Years Of College

After four years of college, a $40,000 tuition bill and a B.A. in psychology, Lauren Hider can answer a lot of questions about Carl Jung's theory of the personality. But nobody is asking her about that."They all ask me, 'What are you going to do now?' " said the 22-year-old from Severna Park, now a hostess at Buddy's Crabs and Ribs Restaurant in Annapolis. "There's so much pressure. I don't know what I want to do right now."Two months have passed since the most recent batch of college graduates tossed their caps into the air and said goodbye to undergraduate schooling.

Student loan debt is a ticking time bomb, many are warning. In the U.S., it's reached $870 billion -- more than credit cards and auto loans. In February, the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys referred to a "student loan 'debt bomb'" and wondered if it was shaping up to become "America's next mortgage-style economic crisis," according to this Chicago Tribune story . College grads are having a hard time finding a...

Kobie Morgan, the 1990 Howard County Sun's boys basketball Player ofthe Year, has signed a letter of intent to play basketball at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.The 6-foot-1, 175-pound point guard, a graduate of Oakland Mills High School, will enter as a freshman and major in either psychology or pre-law.After graduating from high school, Morgan decided to spend a yearat Mercersburg Prep School in Pennsylvania to strengthen his grades while retaining four years of college eligibility.

After putting off finishing her college degree for more than two decades, Elizabeth Smith this year needed just one more class — an algebra course — to earn her bachelor's degree in theater arts. The full-time worker and single mother of two didn't have time or money to spare, so she signed up for a course offered by Baltimore-based StraighterLine Inc. She finished the course in seven days over the summer, working on her laptop as her kids frolicked in a pool. And the course cost only $138 — a fraction of the price for a similar course at a four-year or community college.

They may be the best high school senior baseball players in the state, but that doesn't mean pro baseball will be their next step.Most of the players selected for the Crown High School All-Star Game are bound for college. And that, in the estimation of longtime Arundel High and sandlot coach Bernie Walter, is as it should be."The difference in lifetime income between a person with a college education and one with only a high school degree is $600,000," said Walter, a South coach, after the Crown game at Camden Yards that was to follow yesterday's Orioles-White Sox game was postponed when a drizzle caused fear of damaging the field.

Dr. Nicholas Varga, whose career as an educator, archivist and author at Loyola College spanned nearly four decades, died from complications of neurological surgery Tuesday at Good Samaritan Hospital. He was 79. Dr. Varga's areas of expertise were the history of Maryland and the politics of Colonial New York. In an autobiographical sketch, he wrote that he adhered to the theory that teaching history was more than "merely the facts and interpretations of history" but more importantly "how to draw valid conclusions from the available evidence and also how firmly such conclusions were to be held."

AS MY younger friends receive their college acceptance letters this time of year, I think about my senior year at Western High School in Baltimore City and the decision I made that changed my life forever: taking time off before college. In Britain, it's called a gap year - the sabbatical that most students take between high school and college. This is a time for young people to discover themselves before their devotion to another four years of intensive schoolwork. Not a bad idea, considering that a good number of college freshmen flunk out because of the overwhelming temptations of extracurricular college life.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, keeping active in the election year tax-cut derby, yesterday proposed a tax credit worth $3,000 during the first two years of college for students from families earning less than $100,000."

Not long after midday on a recent Monday, on the track at Western High School's Lumsden-Scott Stadium, Latosha Wallace noticed a drastic difference about a surface she once dominated, a surface she once called home. Four years ago, when the 22-year-old sprinter from Baltimore last ran here, she had capped a high school career that Division I college recruiters could not ignore. Wallace lettered all four years in track and field and cross country at Western. From 2001 to 2003, she earned All-City and All-Metro honors in indoor and outdoor track, and cross country.

The National Basketball Association holds its draft in three weeks and three college sophomores, including Maryland's Joe Smith, are expected to be top picks. Seven college juniors are also registered for the draft, and Kevin Garnett, a high school senior in Chicago.It would actually make more sense for the 18-year-old prep player to be selected than the college underclassmen. At least that wouldn't constitute the culmination of a farce. Colleges that enroll gifted athletes do so knowing education is often the least of what many of them want.

