[HN Gopher] Despite sticker prices, the real cost of getting a d...
___________________________________________________________________
Despite sticker prices, the real cost of getting a degree has been
going down
Author : linusg789
Score : 54 points
Date : 2025-02-23 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| linusg789 wrote:
| Free link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-if-college-got-
| cheape...
| abctx wrote:
| https://archive.ph/kWAo5
| tekla wrote:
| This is only secret to people who have money.
|
| Its been well known for 50 years that poor students with good
| grades get pretty much full rides to top tier schools due to
| scholarships.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think the line has shifted though as have, perhaps,
| expectations of work-study. And more or less _everyone_ at a
| lot of elite schools (OK, leave out legacies, athletes perhaps,
| etc.) had pretty top grades; they wouldn 't have gotten in
| otherwise.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| The article disagrees:
|
| > _One study found that most high-achieving, low-income
| students chose not to apply to highly selective colleges with
| steep sticker prices. They opted instead for schools with lower
| sticker prices that ended up offering much less financial aid
| and thus costing more._
| ghaff wrote:
| The other not-so-secret is that small private liberal arts
| don't necessarily have stickers all that much lower than the
| top schools--and, as you suggest, they're much less able to
| provide financial aid than schools with multi-billion dollar
| endowments.
| SnowflakeOnIce wrote:
| Yes, this was my own experience!
|
| When looking at universities, when I saw a high sticker
| price, I ignored that university, even if in hindsight I had
| a good chance of being accepted.
|
| I wish I had had someone when I was young who encouraged me
| to have broader horizons.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I have some regrets about my choice of undergrad school,
| but it isn't because I went someplace cheap. I could have
| gone to one of the multiple state schools that would have
| given me half off just for being born somewhere.
|
| Instead, I went to a school that was in my home town. I
| learned things when I went to college, but that school was
| objectively the wrong choice. Not only did it cost double
| what the state school would have cost[0], I missed out on
| the reason young people ought to go to college in the first
| place: a once in a lifetime chance to spend 4 years hanging
| out and making friends with high achieving people who would
| go on to shape the face of the world.
|
| Granted, one of my college friends ended up as a senior
| researcher studying cancer, and another went on to work for
| Mozilla, but I'm pretty sure in my class of ~300, there
| weren't too many CTOs, VPEs, star researchers, _etc._
| Simply going to a _bigger_ school would have been a better
| choice; going to a school that was both bigger _and_ better
| than my undergrad institution would have been the best
| choice.
|
| I guess that's what you get when society expects a 17-year-
| old to make what may be the single most impactful life
| choice they'll ever have. -\\\\\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| That said, going to a small liberal arts college had its
| advantages. I learned a lot. Some of that stuff I learned,
| I've even gotten to use once or twice. But, looking back,
| if I could send my past self a message back in time, I'd
| tell me to go somewhere else. I may not have been much
| better off financially if I had met someone in college at
| 20 who talked me into partnering up on some insane business
| venture or something, but that experience would have been
| priceless.
|
| --
|
| [0]: This was even after I got a scholarship that reduced
| my estimated family contribution to 2/3 of what the sticker
| price was, on top of being able to stay at home and save
| money that way.
| diob wrote:
| This is what I did.
|
| My parents also told me college doesn't matter, just the
| degree (which was their way of saving money). Not that they
| paid a dime anyways, they just always felt comfortable lying
| to me if it saved them any amount of trouble.
| drillsteps5 wrote:
| One of the most unpleasant surprises I had when researching
| colleges for my kids was how little merit aid is offered by not
| just "top tier" but good colleges in general.
|
| Our state school does not have much merit scholarships (and I'm
| not talking about $500 per year for 4.0 GPA/1500+ SAT, which is
| not even available to all applicants, that's just insulting).
| There are colleges which are definitely in the bottom of the
| rankings where you can get in with 0 tuition or even full ride
| (no tuition+free room and board) AND you can get some stipend
| thrown on top. I now have a choice: pay $45K (tuition with room
| and board) per year for my very academically strong kids at my
| (reasonably good) state school or $0 at the likes of Alabama,
| Tennessee, Oklahoma, Florida, and to a smaller extent Arizona
| and Texas (well the last ones would not be free, but at least
| less than half of the state uni). What do you think I will
| encourage my kids to do???
| akomtu wrote:
| 4.0 GPA isn't what they are looking for. Rich kids have the
| money, but not talent. Poor kids have talent, but not money.
| MIT and the like is a place where the two can meet and work
| together. They don't need a high GPA, they need a seriously
| gifted student.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of elite universities in particular have given financial
| aid for ages if you were at the lower half of the parental income
| scale or thereabouts. But my recollection from the 70s is that
| upper middle class at least pretty much paid sticker. Today, my
| understanding is that sticker (for undergrad at least) is largely
| a fiction that few people (at least non-international students)
| pay.
|
| Which
| cjpearson wrote:
| Yes, it is largely a fiction. For private universities (the
| ones typically with the high sticker prices) 16% paid the full
| amount in 2019-2020. For public schools the number is 26%. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ignore-the-sticker-
| price-...
