UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute recently conducted a survey of students in their first year of college. The survey was taken in spring of 2009 by over 25,000 first year college students. Questions were designed to analyze the academic and personal development progress of students through their first year in college.

Obviously there is a big change going from high school to college. This survey takes a look at the multiple aspects students face when going through this adjustment phase. Among them is time management.

In the transition from high school to college, first year students have found themselves spending much more time studying and doing homework. However, these students are still able to find a balance between academics and extracurricular activities, as nearly 80% of those surveyed agreed so.

Students were asked how much time they spent per week on various activities. Here is what the majority of those surveyed reported:

How College Students Spend their Time

Other related surveys

The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted a Time Use Survey to look at how the average college student spends their weekday. They found the typical college student spends 3.3 hours engaged in educational activities, 3.1 hours working, 8.3 hours sleeping, and 3.7 hours doing leisure and sports activities.

The number of college graduates moving back home has continuously increased over the past few years. In 2009, 80% of college grads moved back home after graduation. How many 2010 grads will do the same?

With the current economic condition and a tight job market, many recent grads return home to save money and stay there until they land a job, or become financially stable.

Things are looking slightly better for this year’s class. About 25% of the Class of 2010 who applied for a job actually have one lined up.

Graduating also means payments for student loans will soon be due. This financial pressure adds fuel to the fire in an already stressful situation of finding a job after college.

Because of the tight job market, college graduates seem to be more willing to accept entry-level jobs. This year, 39 percent of seniors reported they had received job offers, with 59 percent of those students taking the job. Last year, 40 percent of seniors were offered jobs, but only 45 percent accepted them.

Students are realizing they can’t be picky in their job selection, as they grasp the fact that the market is already flooded with many others with bachelor’s degrees looking for work.

Percent of college grads moving back home:
2006 - 67%
2007 - 73%
2008 - 77%
2009 - 80%
Source: CollegeGrad.com

Many first-year college students are having concerns about being able to afford college. Students surveyed in 2009 showed that financial concern has reached a 40-year high when it comes to paying for college.

This financial pressure is forcing more students into debt as 53.3% turned to student loans in 2009, up nearly 4 percentage points from 2008 and the highest level reported in nine years.

Financial concerns have also affected college choice as 41.6% of students reported that cost was a "very important" factor in choosing which college to attend, the highest level since the question was added to the survey five years ago.

Because money plays such a huge part in college selection, more students are looking into colleges that provide top-notch career services and are choosing colleges where graduates get good jobs. The percentage of students reporting employment and financial success after college as "very important" increased to 56.5 percent in 2009, the highest level since the question was introduced in 1983. Perhaps this is why schools like Dartmouth are seeing an all-time high number of applicants; the school was ranked #1 in a recent salary survey.

No major introduction needed here, as a picture is worth a thousand words. Here we take a look at some of the most magnificent university libraries across the country.

Comfort and atmosphere play a huge role in getting in a quality study session. The problem is that some of these libraries are so beautiful that they almost become too distracting to study in.

Quick List

1. Bapst Library, Boston College
2. William W. Cook Legal Research Library, University of Michigan
3. Suzzallo Library, University of Washington
4. Butler Library, Columbia University
5. Fisher Fine Arts Library, Penn
6. Chancellor Green Library, Princeton
7. Doe Library, UC Berkeley
8. Harper Library, University of Chicago
9. Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, Vassar
10. Sterling Memorial Library, Yale
11. Firestone Library, Princeton
12. Powell Library, UCLA
13. George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University
14. Widener Library, Harvard
15. Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
16. Perkins/Bostock Library, Duke University
17. Riggs Library, Georgetown University
18. Bizzell Memorial Library, University of Oklahoma
19. Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester
20. Baker Hall, Harvard
21. Williston Library, Mount Holyoke College
22. Uris Library, Cornell
23. Monroe Library, Loyola University New Orleans
24. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
25. Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth

With Spring comes nice weather...and announcements of tuition increases.

Many colleges have announced their tuition charges for next year and it has some students seeing a near 10% increase in costs.

