Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com September 28, 2015 • Worcester Business Journal 25 As the value of the degree deflated – at least in perception – the cost of a degree has inflated. Instead of becoming a commodity with a lowered price accessible to more people, the opposite happened. As has been widely reported, the cost of a college education has risen faster than inflation – not only today's languid inflation rate, but in some cases more than the rampant inflation of the late 1970s. Conservatives in government blame the cost increases on too much government money flooding the system. But in addition, private lenders jumped in to the game of helping folks get ahead – but often at a pretty stiff price. Now, comes a dose of reality. A federal scorecard on the website of the U.S. Department of Education, titled The College Scorecard Report, shows graduates' earnings, their student loan to debt burden, and their ability to pay back those loans. According to the report, the overall three-year repayment rate for all undergraduate institutions, weighted by the number of students borrowing at each school, was 63 percent in the combined 2010 and 2011 repayment cohorts. Thirty- seven percent of students were thus not meeting the repayment metric—either they were in default or were making monthly payments that were not reducing their loan balance. As a point of comparison, the three-year CDR was 13 percent for all students in the 2011 repayment cohort. According to a recent report in The Boston Globe, Massachusetts schools at the lower end of the ranking are protesting their standing, saying it prioritizes career fields in which graduates enter the job market right after graduation, over careers which require graduate school or which can take a long time to develop – for example, careers in the arts. At the top of the Massachusetts earnings list is – surprise, it's not Harvard – is MCPHS University, formerly the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, which has a substantial presence in downtown Worcester. Its graduates had a median annual income of $116,400 ten years after enrollment, according to the federal scorecard. They are followed on the oncome list by MIT, Harvard, Babson College and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The DOE report, available at https:// collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/, has comprehensive, real-time information on what really happens once the bills start coming in. The topic of graduate earnings has long been a hot-button issue with higher education. It's not just the plight of the liberal arts major grad who don't have a specialization that makes the job pursuit a straightforward process– it's also become an issue in the professions. During the recession, law schools came under scrutiny for their reporting of graduates' earnings, at a time when there were more graduates than entry level jobs. In the most recent year for which data is available, law schools attracted fewer applicants than they had in three decades. Also, applications to financial programs dropped during that time. In previous recessions, it was engineers who navigated the boom and bust cycle. While The College Scorecard Report examines only the students who took federal loans and/or grants, it provides valuable data on how school and choice or concentration of study can affect earnings. Financial literacy and the ability to solve financial problems related to the financing of an education go hand in hand. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal noted that parents should factor in the impact of meeting college costs on their own plans to retire, and students are encouraged to evaluate the relative benefits of attending a costly, prestigious school in the early years, when they could have gotten the basics of an undergraduate education at a more economical four-year or even two-year school – particularly in their early college years -- and saved a lot of money. Numbers and statistics can be bent in a thousand directions to support or refute an argument, and the large dump of data that the College Scorecard provides must be sifted through with great care. However, it does provide useful insights, and allows consumers more accessible information to consider as they map out their higher education strategy. Clearly the direction is heading towards a more engaged, informed consumer in the education arena – which can only be a good thing. n Show us the money E D I T O R I A L The Worcester Business Journal welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Please send submissions to Rick Saia, editor, at rsaia@wbjournal.com. Letters can also be faxed to 508-755-8860. I f you have ever suffered with conjunctivitis, you know the symptoms are hard to miss. While not an emergency, it is important to get treatment as soon as possible, even when your doctor's office is closed, and even better, from the comfort of home. At UMass Memorial Health Care, we are using technology to make the delivery of health care faster, safer, more accessible and affordable. UMass Memorial Health Care is debuting a groundbreaking online diagnosis and treatment service called eVisit, through a partnership with Minneapolis-based Zipnosis, that will be introduced as a pilot program to connect a group of UMass Memorial patients with UMass Memorial clinicians for prompt, high-quality virtual care for common health concerns such as colds and flu, sinus infections, female bladder infections and yes, conjunctivitis. All it requires is is a web-enabled device such as a computer, tablet or smart phone. If all goes well, we plan to offer the service more broadly in 2016. UMass Memorial has as longstanding commitment to improve patient care through innovative technology. In 2007, UMass Memorial Medical Center was the first hospital in the state to implement a novel eICU system that augments bedside care by remotely monitoring critically ill patients – adding an important layer of safety that yields better outcomes. Our Telestroke Program enables Medical Center neurologists with stroke care expertise to remotely examine, diagnose and manage stroke patients at our affiliated community hospitals. – Users will start by signing into the secure eVisit website and completing an online interview. This process typically takes less than five minutes to complete. The user's medical history and symptoms will be instantly sent to a UMass Memorial provider for review. During normal operating hours the user will be notified within an hour via text or email that the treatment plan is available for viewing in the online eVisit account, and. will remain available in the user's secure account for future reference. A visit summary will be generated for the UMass Memorial medical record. If the treatment plan includes a prescription medication, the prescription can be sent electronically to the pharmacy of choice. If a condition is not suitable for virtual care, eVisit is designed to triage the user to the appropriate level of care, either by making an appointment with the primary provider, or referring the user to a nearby urgent care center or emergency department. The eVisit service will be accessible 24 hours a day, with provider diagnosis and treatment available from 7 am to 10 pm daily. After-hours requests will receive priority response the following morning. All eVisit records will become part of the UMass Memorial medical record, so all involved in a patient's care is current with a patient's health history. This saves time and reduces errors such as duplicate prescriptions or drug interactions – and enhances patient safety. Some health concerns simply do not require the time and expense of an in-person hospital or doctor visit. For patients comfortable with the concept of virtual health care, eVisit promises to be just what the doctor ordered. n William Corbett, MD is senior vice president, community practices, UMass Memorial Medical Group and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School eVisiting the electronic MD BY WILLIAM CORBET T, MD Special to the Worcester Business Journal V I E W P O I N T Dr. William Corbett N ot long ago, the measure of a college education was supposed to be to develop well-rounded individuals. A bachelor's degree would get the new grad several steps above the ground floor in that hunt for the first job. Then, those steps gradually disappeared, and the bachelor's degree in many ways became the ground floor for jobs for which it had previously not been required. "A federal scorecard on the website of the U.S. Department of Education, titled The College Scorecard Report, shows graduates' earnings, their student loan to debt burden, and their ability to pay back those loans.

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