| grandempire wrote:
| The international students are definitely whales for funding.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| I have always believed that the concept of a college should be
| abolished for bachelor's degrees - the concepts can and should be
| learned on one's own via learning materials, lots of practice,
| simulations, and an eventual certification. Education should
| truly become accessible to all. Currently it is nothing but a
| moneygrubbing racket. A college makes sense for doctorate level
| programs only.
| LVB wrote:
| For some areas, yes. But for studies that have a meaning
| lab/shop component, the university setting is quite practice.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| That is vocational training. There isn't a strong need for a
| full-blown college degree for it unless one is also tasked
| with improving the process.
| jtmarl1n wrote:
| Strongly disagree. Part of the value of college is new
| experiences and being exposed to people and things you wouldn't
| be otherwise. Removing these experiences only reinforces the
| idea that the only benefit to college and university is to
| churn out worker drones.
| qudat wrote:
| Meh, turn that aspect into smaller "camps" or apprenticeship
| programs without the insane price tag.
|
| People can get new experiences and meet people in much more
| efficient ways.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| I understand but it's not worth the price tag or even close.
| There ought to be 10x more price efficient ways of getting
| that experience if not for free altogether.
| dworkr wrote:
| Maslow's pyramid is a thing. Once you are financially secure,
| those other levels of good stuff open up. For most common
| folk, college is about financial security because that is
| what they don't have. If you are born into a financially
| secure family, you cannot understand that and may give really
| had advice to poorer folks.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| I'm not sure if bachelor's degrees should be abolished.
|
| But we need to start recognizing that most college degrees
| aren't required to do most jobs, and it's basically rent-
| seeking behavior.
|
| I've helped interview and hire three additional software
| engineers for my teams over the past 2.5 years. None of the
| applicants with a B.S. in SWE could hold a candle to the self-
| taught applicants. Those are my anecdotes, but we interviewed
| multiple applicants with B.S SWE degrees from Auburn, the
| University of Alabama, and the University of Tennessee. None of
| them were close to being as prepared as the applicants, who
| were a little older and had no college degrees but decided to
| pursue SWE independently.
|
| I had a very successful career in construction when I was a
| young man. First, I wore a tool belt, and then I got into
| commercial construction management. I work for one of the Top 5
| builders in the world. I decided to move back to the states and
| put down some roots. I expected to land a construction
| management job in Auburn easily. However, none of the companies
| would even give me a chance to interview because I didn't have
| a B.S. in Building Science from Auburn.
|
| As it turns out, everyone and their mother has a Building
| Science degree from Auburn. So, I also decided to pursue one
| until I learned how much the people were earning. They were
| spending ~$100k on a degree only to graduate and earn far less
| than I earned while wearing a tool belt.
|
| So, I put my tool belt back on and went to work.
|
| I pivoted into SWE a few years ago without a degree. However,
| to get to the executive level, the head of our company
| suggested that I obtain a degree. So, I completed an SWE degree
| at WGU. I didn't learn anything while pursuing the degree, but
| at least I have that piece of paper hanging in my office now.
|
| I have many more anecdotes I could share to show why I think
| most college degrees are rent-seeking behavior, but I guess
| anecdotes don't account for much at the end of the day.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Your self-disagreement, as manifested in your first two
| paragraphs, should be eating you alive, but it isn't because
| you haven't fully come to terms with it yet.
| whatshisface wrote:
| College degrees still make sense for things that involve math
| (like mechanical engineering or physics) because I have never
| met a single person who put the effort in to raise themselves
| to a professional level on their own.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| Great colleges teach some people how to think. Most people
| cannot critically think, they simply parrot others, go with
| the herd, although some of those can perhaps communicate
| effectively. But for those that go to college and get some
| manner of STEM degree, something that requires analysis,
| these people can think from first principles. They are worth
| 10x what the others are at a technical company. Any college
| that manages to train students how to critically think is
| well worth the price. Our economy is quite literally held
| back by the fact that we do not have enough people who can
| actually think. Perhaps AI will help solve this problem, but
| so far, AI just seems to replicate the non-thinkers.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I agree with your thesis, but I don't think there are 5
| colleges or universities in the US that actually truly
| teach people how to think critically, with genuine
| curiosity. I despise people who are smart and educated, but
| not the least bit intellectually curious. The sad part is
| that the entire US education system is literally designed
| to beat the curiosity out of people, at least until you
| start talking about graduate schools.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| I think it is very difficult to do it. You need
| professors who challenge assumptions and break with the
| crowd. In college you want many kinds of thinkers
| teaching the students, and even if you're successful, it
| takes years for those seeds to grow in young minds to
| break through prior indoctrinations. And if you think US
| school systems are bad, they are far better at this than
| the rest of the world. Please forgive me for the blanket
| statement, I speak generally not specifically of a
| particular country.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Learning/teaching how to think is:
|
| (1) Not entirely a function of bachelor's programs that
| produce conformant wage workers.
|
| (2) Not worth the high tuition and debt at all.
|
| I can't help but imagine that there have got to exist far
| better and cheaper ways to learn how to think. I would like
| to see more entrepreneurship colleges that force people to
| innovate, also to bootstrap without external investment.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| As a self-taught SWE myself, I agree with your observations.
| Two of the most talented engineers I've ever met were self-
| taught. The interesting thing about the two people I'm
| thinking of is that, besides being self-taught, neither one
| of them actually even went to college. One of them actually
| dropped out of college, then went on to get hired at Netflix
| at 23 years old, back when they were only hiring senior
| engineers.
|
| Me, I have a degree in math, but 97% of what I know is stuff
| I picked up either on the job, or because I found it
| interesting. Besides those that picked up CS as a major when
| it was a hot field, I'm betting that some of them get the
| love of tech beaten out of them by their college experience.
| I certainly know more than one science major who felt that
| way after graduating. (Not me, though. I'm weird, and I still
| love math just as much as I always did. Maybe even more.)
