25 Interesting Facts About Colleges

Here are 25 Interesting Facts About Colleges.

1. The cost of college textbooks has risen 812% in the past 30 years. That’s more than healthcare costs, housing prices, and college tuitions, all of which have risen faster than the rate of inflation. – Source

2. NBA’s Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs sacrificed money and stayed in college for four years instead of going directly to the NBA because in her last days, his dying mother made him promise to graduate college with a degree. – Source

3. Nearly 60% of American college students are female; every state but Utah has more women than men in college. – Source

4. Harvard College is suspected of grade inflation. The median grade is an A-, and the most frequently awarded mark is an A. – Source

5. In 1957, KKK planned to set up a burning cross at a college in Alabama that recently integrated. However, because it was finals week, the students were all in their dorms and heard the KKK outside. The students then attacked the KKK with bats and golf clubs and forced them to retreat. – Source

6. NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing frequently faced racist chants while he played in college. In one game after an orange was thrown at him, the opposing coach borrowed a microphone and threatened to forfeit the game if fans continued to throw objects at Ewing. – Source

7. California is spending more on prisoners than colleges according to the data presented in 2011. – Source

8. Norway has world’s highest gas prices. Though they have oil reserves, they don’t subsidize fuel and use money to fund free college education and national infrastructure. – Source

9. The first guest to enter Disneyland was a college student named Dave MacPherson. He didn’t ride a single attraction because he had to get back to school. He was awarded a lifelong ticket to Disneyland (with up to 3 guests). The ticket has since extended to include Disney parks around the world. – Source

10. When an online college in the US jokingly offered, as an April Fools gag, a course called ‘Underwater Basket Weaving’ (a notorious code for a do-nothing class) the school was forced to apologize for being disrespectful to indigenous cultures. – Source

11. 14 of the world’s 25 largest stadiums belong to American college football teams. – Source

12. In 1987, an 18 year old came up with an idea to raise $28,000 he needed for college. He contacted a newspaper columnist, asking to write his readers a request to send a penny each. Readers sent 90,000 letters and $29,000. He graduated with a Food Science degree from the University of Illinois in 1991. –Source

13. In 1980, twins brothers separated at birth ended up going to the same college. When the news caught fire and spread in media, the unthinkable happened and another person called them with adoption papers that all three of them (himself included) were triplets separated at birth. – Source

14. In 2005, in order to pay for college, a student in England made a 1,000,000 pixel webpage and put up the space for sale at $1/pixel. He was successful, selling out in less than 6 months. – Source

15. Deep Springs College is a community college that is isolated in the middle of a California Valley at which students live on campus but pay almost nothing, and are instead required to work at least 20 hours a week in jobs such as cook, butcher, or “cowboy”. – Source

16. There’s a small college in Oregon with its own nuclear reactor, run by undergraduate students. It has more female reactor operators than all the other research reactors in the world combined. – Source

17. An anonymous donor pays for the college education of every student in Kalamazoo, Michigan – Source

18. Surveys in the U.S. & other countries show that college students continue to prefer printed textbooks to electronic ones by wide margins. – Source

19. Harvard prof. Dr. Edward Clarke asserted that women should not be allowed to attend college. If young women studied too much, they would divert blood away from the uterus to the brain, rendering themselves “irritable and infertile.” – Source

20. Theodor Geisel was caught drinking gin as a Dartmouth undergrad and forced to resign from the college humor magazine, so he started contributing under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss. – Source

21. In 1927 William Smith, a college student received two enrollment forms for Georgia Tech, and decided to make an imaginary student with the second form. Over the years, the imaginary student has received multiple degrees. – Source

22. A condom ambulance service will deliver condoms to your dorm door at the College of New Jersey for a small fee. – Source

23. In 2006, police at George Washington University used Facebook to learn about college parties and bust them. To fight back, students set up a beer blast event on Facebook. When the cops showed up, there was no alcohol, but cookies with “Beer” written on them and games of “Cake-pong”. – Source

24. Being a Star Trek fan can get you a $500 college scholarship from an organization called Starfleet. –Source

25. The college student who discovered that the 27th Amendment was still technically able to be ratified got a ‘C’ on the research paper he wrote about it. The professor said it was “unrealistic”. Ten years later the 27th Amendment was successfully ratified.