Educator Volunteer Network, which matches up skilled Canadians with schools in developing and at-risk regions around the world, letting them donate their time without ever leaving their desks.

EducatorVolunteer.Net is the brainchild of Ryan Aldred, president of the CanILF, a registered charity devoted to improving educational opportunities for children in destitute and war-torn regions. Through the agency's work in Afghanistan, Aldred said, he saw that online volunteers could make a massive difference to schools. “Two things we were struck by was how interested Canadians were in getting involved and how many schools were out there looking for assistance. We kept thinking, 'What can we do to help these schools?'

“So we came up with the notion of an online community where we could connect the two groups and help them work together. The network launched in September and the response has been amazing.”

So far more than 50 volunteers have signed up to provide one-on-one online assistance with new technologies, research requests, curriculum enhancement, development of resources, writing content for websites and putting together budgets and business plans.

“Going overseas to volunteer isn't always possible,” said Melanie Wilson, a volunteer working on her PhD in Montreal, in a press release. “Now I’m in touch directly with a school in Uganda... It has been a fun, interesting and empowering experience that has nicely fit into my already busy schedule.”

In addition to two schools in Uganda, there are six other partner schools in Afghanistan, Tanzania, Nepal and Liberia. The beauty of helping online, Aldred points out, is that because the network offers mainly expertise, there's little risk that resources might be misused. Volunteers know the exact value of their contributions, and the schools provide oversight and feedback to determine their needs and evaluate the assistance they're getting.

While charitable organizations are increasingly using the Internet and social media to solicit donations, Aldred said, the network is the first to harness it in this specific way, and he sees huge opportunity.

“You've got the potential to solve a problem once and then solve it forever — an organization can come along and see what you've done,” he said. “You could potentially have millions of people volunteering online with almost no cost attached. It could transform not only education but health care, social services, and agriculture.”

Right now, Aldred said, the network is seeking volunteers with business knowledge, “to help with developing business plans and help [schools] build up the credibility they need to work with international organizations.”

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In 2010, more than 6.1 million students signed up for at least one online course, about 10 percent more than 5.5 million the previous year, reports the Sloan Consortium Survey of Online Learning. "It's scaling quickly," said John Katzman, founder of 2tor Inc., a New-York based tech company that has partnered with universities including Georgetown, UNC and USC to build, administer and market online postgraduate degree programs that he says seriously compete with traditional on-campus study.

"By every metric, the quality of the students coming in and the quality of the work they are doing (according to the faculty) and the satisfaction of the students - I think we've made our case this is as good or better than the classroom program," he said, adding 3,000 students aged 21 to 81 are currently enrolled in 2tor programs.

The tech darling remains the highest funded startup in online education with a total of $65 million raised since its seed funding round in March, 2009. Its VCs including Novak Biddle, Highland Capital Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners and it currently ranks in the top ten highest-funded tech start-ups in New York in 2011, the New York Post reported last July.

2tor programs include an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, a Master of Science degree in nursing from Georgetown University and from USC a Master of Social Work degree and a Master of Arts in Teaching.

Katzman was no stranger to the business of education when 2tor was first conceived. Founder and CEO of the test prep and admissions company the Princeton Review, Katzman spent 25 years watching the strength of his brand grow while the Internet transformed a wide range of industries.

"It just made sense that someone would come along to transform higher education," he said. The question remained: "What would online education look like if it were fantastic? And how could one make it as good, or better, than an on-campus program?"

Back in 2008, Katzman started a conversation with his contacts at the University of Southern California and took his vision for high-quality online education to the Princeton Review's board. They didn't jump at the proposal.

So Katzman left to build upon his idea and in 2008, launched 2tor with Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Johnson, a technology entrepreneur with a background in education, and COO Chip Paucek, former CEO of Hooked on Phonics. So far they haven't looked back.

The ninth annual survey by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board found almost two-thirds of for-profit institutions now say that online learning is a critical part of their longterm strategy and the rate of growth for online enrollments is 10 percent, far exceeding the 2 percent growth in the overall higher education student population.

As for investing, Katzman doesn't believe there are shortcuts. "These are incredible institutions and if we can help them unlock their value, and scale up while making education better (both online and in the classroom) it's a pretty big opportunity. I think 2tor has a chance of remaking higher ed in a really great way. If we do that, those investors will do well," he said.

While there are other companies in the space of online education, both Johnson and Katzman agree 2tor doesn't have an parallel competitor offering the same level of to their high-quality but welcome the emergence of one. "I would love for more people to try to do what we're doing," says Johnson. "It would validate the world of higher education is taking online more and more seriously."