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| Whoops, I noticed a mistake!
|
| > One of them actually dropped out of ~~college~~ high
| school(!), then went on to get hired at Netflix at 23 years
| old, back when they were only hiring senior engineers.
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| I think that 3 or 4 years is too large a chunk of one's life
| and education to take on an all or nothing basis. If 3 years of
| college are good, aren't 2 years of college 2/3 as good? Or
| more appropriate for some people?
|
| The current system grades people as failures if they fail to
| complete the whole course.
| foxglacier wrote:
| It might suit some highly motivated people but the pressure of
| meeting all the deadlines which have heavy costs for missing
| (like repeat the entire paper next year and pay again) keep
| many students actually doing it instead of procrastinating
| forever. So does the pressure to simply get out of bed to
| attend lectures instead of learning whenever they feel like. It
| does sound silly but humans are weak and useless at doing
| things they don't want to do in the short term with nebulous
| future benefits.
|
| This happens with mortgages too. People with a mortgage tend to
| religiously pay it off as required so they don't lose their
| house while people without, somehow don't manage to build
| equivalent wealth even though they could be scrupulously
| investing their spare money just as much. And once you have a
| house, it's easier to keep it than to keep a pile of money.
| Often when people die, almost their only wealth is their house.
| Where did all the rest of what they earned their entire life
| go?
| cjpearson wrote:
| The sticker price arms race will continue until the incentives
| change. Having an absurdly high listed tuition price is simply
| effective advertising, even if almost nobody actually pays that
| price. Surely the most expensive colleges must be the best.
|
| Colleges know that outside of a few suckers, few will pay the
| full price even if they have the money. So they offer massive
| discounts to get you to sign. To help seal the deal, they will
| market the discount as something special for you based on your
| "merit". "Normally we charge $75k, but since you're so awesome we
| can give you a $30k merit scholarship." Sounds like you're
| getting a great deal as long as you don't find out that the
| actual average charged tuition is $35k and you're actually the
| one getting milked.
| newsclues wrote:
| How do you change incentives when the people in charge of the
| incentive system have a interest in maintaining the status quo?
| whiplash451 wrote:
| This is typically where the government steps in.
| atom-morgan wrote:
| Isn't that exactly why we're in the position we're in? Near
| universal financial aid driving up prices?
| soco wrote:
| How do you explain other countries where education is
| basically free?
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| This is consistent with the top-level response, about
| expense signaling quality.
|
| Consider the quantity of people coming from outside the
| USA to study. It may be that foreigners looking for
| prestigious schools are searching in the USA because
| their own system is middling (except maybe for a flagship
| school?). Thus, they're also doing the damage to the
| USA's education market while not affecting their own
| domestic one.
| buran77 wrote:
| > foreigners looking for prestigious schools are
| searching in the USA because their own system is middling
|
| See how you called it "prestigious" not "expensive", and
| "middling" not "cheap"? Price contributes to the feeling
| of quality of any product but it's neither _necessary_
| nor _sufficient_. There 's more than that just the price.
|
| The US is an economic powerouse, it attracts top talent
| in every area or level because it offers opportunities
| and high rewards. Even the language is part of the cycle
| which fuels this talent attraction. This brings results,
| the results bring prestige, and the prestige brings in
| more talent.
|
| An expensive school in Bulgaria will _not_ attract that
| kind of talent because fewer people are attracted to
| living, working, or learning the local language there.
| Heck, even a no-name US school couldn 't attract talent
| by jacking up prices.
| amluto wrote:
| > The US is an economic powerouse, it attracts top talent
| in every area or level because it offers opportunities
| and high rewards.
|
| The US is an _educational_ powerhouse, and we attract top
| talent, sometimes charge money to educate these visitors
| (undergraduate and graduate work quite differently), and
| then, wait for it, we kick the people we educated back
| out.
|
| Seriously, check out the visa types linked from here:
|
| https://educationusa.state.gov/foreign-institutions-and-
| gove...
|
| I don't know the history, but if I was in charge of a
| non-US country trying to import skills, maximize my
| country's future success, and even slowly weaken the US,
| I would love these rules. If I were a US lawmaker, I
| would struggle to invent a more self-destructive, not to
| mention inhumane, policy.
|
| So, in answer to your comment, no, our educational system
| is crap at retaining the top talent it attracts, because
| the US made it mostly illegal for that talent to stay
| here.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Wealthy progressives in other countries put their money
| where their mouth is. Wealthy progressives in the US only
| pay lip service to progressive values because they only
| support wealth redistribution when it's being done with
| other people's money, then they magically flip and become
| some weird hybrid mercantilist-nationalist conservatives
| who insist upon privatizing gains, but only up until
| their brilliance fails them and they need to come beg the
| US taxpayer for handou- err... bailouts, emphasizing the
| values of the collective good as justification for
| forcing the rest of us to socialize their losses.