Malcolm Graham Vinzant Jr., a founding faculty member of what is now the Community College of Baltimore County at Catonsville and who later rehabilitated houses and owned a popular Cross Street Market cheese stall, died Thursday from complications of a stroke at a Winter Park, Fla., assisted-living facility. The Federal Hill resident was 78. Mr. Vinzant, the son of a federal government worker and a homemaker, was born in Laredo, Texas, and moved to Catonsville shortly after his birth.

Not long after midday on a recent Monday, on the track at Western High School's Lumsden-Scott Stadium, Latosha Wallace noticed a drastic difference about a surface she once dominated, a surface she once called home. Four years ago, when the 22-year-old sprinter from Baltimore last ran here, she had capped a high school career that Division I college recruiters could not ignore. Wallace lettered all four years in track and field and cross country at Western. From 2001 to 2003, she earned All-City and All-Metro honors in indoor and outdoor track, and cross country.

Amid all the late posturing and trade proposals that will inevitably take place in the final hours before Tuesday's NBA draft, there appears to be one certainty. Shortly after NBA commissioner David Stern announces the first overall selection, he'll be joined on the Madison Square Garden stage by a player who honed his game in college basketball last season. With the top pick, the Milwaukee Bucks will likely select either North Carolina forward Marvin Williams or Utah center Andrew Bogut.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - If youth really is wasted on the young, Orioles vice president Mike Flanagan has a chance to do something about it. Flanagan was a solid basketball and baseball prospect at Manchester (N.H.) Memorial High School in the late 1960s and went on to play two years at point guard at the University of Massachusetts before making himself available for the baseball draft after his sophomore year. That might seem like a long time ago, but Flanny still has two years of college eligibility left - a fact that was not lost, even after all this time, on a New Hampshire company that runs college scouting camps.

Dr. Nicholas Varga, whose career as an educator, archivist and author at Loyola College spanned nearly four decades, died from complications of neurological surgery Tuesday at Good Samaritan Hospital. He was 79. Dr. Varga's areas of expertise were the history of Maryland and the politics of Colonial New York. In an autobiographical sketch, he wrote that he adhered to the theory that teaching history was more than "merely the facts and interpretations of history" but more importantly "how to draw valid conclusions from the available evidence and also how firmly such conclusions were to be held."

"MEN 18 -- 25 YEARS, you can handle this," claims the Selective Service in its registration brochure. Simple cartoons on the cover urge young patriots to "Read it. Fill it. Mail it." Currently, the Selective Service's only threat to teens is a potential paper cut while filling out the postcard. But a growing number of the nation's youths fear a revival of the draft after the November election because of a shortage of troops to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the war on terrorism might take Americans.

HOW A MAN could play eight years of college football defies comprehension during any period of time. It may never occur again, and in more than 50 years it hasn't. First of all, World War II provided the setting for the strange circumstances that allowed it to happen. Sheer incongruity. Barney Poole never asked to be isolated in such a scenario. He didn't anticipate being a rare exception. Poole, from a poor, hard-working, cotton-farming family in Gloster, Miss. (Amite County), whose father had died when he was a child, never realized what destiny had ticketed for him. He didn't aspire to establish any kind of a record.

Vickie S. Jackson has set her academic sights on Duke University in Durham, N.C.With an outstanding high school record and the right SAT scores, the North Carroll High School senior could be accepted tothe university's School of Engineering.Diane and Glenn Jackson support their 16-year-old daughter's decision. The family traveled south last week, toured the school and met with its administrators. They liked what they saw.All systems would be go, if the Jacksons can come up with $23,000 a year for tuition, board and fees.

When the members of the freshman class at New Era Academy walk through the school's doors today, they won't just be starting high school. The next years of their lives will be like four years of college orientation. "It's not like we're going to talk about college once a month and then move on to other things," said the new school's principal, John Davis. "We want this to be a part of their lives. We want them to see college in everything that they do." Many high schools focus their students on college preparation; the New Era Academy takes it one step further - college expectation.

Parents and others signing up for Maryland's prepaid tuition plan may be in for sticker shock, with the price of contracts this year going up as much as 30 percent for four years of college. Officials with the Maryland Prepaid College Trust blame the price jump on tuition inflation. "We're in line with what the other states have been doing," said Ed Crawford, chairman of the Maryland Higher Education Investment Board, which oversees the plan. Crawford said the higher prices this year have nothing to do with last year's investment losses, which are largely responsible for the 4-year-old plan reporting its first actuarial deficit.