"Our goal is to make sure we are the leader and there is a very small number of followers," says Katzman. The company will continue to ramp up, and continue to perfect, their existing programs to position them as leading programs in their field.

At the same time, 2tor has six more programs on the launch pad (including an undergraduate concept) and will roll them out in the next 12 months.

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With most reforms, even the most controversial and contested, there finally comes a time for acceptance. But that time has not yet come for the government's plans to slash public funding and triple fees in higher education.

University managers have had no choice but to prepare for next September, setting fee levels and, for more than 20 institutions, re-setting them to come under the £7,500 threshold that allows them to reclaim some of the student places they have lost.

But the anger is not abating. Students, of course, have been supremely ungrateful from day one despite being placed at "the heart of the system" (to quote the white paper's title), although police tactics have curbed street protests. Now large sections of the academic community – from young researchers and lecturers to the stars of the profession – are finally waking up to the challenge posed by the government's reforms.

There have been three responses. The first is that there is no alternative. Labour started down the track of higher fees; the coalition is simply following. The state won't pay, so students must. Public expenditure has to be cut to reduce the deficit. Luckily, back-doors public funding via state loans to pay these higher fees can compensate higher education.

The second is that the initial proposals were unworkable. So what started out as privatisation is beginning to look more like nationalisation. Not only has the government frozen student numbers, it is now telling universities which categories of student they can freely admit. Far from fading into history, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) is now to be the "lead" regulator.

The third is to regard the government's reforms as heralding the death of the university as a public and liberal institution. Key academic values are under attack, whether scholarship in the humanities or curiosity-driven science. So are key social values such as widening participation.

The first response has come from a largely craven university establishment. As a result, vice-chancellors risk joining bankers as objects of public disdain – even if their salaries are somewhat lower. The second response, interestingly, has come from the policy establishment, although those who work for Hefce and other agencies have been forced to use coded language to express their criticisms of government policy.

It is the third response that seems to be gathering force. No longer confined to the "usual suspects" such as the National Union of Students and the University and College Union, it is gradually becoming established as the dominant response among the academic rank-and-file and high-profile public intellectuals. Not so long ago, the much-despised "chattering classes" shared the politicians' low opinion of universities; now they are rallying to their defence.

The reasons for this deeply significant shift are various. One is the growing unpopularity of a government that, more clearly every day, has made a disastrously wrong call on the economy. A second is that people are beginning to join things up. Grimly, the fates of higher education and of the national health service are now seen as linked. Both are grand 20th-century social projects under neo-liberal fire.

A third, of course, is that the government's reforms are now better understood. Paradoxically, the more they unravel as workable solutions to the challenges facing universities in the post-crunch era, the more their ideological foundations are exposed. It is the illiberality and philistinism, reductionism and instrumentalism, which so offend the silent majority with higher aspirations and nobler ideals.

As a result, the contest is moving on to new ground. Very few people now expect these arrangements to produce an enduring settlement. In just over a year, the original proposals of the Browne committee have already been modified almost to death. Lots more "adjustments" are likely, sooner rather than later.

But it is the government's ideological assault on academic values, and its indifference to the social consequences of its policies, that have provoked the growing anger. Those who are attached to old academic habits and those who care deeply about higher education's social purpose have joined together in a strengthening opposition.

At a recent conference, the distinguished historian Keith Thomas called for the creation of a "society for the protection of English universities". The fact that such an organisation is now thought to be necessary shows how much the ground is shifting.

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Jesse Roe, a ninth-grade math teacher at a charter school here called Summit, has a peephole into the brains of each of his 38 students. He can see that a girl sitting against the wall is zipping through geometry exercises; that a boy with long curls over his eyes is stuck on a lesson on long equations; and that another boy in the front row is getting a handle on probability.

Each student’s math journey shows up instantly on the laptop Mr. Roe carries as he wanders the room. He stops at each desk, cajoles, offers tips, reassures. For an hour, this crowded, dimly lighted classroom in the hardscrabble shadow of Silicon Valley hums with the sound of fingers clicking on keyboards, pencils scratching on paper and an occasional whoop when a student scores a streak of right answers.

The software program unleashed in this classroom is the brainchild of Salman Khan, an Ivy League-trained math whiz and the son of an immigrant single mother. Mr. Khan, 35, has become something of an online sensation with his Khan Academy math and science lessons on YouTube, which has attracted up to 3.5 million viewers a month.