|
| This is why Ivy League schools have endowments larger
| than the GDP of some micronations and are financially
| being run like hedge funds, while still simultaneously
| being supported with US taxpayer money. The progressive
| orthodoxy does not hold these institutions accountable
| for institutional greed and selfishness because of a
| shared cultural affinity between progressive politics and
| higher education, and because all of the negative
| externalities of the spiritual sins of selfishness and
| greed at institutional scale are forgiven for the virtue
| of being a nonprofit under the idiosyncratic, dogmatic
| priesthood of progressivism.
|
| The US doesn't have progressives. We have conservatives
| and conservatives LARPing as progressives when it's
| financially convenient for them.
|
| On a related note, this is also why Canada and the UK can
| make single-payer healthcare work and why the US can't.
| Some of those shadowy GOP dark money donors are the same
| faces that the public would associate with progressive
| thought leadership. They're following a Machiavellian
| playbook where they attempt to portray themselves as
| publicly virtuous while remaining the same soulless,
| greedy multimillionaires or billionaires that
| instinctively think from a place of unadulterated self
| interest behind the scenes.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Do other countries allow nearly everyone who wants to
| attend to do so? In the US, while you can't necessarily
| go to whatever school you want, pretty much everyone has
| multiple choices of schools they can attend. Even people
| with Down Syndrome are now earning bachelor degrees. Not
| special programs for those with learning disabilities but
| degrees in regular programs. If they're able to pay,
| they're able to attend. Since most of this is financed
| via student loans, living expenses are covered too
| regardless of if the student has any realistic prospect
| of ever paying off the debt.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Lots of European countries have cheap (not free)
| excellent universities.
|
| The price signal is almost the other way around (the more
| expensive, the less likely it is to be a good place).
| drillsteps5 wrote:
| It did. It is part of the system. This is how it works.
|
| 1. Colleges set exorbitantly high prices.
|
| 2. The government-supported system assesses families'
| ability to pay though FAFSA process, where you submit your
| tax returns (not that you have to, IRS is government as
| well) with your wage/business income, then list all your
| assets (minus retirement accounts such as 401Ks) and
| liabilities. Then the FAFSA spits out your expected
| contribution, TELLING you how much you can afford to pay
| for your kids education.
|
| 3. Colleges and government then use this number to
| determine how much "financial need" you have. They can
| "meet your financial need" by letting you pay less than the
| sticker price (it's called "need-based scholarship"), or
| allow to take loans on favorable terms to close the
| difference between the sticker price and your ability to
| pay (that they determined). More often it's a combination
| of the two (depending how desirable college is and how good
| of the student they perceive your kid to be).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| meanwhile, the idea of paying out the nose for most post-
| secondary education overseas is laughable. You never have
| to go into 5-6 figures of debt just to get an education.
| Even 30 years ago US colleges had a huge amount of
| tuition covered by state governments. But decades of cuts
| pushed more of the tuition on the student and now people
| in the propoganda just want DoED as a whole to crumble.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| By outside forces, of course. Women entered the legal
| profession in the 1920's, but wages did not catch up until
| the Equal Pay Act was enacted under the Kennedy
| administration. There were plenty of labour market
| arbitrageurs profiting from the game, but the Civil Rights
| movement proved stronger.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Unfortunately, all of the labor market arbitrageurs went
| away, and now we're stuck in this weird economy where women
| get paid 83C/ on the dollar _for identical work
| performance_ , in an economy that is deeply entrenched in
| boundless corporate greed, and yet no major companies
| appear to have effectively capitalized on the free,
| automatic, statistically-guaranteed 17% ROI that's just
| sitting on the table by replacing men with women. I guess
| our laws against unlawful gender discrimination in hiring
| must be so strict that no large companies have ever been
| able to do it at scale without getting caught and fined,
| no? How else do you explain for-profit companies turning
| away free money?
| dugmartin wrote:
| We are going through this now with our youngest. All the
| private schools are $85k+/year but every one of them has
| offered a merit scholarship that brings the price down to
| around $5k above the public schools. Such a great deal.
| grandempire wrote:
| I grew up in a different class than most of my peers. It's
| interesting to see how many of them are willing to go all out for
| their kids when it comes to college. Touring many schools,
| application prep, savings accounts, meal plans, etc.
|
| It sometimes seems as this support comes out of nowhere after
| years of not being involved in their child's life.
|
| So my question is what motivates this? Are they right? Is it
| really important for their kids future to go to a top 70 instead
| of 130? (I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money)
|
| Is this based on college being a good time in their life and they
| are projecting that experience? Do they feel obligated to "finish
| strong" in regards to parenting?
|
| The attitude of my parents is to make sure the degree will lead
| to a job, and then find a local and cheap school to get that
| credential. I believe there may be taboo class issues around this
| topic that are not vocalized.
| prododev wrote:
| Where your kid goes to school is a status symbol. And like most
| status symbols, it is a foolish and conspicuous waste.
|
| Americans love to root for teams and build their identities
| around what teams they are on. In sports, in politics, in
| college selection, even which state or city they are from.
| College selection is just an easy way to buy yourself into a
| team.