As more schools cross the $50,000/year mark, it's easy to see how the cost of higher education is getting out of hand. With tuition increases that continue to outpace inflation, it's only going to get worse. (It will be interesting to see next year's ranking of most expensive colleges. See 2009-2010)

Stories of college tuition increases can be found in newspapers and local news broadcasts all across the country. Perhaps the most noticeable being the University of California System, who raised tuition 32% and experienced student outrage at many of its campuses.

Many schools are raising tuition because of lost funding from the state and to give faculty long overdue raises. Governors, College Presidents, Regents, and other University Officials have given multiple reasons as to why costs are going up. Here is a roundup of what officials had to say when questioned about tuition increases.

50 Reasons for Increasing Tuition

1. "Students need to pay their fair share."
   -Quebec Universities


2. "I'm asking our families and our students to sacrifice a little bit."
   -Washington State Universities


3. "If they can afford it why not have them pay a larger fare?"
   -Colorado Universities


4. "I don't think it's the right thing to do necessarily but it what's going on in our market right now."
   -Midland College


5. "If tuition has to raise by 77 percent, so be it. If we have to break the promise of locking in tuition, we have to break the promise."
   -Georgia Universities


6. “The economy is the driving factor in this. The cuts in this budget reflect that."
   -Boise State University


7. "We live in a world with a weird and unfortunate state funding formula and that forces universities to raise tuition."
   -New Mexico State University


8. “Even though tuition has increased rapidly over the last decade it’s not filling the gap of lost state support."
   -University of Illinois


9. "The West is moving more toward the national averages."
   -Colorado Universities


10. "I don't feel comfortable going to the Legislature and saying, 'We're counting on you to solve our problem. I think we need to step up, and we have the opportunity to do so, and that's why I am proposing this increase."
    -Nevada Universities


11. "Even a 15 percent increase is still a bargain."
    -University of South Florida


12. "I hope this will serve as a wake-up call to people in this state."
    -University of Colorado


13. "When you have no choice, you have no choice. We do not have the money to continue to run the University of California."
    -University of California


14. "We are at a loss to make this a win for everybody because of Colorado's complete lack of commitment to higher education."
    -University of Colorado


15. "It's not all that much money. When you look at the dollars, it's $956."
    -University of Virginia


16. "They came here with an expectation for what they would pay."
    -University of Houston


17. "In the 1980s higher education made up 17 percent of the state budget, and prisons accounted for 3 percent. Today those figures are 9 percent and 10 percent, respectively."
    -University of California


18. "We are not asking for your approval, we are asking for your support."
    -OCCC


19. "The worst is not over."
    -University of California


20. "Cornell University hemorrhaged more than a quarter of its endowment in the past six months - roughly $1.45 billion - and will slash budgets and hike tuition to shore up".
    -Cornell University


21. "Our percentage increase appears it’s going to be the highest, but our dollar amount is going to be the third lowest."
    -Eastern New Mexico University


22. “We’re becoming a socialist society when we say that you shouldn’t raise tuition at all.”
    -Georgia Universities


23. "The increase is absolutely necessary to balance our budget. Without it, we’d have to lay 110 people off.”
    -Idaho State University


24. "I absolutely had to vote for this, it would have been hypocritical of me not to."
    -University of California


25. "The prison system used to get about one-third as much money as the university system. Now [they] are pretty close to being the same because we incarcerate too many people."
    -Wisconsin Universities


26. “This is just the beginning. These tuition increases are nowhere near what they may be next year.”
    -University of Virginia


27. "This is our one best shot at preventing this recession from pulling down a great system toward mediocrity."
    -University of California


28. "We're not going to slow down on planning. We're going to keep going and pay ourselves back."
    -James Madison University


29. "85 percent of the revenues generated by the tuition-fee increase would be allocated to the faculty."
    -University of Manitoba


30. "We hope to increase salary for our faculty and staff next year."
    -Stanford University


31. "The college hopes to set aside money now to cushion the school in the future."
    -Oklahoma City Community College