Now he wants to weave those digital lessons into the fabric of the school curriculum — a more ambitious and as yet untested proposition. This semester, at least 36 schools nationwide are trying out Mr. Khan’s experiment: splitting up the work of teaching between man and machine, and combining teacher-led lessons with computer-based lectures and exercises.

As schools try to sort out confusing claims about the benefits of using technology in the classroom, and companies ponder the profits from big education contracts, Khan Academy may seem like just another product vying for attention.

But what makes Mr. Khan’s venture stand out is that the lessons and software tools are entirely free — available to anyone with access to a reasonably fast Internet connection. “The core of our mission is to give material to people who need it,” Mr. Khan said. “You could ask, ‘Why should it be free?’ But why shouldn’t it be free?”

For now, Mr. Khan’s small team is subsidized by more than $16.5 million from technology donors, including Bill Gates, Google, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the O’Sullivan Foundation. He intends to raise an endowment. And this summer, starting in the Bay Area, where he is based, he plans to hold an educational summer camp.

It is too early to know whether the Khan Academy software makes a real difference in learning. A limited study with students in Oakland, Calif., this year found that children who had fallen behind in math caught up equally well if they used the software or were tutored in small groups. The research firm SRI International is working on an evaluation of the software in the classroom.

Mr. Khan’s critics say that his model is really a return to rote learning under a high-tech facade, and that it would be far better to help children puzzle through a concept than drill it into their heads.

“Instead of showing our students a better lecture, let’s get them doing something better than lecture,” Frank Noschese, a high school physics teacher in Cross River, N.Y., wrote on his blog in June.

But in education circles, Mr. Khan’s efforts have captured imaginations and spawned imitators. Two Stanford professors have drawn on his model to offer a free online artificial intelligence class. Thirty-four thousand people are now taking the course, and many more have signed up. Stanford Medical School, which allows its students to take lectures online if they want, summoned Mr. Khan to help its faculty spice up their presentations.

And a New York-based luxury real estate company credited Mr. Khan with inspiring its profit-making venture: the Floating University, a set of online courses taught by academic superstars, repackaged and sold to Ivy League colleges and eventually to anyone who wants to pay for them.

“What Khan represents is a model that’s tapped into the desire that everyone has to personalize the learning experience and get it cheap and quick,” said Jim Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the Education Department. Mr. Shelton predicted that there would be “a bunch of knockoffs” that would take the Khan approach and try to expand on it. “This is going to spread like wildfire,” he said.

Mr. Khan grew up in a suburb of New Orleans, where his mother, who is from Bangladesh, raised him on her own by cobbling together a series of jobs and businesses. He went to public schools, where, as he recalls, a few classmates were fresh out of jail and others were bound for top universities.

Math became his passion. He pored over textbooks and joined the math club. He came to see math as storytelling. “Math is a language for thinking,” he said, “as opposed to voodoo magical incantations where you have no idea where they’re coming from.”

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PATNA: Academics and administrators of different universities from the state and outside discussed in detail the ways of bringing in qualitative improvement in higher education through continuous internal assessment and semester system as per UGC guidelines and suggested steps for making higher education meaningful and socially responsive.

Participating in a two-day workshop organized by the Central University of Bihar (CUB) here on Friday, they observed that the universities would have to change their work culture as per the needs of the changing times. The workshop was presided over by CUB vice-chancellor Janak Pandey.

Inaugurating the workshop, Himachal Central University VC Furkan Qamar observed that since higher education is dependent on socio-economic condition, ground realities must be well understood before thinking of any change in the system and for achieving excellence.

Earlier, higher education used to be knowledge-oriented, but now it has turned job-oriented. A large number of our youths are deprived of higher education owing to their poor socio-economic conditions. Steps must be initiated to provide them easy access to higher education, he said.

Kameshwar Singh Darbhanga Sanskrit University VC Arvind Pandey pleaded for developing higher education keeping in view the basic tenets of Indian society and culture. He also pleaded for better infrastructural facilities in colleges and universities for any qualitative change.

A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies's former director M N Karna regretted that the universities were being run today by bureaucrats, eroding the much-needed autonomy. He pleaded for effective implementation of the semester system.

Veer Kunwar Singh University VC Tapan Kumar Sandilya, Pondicherry University's former VC A K Bhatnagar, Delhi University's Hindi teacher Apoorvanand and CUB registrar M Nehal also addressed the workshop.

CUB VC Janak Pandey observed that qualitative improvement in higher education was essential for all-round development of the country. He said that our policymakers and planners should take a lesson from China for bringing in qualitative improvement in high education.

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