| grandempire wrote:
| I'm gonna need a steel man here. Is this real status they are
| buying? If so it has real impact?
|
| These are otherwise shrewd people.
| prododev wrote:
| Bragging about where your kid goes to school is extremely
| common. It signals not only what can you afford (like a
| car), but also lets you buy and display a bunch of gear.
| (University name) Dad is like a super common apparel and
| bumper sticker item. And having, e.g., Stanford Dad is more
| prestigious than eg New Mexico State Dad apparel.
| grandempire wrote:
| Yes, but having gone to Stanford is significantly better
| than New Mexico State. But is UC Berkeley better than
| community college transfer to UC Davis?
| bdangubic wrote:
| while having paper from Stanford may open some doors for
| you if you network well while you are there the degree
| from New Mexico State can get you a lucrative career if
| you know wtf you are doing. business work on the bottom
| line and in my three decades in the industry I have found
| more gems from non-Ivy league schools than otherwise by a
| wide margin
| drillsteps5 wrote:
| Your second statement is accurate and contradicts your first
| statement. Going into the right school puts you on the right
| team which will make your future career easier, as your
| school affiliation will send the right signals to hiring
| managers/business partners/investors/customers/whoever you
| will need to work with.
| lumost wrote:
| Lack of involvement can come from multiple issues. I don't
| spend as much time with my kids as I'd like. Partly so that we
| can have good education, a decent home, activities, and college
| without stress.
|
| The push into college is kinda the last hurrah for parents to
| set their kids up. Taking it seriously helps the (soon to be
| adult) kids take it seriously, finding a good fit can have an
| outsized impact on what they do next.
|
| I do wish we lived in a world where we could be both involved
| and supportive of future endeavors. I grew up in a lower middle
| class home. College involved atrocious debt while my parents
| were uninvolved as ... they were still busy working.
|
| Why can't we have time for ourselves in society?
| grandempire wrote:
| I think this a poor justification for uninvolvement. All
| families need resources - so satisfying that can justify all
| your time. But for many people on this forum that does not
| occupy all their time and attention, except for brief
| exceptions. What differentiates quality of upbringing is not
| resources. So working harder at your white collar job does
| not make you a better parent.
| lumost wrote:
| I don't think it makes me a better parent, apologies if
| that was how it was interpreted.
|
| The point is that there is no other alternative. My
| observation, at least in tech - is that the expectation of
| greater than 40 hours of work per week is ever present.
| There is no choice to earn less, take it easy, and have
| more time for other pursuits. If both parents are under
| this expectation then there are fewer hours to be involved.
| A break of 1-2 years will be held against you in future
| interviews.
|
| From talking with other parents, this is a common conundrum
| across industries. No one feels that they have enough time
| to be a good parent.
|
| More concretely, what work arrangements do you have or are
| aware of which allow you to cap the hours worked while
| affording a livable home life?
| bluGill wrote:
| There are many tech jobs where 40 hours and no more is
| normal. If you are not in one find a new one.
| csa wrote:
| > Are they right?
|
| Maybe
|
| > Is it really important for their kids future to go to a top
| 70 instead of 130?
|
| There are definitely rough cutoffs. Using your ballpark
| thresholds, yes, there can be a big difference in 70ish and
| 130ish in terms of opportunities. The big issue is whether the
| student will avail themselves of these opportunities.
|
| > (I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money)
|
| Oh, definitely not true unless the student avails themselves of
| the available opportunities.
|
| At top 5, it's only worth the money (assuming that you're price
| sensitive) if the student does one or more things like uses the
| school alumni network, develops a robust network in school,
| works with top tier researchers, accesses unique learning
| opportunities, goes into fields that only pull from these
| schools (e.g., investment banking, consulting, etc.), tapping
| into the varsity athlete network, and other things like that.
|
| If they just go and get a degree and then do whatever they were
| going to do if they had gone to State U, then it's wasted
| money.
|
| The classroom education at the top 5 universities is largely
| not that good. Smaller liberal arts colleges do a better job of
| classroom education, imho, if thats what someone is looking
| for.
|
| > Is this based on college being a good time in their life and
| they are projecting that experience?
|
| Maybe.
|
| There's probably a lot of intuitively knowing that it's better
| to go to a good school without necessarily knowing what about
| going to a good school makes it matter.
|
| > The attitude of my parents is to make sure the degree will
| lead to a job, and then find a local and cheap school to get
| that credential.
|
| Smart, but very limiting if you have ambitions beyond being a
| middle manager.
|
| > I believe there may be taboo class issues around this topic
| that are not vocalized.
|
| Class issues, yes. Taboo... I'm not so sure.
| grandempire wrote:
| > unless the student avails themselves of the available
| opportunities.
|
| I was imagining it in personal terms. I would have paid any
| amount of money for myself because I believe it would have
| worked for the reasons you mentioned.
|
| > knowing that it's better to go to a good school without...
|
| That's likely.
|
| > but very limiting if you have ambitions beyond being a
| middle manager.
|
| Say more. That kind of thing sounds worth paying for.
|
| > Taboo
|
| For example, someone might secretly think state school
| education was a waste of time, but not want to talk bad about
| their peer's schooling. Or want their child to socialize with
| other well-to-do families.
| csa wrote:
| > Say more. That kind of thing sounds worth paying for.