32. "It's the system that is broken."
    -University of California


33. "To begin to rebuild the university, we will have to raise tuition in two phases by a total of 32 percent over the next two years—from $7,788 to $10,302. Students are angry about that, and they have every right to be."
    -University of California


34. "The state is no longer a reliable partner."
    -University of California


35. "The availability of courses is rapidly diminishing. If you can't get into the classes you need, it will take you much longer to get your degrees—which means it will be more expensive to graduate. So raising tuition may, in fact, ultimately save students money."
    -University of California


36. "Tuition is being adjusted for inflation."
    -Southwestern Oregon Community College


37. "Virginia does not fund higher education as much as other states do. As a result, the undergraduate in-state tuition rates at the University are about $1,200 higher than average."
    -University of Virginia


38. "If we don't implement the increases, we won't get the revenue increases that we really need."
    -University of Windsor


39. "There's no money, so we're trying to ask students to come up to the plate."
    -Montgomery College


40. "The fee increase is intended to help pay for $16 million in deferred maintenance projects."
    -Eastern Illinois University


41. "Tuition hikes at UA still fall short of most increases among universities in the 15-state Western region. In the past five years, UA tuition has climbed 29.8%, compared to a regional increase of 48.2%"
    -University of Alaska


42. "Some of UAFS' proposed increase is driven by student requests for greater health coverage."
    -University of Arkansas at Fort Smith


43. "Santa Clara does not have the luxury of having a multibillion dollar endowment. Unless someone came along and made a mega gift to the institution, we are tuition dependent."
    Santa Clara University


44. "We continue to face external economic pressures that affect sources of income such as the endowment payout and philanthropic giving."
    -University of Chicago


45. "We don't feel that we're through this yet, but we feel that maybe we're past the absolute worst. But it's still a very dangerous time that we're in."
    -NYU


46. “The trustees are focused on modest tuition growth for years to come."
    -Franklin & Marshall College


47. "We are now where the state of Georgia does not have enough money to complete this fiscal year."
    -Georgia Universities


48. "The Athens campus will sustain a $10.4 million reduction in state funding in 2011 and must reallocate an additional $3.25 million to fund increasing health-care and utilities costs"
    -Ohio University


49. "My goal is to make sure that those doors remain open and we don't sacrifice the quality of education. We cannot make cuts that will damage educational opportunity."
    -Washington State Universities


50. "This increase is necessary to move forward with investments and continue with academic enterprise."
    -Ohio University

Things are looking better for this year's graduating class than last year's. Employers expect to hire 5.3% more college graduates in 2010 than they did in 2009, giving the job market for college grads the best hiring outlook it has seen in nearly two years.

Preliminary reports show that the strongest areas of employment will be in Accounting, Engineering, and Retail/Wholesale as the top employers extending offers to 2010 college grads. The technical fields of Accounting and Engineering, which have traditionally been the most active in hiring recent college grads over the years, continue to see high demand.

After analyzing preliminary hiring reports, recruiting trends, and multiple employer rankings, we have ranked this year's best bets for employment.

Accounting

1. Deloitte
2. Ernst & Young
3. Pricewaterhouse Coopers
4. KPMG
5. Grant Thorton
6. RSM McGladrey
7. Moss Adams
8. Plante & Moran
9. BDO Seidman
10. Eisner

Engineering

1. GE
2. Intel
3. Raytheon
4. Nestle USA
5. Boeing
6. Entergy
7. Northrop Grumman
8. Lockheed Martin
9. Siemens
10. BAE Systems

Retail/Wholesale

1. Target
2. Macy's
3. Kohl's
4. Walgreens
5. Amazon.com
6. Sears
7. Abercrombie & Fitch
8. Whole Foods Market
9. Wegmans Food Markets
10. Nordstrom

Data and Reports analyzed for this ranking:

BusinessWeek's Best Places to Launch a Career
CERI Recruiting Trends 2009-2010 [PDF]
Fortune's 100 Best Companies To Work For
Top Cities for Finding a Job After College
Vault's Top Accounting Employers
Internships: The Best Places to Start