Posts by Dave Bergman:

Same Major, Different School, Wildly Different Salary: How Much Does Where You Study Your Field Matter?

Posted on: 10 Apr 2026

There is a persistent belief in American higher education that what you study matters more than where you study it. The logic is intuitive: a nursing degree is a nursing degree, an engineering degree is an engineering degree. The credential opens the door, and the labor market takes it from there. The College Scorecard’s field-of-study […]

AP Score Calculators – 2026

Posted on: 06 Apr 2026

Advanced Placement (AP) courses from the College Board present high school students with an amazing opportunity to engage in a college-level curriculum. Those who manage to score a 3,4, or 5 on a given exam may earn college credits, effectively saving them thousands of dollars off their future tuition bill. Excelling in AP coursework and […]

Does Your Degree Pay Off Over Time?

Posted on: 02 Apr 2026

How Earnings Grow (or Stall) from Year 6 to Year 10 Most college rankings use a single salary snapshot. The Scorecard tracks earnings over five time horizons—revealing which schools’ graduates keep climbing and which ones hit a ceiling. When families evaluate the financial return on a college degree, they almost always look at a single […]

How Close Are You to Finishing an Online Degree? (Credit Calculator)

Posted on: 02 Apr 2026

Millions of American adults are somewhere in the middle of a degree — not finished, not walking away, just stuck in the gap between credits already earned and credits still needed. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, approximately 36 million adults in the U.S. have some college credit and no degree. If that’s […]

Online College Review: Pepperdine University Online

Posted on: 01 Apr 2026

Pepperdine University is a private nonprofit university founded in 1937 in Malibu, California, affiliated with the Churches of Christ and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) — the same body that accredits Stanford, the University of California system, and the University of Southern California. It is ranked by U.S. News as […]

Online College Review: Point Park University Online

Posted on: 22 Mar 2026

Point Park University is a small private nonprofit institution in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, founded in 1960 and holding MSCHE regional accreditation. It is not a large-enrollment online university. Its total student population is approximately 3,500 to 4,000. What it is, and what distinguishes it in any honest comparison against larger online alternatives, is a communication-focused […]

Online College Review: Old Dominion University Online / ODUGlobal

Posted on: 21 Mar 2026

Old Dominion University’s online platform, ODUGlobal, is one of the longest-running distance education programs at any public university in the United States. ODU began serving military students through distance learning more than 50 years ago, and that heritage is visible throughout the platform’s current structure: 30 percent of ODU’s students are military-affiliated, dedicated military pathway […]

The New Math of College Admissions: More Applications, Fewer Acceptances, and the Rise of the Sub-10% Club

Posted on: 20 Mar 2026

A data-driven look at the decade-long transformation in selective college admissions In 2015, ten colleges in the United States admitted fewer than one in ten applicants. Stanford, Harvard, and the other usual suspects. By 2024, that number had nearly tripled to 28, and the newcomers included schools that, just a decade earlier, had been admitting […]