|
| I'm not sure what you have in mind.
|
| I'm assuming "get a local and cheap degree that gets you a
| job" means going to a community college and a directional
| school (at best).
|
| The whole mentality behind this thinking is "I'm going to
| be the best worker bee I can be". Worker bees cap out at
| middle management. When you go to schools like this, you
| are surrounded by future worker bees, that will probably be
| your mentality, and that will almost certainly be your
| social circle. It's hard to escape worker bee status in
| that context -- possible, just hard and not probable.
|
| Note that there isn't anything wrong with being a worker
| bee. The world needs a lot of them.
|
| Upper management, owners of big businesses, politicians,
| etc. are thinking about how to utilize worker bees to
| accomplish goals grander than "getting a good job". It's a
| very different way of thinking. It's not particularly
| difficult, but it's foreign to most people who aren't
| surrounded by it.
|
| Note that I am _not_ referring to a flagship state school,
| which usually produces the majority of your local and state
| leaders (see below).
|
| As a side note, this worker bee phenomenon is in play at
| elite schools as well. The worker bees get "good jobs" as
| analysts at investment banks, entry level positions at
| consulting firms, or (later) associate positions at good
| law firms. They do their worker bee thing, make the
| principals a lot of money, and then plateau / wash-out mid-
| career when they realize that they don't have the social
| capital it takes to be a rainmaker. Some folks adjust and
| do well for themselves, but others don't.
|
| So to address your comment about being "worth paying for",
| it really boils down to a few things. Does the student
| already have a lot of social capital that they will be able
| to build on top of? If not, are they socially capable
| enough to do the things they need to do (mostly build
| social networks that will let facilitate them being rain
| makers and/or power brokers later in life)? This is a lot
| to ask of a kid who is not already part of the upper-middle
| class or higher (e.g., the capital class).
|
| If a student is just going to go to college, play video
| games in their dorm room, maybe roll in the hay a bit, and
| be an average student with a mediocre degree, then paying
| for a top 5 school (or even a flagship state school)
| largely is not worth it, imho.
|
| > For example, someone might secretly think state school
| education was a waste of time,
|
| As long as the "state school" is the flagship school or the
| A&M school, then this would not be a smart thing to think.
| Exceptions exist (e.g., UCLA), but these are largely known
| schools.
|
| It all gets back to how the student utilizes the
| opportunities presented to them.
|
| > but not want to talk bad about their peer's schooling.
|
| Probably a good idea in general.
|
| > Or want their child to socialize with other well-to-do
| families.
|
| Well, this is a smart move for building and/or maintaining
| social status.
|
| That said, outside of the northeast corridor and
| California, the state flagship school probably produces
| waaaay more local and state leaders (business, political,
| etc.) than top 5 schools. I've definitely heard of people
| having limited access to their state power scene because
| they went to an Ivy instead of making the right connections
| at State U.
|
| Edit:
|
| Note that there are other scenarios that make elite schools
| good.
|
| If you want to become an academic/researcher (I suggest not
| doing this unless you know someone who will give you the
| "inside baseball" version of being an academic), the elite
| schools give folks advantages that state schools don't.
|
| If you are in a STEM field and you want to meet other super
| smart and super motivated folks to work with in STEM later,
| then elite schools can be a good deal. But again, we are
| back to social networking.
|
| If you want to go to an elite law school or certain grad
| schools, I actually recommend most people go to State U.
| For most majors, the effort required to be middle of the
| pack at an elite school will put you at the top of State U.
| A super high gpa and recs saying that you're one of their
| 1%er students ever are worth way more than being merely
| above average (e.g., 70th percentile) in a pool of very
| motivated and intelligent people.
|
| It's rough listening to folks at Ivy graduations who busted
| their butt to get into an Ivy and do well (but not top of
| their class) moan about how they are ending up at the same
| good-but-not-great law school as their buddy who had zero
| stress before and during college. Note that the Ivy grad
| may be better prepared for law school (maybe), but one has
| to wonder if the stress, money, and effort were worth it.
| silvestrov wrote:
| I wonder how many of those peers that can evaluate the quality
| of the teaching itself.
|
| I'm guessing a lot of people (especially those without an
| university education) look at how impressive the buildings and
| facilities are because those are the status signals they
| understand. I don't think many check how large percentage of
| lessons are run by assistants.
|
| So too many US colleges end up being 80% overly expensive hotel
| and 20% education.
| grandempire wrote:
| It's well understood that teaching quality is a small part of
| the package value, so I dont even know if it matters for this
| decision.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| Because the 80% overly expensive hotel is precisely what
| you're paying for. Quality of education is a bare minimum
| requirement. The rest is the people you'll meet. Be that your
| neighbors in the expensive hotel or the professors you'll
| work with, or the activities that will bond you with those
| people.
| rafram wrote:
| > I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money
|
| Is it, though? Of course people who go to Harvard et al. do
| well afterwards, but many of them came from wealthy families
| and were bound to do well no matter what. If you're poor,
| Harvard [1] is less likely to make you rich than UC Riverside
| [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-
| mobilit...
|
| [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-
| mobilit...
| grandempire wrote:
| Money is not the same as status, and opens different job
| opportunities like key government officials . I would be more
| interested in a survey that includes whether the participant
| was satisfied with their career trajectory
| antasvara wrote:
| Which measure are you going off there? Because I see the
| "Chance a poor student has to become a rich adult" metric at
| 41% for UC Riverside and 58% for Harvard.
|
| There is the "overall mobility" metric that favors UC
| Riverside, but the way that's being measured would seem to
| skew in favor of whichever college has students in lower
| quintiles (a top quintile kid can't move up 2 quintiles).
| rafram wrote:
| Ah, you're right, I misread. But 41% vs 58% isn't a big
| enough difference to pay "any amount" for IMO - and the gap
| is much smaller with other public universities like Irvine
| (55%) and SUNY Binghampton (54%).
| lumost wrote:
| Quintiles is a poor measure given the extremes of
| inequality. The Pareto distribution of income and wealth
| has folks in the top 10/1/.1/.01 percentiles with vastly
| different lifestyles compared to the other percentiles.
| rafram wrote:
| Sure, but an individual income in the top 20% ($130,000)
| is enough to be comfortable pretty much anywhere in the
| US.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| "Any amount of money" when the statistics are still a
| coin toss sounds like a gambling addict. That's insanely
| bad odds for "life savings" amounts of money...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I know someone who is a guidance counselor at an ultra elite
| high school. He globetrots every year to a plethora of
| institutions that are desperate to attract those students. All
| presumably because they want the alumni bucks when they have
| their own children. For a certain class, higher education
| serves an entirely different purpose.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| Attitudes around college in the US are really fascinating to
| me, because I've found they vary a lot from region to region
| and I think really reinforce class divides. I grew up in an
| area/class where my parents and their friends believed:
|
| - All universities and even community colleges are equally
| good, except for maybe the Ivey league schools they've heard
| about, but no one actually goes to those.
|
| - All majors are equally good, except whatever makes you a
| doctor, which is the best.
|
| - Colleges on the east and west coast are very bad because they
| are purely for liberal indoctrination
|
| - The highest earning career path from college is becoming a
| doctor, and if you become a doctor you are very upper class.
|
| - what is majoring in finance? Is that like being a bank
| teller?
|
| - what is studying computer science? Is that like working at
| Best Buy?
|
| Once I got to college and met what I now think of as "the
| American urban professional class" I found a completely
| different set of beliefs, where college rankings were do-or-
| die, everyone wants their kid to go into finance, consulting,
| or tech, or get an MBA, and everyone seems to inherit large
| corporate networks from their parents.
|
| I'm sure this has all sorts of culture war implications. I know
| the politics of the community I grew up in has more to do with
| distrusting/disliking the urban professional class than any
| wholistic political ideology. Probably both groups should learn
| something from each other.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I just searched for "best predictor of career success" and
| found a bunch of conflicting results. Open networks,
| conscientiousness, grit, intelligence, class, etc. This is
| actually reassuring, since if there were a known path to
| success everyone would crowd into it. Curiously I didn't see
| any articles or studies saying "it's partially random" because
| no one wants to hear that.
|
| I think academic prestige is best understood as a safety net.
| It won't guarantee success, because nothing can, but it can do
| a decent job preventing failure. In that respect the parents
| are right. Academic assistance is a way they can convert
| financial resources into something that can't be taken away
| from their children (and isn't subject to the gift tax limit).
|
| That said it's easy to go overboard, and many do. Unless you
| want to work in a small number of careers that have target
| lists of schools they recruit from (which again is because the
| credential is a selling point to clients, not because the
| education is better), there is no difference between a public
| university and a prestigious one.
|
| To the extent parents know that prestige is signalling all the
| way down, and does not imply being better at what you do or
| knowing more about your subject, they do have some inside
| perspective compared to the population at large.
| grandempire wrote:
| > Academic assistance is a way they can convert financial
| resources into something that can't be taken away from their
| children (and isn't subject to the gift tax limit).
|
| This is a really good summary. The end result is a permanent,
| non-transferable, protection with strong resistance to
| "inflation".
|
| > they do have some inside perspective compared to the
| population at large.
|
| Would that advantage manifest as playing into the system -
| looking for opportunities for signaling? Or discounting -
| finding good education with less signaling value.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Would that advantage manifest as playing into the system
| - looking for opportunities for signaling? Or discounting -
| finding good education with less signaling value.
|
| Good question! I think that can play out both ways,
| ultimately based on how wealthy the parents are. If money
| is no object, play the prestige game. If you are middle
| class and know the rules of the game, maximize value.
|
| For example, I am acquainted with parents who are teachers
| at a prestigious private school. Their child attended said
| school because of subsidized tuition, and then attended
| college in an honors program at a state university in the
| middle of the country. He was paid to attend! The parents
| are fully abreast of all the studies on the effects of
| education, both being teachers and being in the middle of
| the college admissions frenzy that goes on in these
| schools. So they know how the game works, and they are
| playing it to the max for value.
|
| On the other hand, at this school are children from
| generational wealth who play obscure sports from an early
| age to give them an edge in admissions. The children never
| need to actually earn a living, and the target school
| admission is seen as a defense of a family legacy and
| bragging rights for the parents - pure prestige.
| koolba wrote:
| > I just searched for "best predictor of career success" and
| found a bunch of conflicting results. Open networks,
| conscientiousness, grit, intelligence, class, etc. This is
| actually reassuring, since if there were a known path to
| success everyone would crowd into it. Curiously I didn't see
| any articles or studies saying "it's partially random"
| because no one wants to hear that.
|
| I'm not sure which is the best for career success and it's
| incredibly difficult to quantify your parents network effect,
| but conscientiousness, intelligence and grit make for a very
| happy life. You'll naturally gravitate toward intellectually
| stimulating things, work hard at them, not care about
| meaningless things around you, and enjoy every minute of it.
| quesera wrote:
| > _but conscientiousness, intelligence and grit make for a
| very happy life_
|
| OK, but do you think these traits are primarily the results
| of nature, nurture, luck, or individual practice?
| lapcat wrote:
| The word "loan" doesn't appear even once in the article, which I
| find bizarre and confusing. It talks about "financial aid"
| multiple times but doesn't mention how much of that aid is in
| grants and how much in loans. If the loans have to be paid back
| later, that doesn't truly lower the cost of college attendance.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| This is nothing more than an advertisement for the loan
| organizations. The secret that colleges should stop keeping is
| that you are taking on indentured servitude by attending.
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| Author states its lower "Once tax incentives are factored in". As
| she is not my CPA, I must call BS.
| crazygringo wrote:
| One critical point the article doesn't clarify:
|
| Is the reduction in price _entirely_ due to discounts, or is it
| also counting student loans that have to be paid back?
|
| Because it keeps using the term "financial aid" throughout, but
| financial aid includes _both_ grants /scholarships _and_ loans.
|
| And if the amount you have to pay immediately is going down but
| the part you have to pay after graduation is going up by the same
| amount, that's not necessarily good news.
|
| It's bizarre that the article doesn't address this distinction
| _at all_. I want to believe the total price ( _including_ loans
| that need to be paid back) is going down -- but with student debt
| ever-increasing, I 'm suspicious.
| underseacables wrote:
| It would help improve things if universities, not the government,
| was responsible for student loan debt. Schools have no incentive
| to lower costs when they have no liability
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Americans have some of the best and cheapest colleges. First,
| most people don't have to pay tuition (low income) or a lot lower
| than tuition. Then, in-state tuition is ridiculously cheap.
| Citizens are eligible for a LOT of grants and scholarships. They
| can work on-campus as teaching/research assistants which offer
| fee waiver and get paid a decent wage! Their parents/grand-
| parents/etc fund tax advantaged college savings account, which
| has to be used for college! They can work off campus or any
| remote job. And finally, a range of federal/state grants, loans,
| etc are available. Student health insurance is also incredibly
| cheap. And health centers on campus. And there are no rules that
| say you must go to college and be done with it at this age
| (unlike other countries), US is incredibly flexible, you can
| defer, do part-time, do slowly (work one year, college next
| year), lots of options!
|
| The only people who pay sticker price are international students.
| I don't know if we can say American higher education is
| subsidized mostly by people from third world, taking massive
| loans, usually half of or almost all of their family's net worth!
| thelastgallon wrote:
| I forgot to add Community colleges, which are incredibly cheap.
| For the final year, they can transfer to top college and get
| degree from there.
| drillsteps5 wrote:
| This reads like part of a PR campaign by some college-related
| interest group to try to influence public opinion. Prices have
| been and continue to rise. They say the prices stopped rising
| because inflation (meaning prices continue to rise but if you
| take inflation into account they do not), but I have not seen the
| numbers. There's like gazillion ways to measure inflation, if you
| use the one where it's 20% a year that might be true, but it's
| just a cop-out.
|
| Also, maybe less people go into prestigious and expensive unis
| and go into less expensive ones, which brings the average down?
|
| I look into the colleges for my kids right now and honestly
| unclear how I can afford putting 2 kids through reasonably good
| schools. Govt tells me I should be able to afford to pay about
| $80K per year for 4 years, and I do not see how I can do that
| without getting HELOC/second mortgage and tapping into my
| retirement savings. I just do not see how these prices are
| reasonable or go down.
| jalk wrote:
| I guess you skimmed the article, as inflation is not the main
| argument, but rather that most people don't pay the "sticker"
| price, but get various "discounts"
| paulpauper wrote:
| yes, this 100% . the discounts , scholarships, etc. make a
| big difference. This is why a college college degree is a
| better deal then the doom and gloomer naysayer pundits
| insist. With federal student loans, you are borrowing at
| close to the prime rate, but for average people, not hedge
| funds. This is a great deal assuming you graduate. Even
| 'soft' subjects from middling schools confer a ROI.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| That's nice for those who get the discounts. Terrible for
| those who are being discriminated against.
| vkou wrote:
| Somehow, I don't think turning the finances of education look
| more like the finances of the American healthcare system is
| the big win they think it is.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Yeah. How come none of their other articles have this at the
| bottom:
|
| _Support for this project was provided by the William and
| Flora Hewlett Foundation._
|
| Per wiki:
|
| _With assets of approximately $14 billion, Hewlett is one of
| the wealthiest grant makers in the United States._
|
| Hmph. I guess the millions of successful college graduates are
| not providing enough positive PR mindshare, so they had to go
| buy some.
| Aeroi wrote:
| this is a wild take. we don't care about the cost of education 10
| years ago. Look at a 50 year horizon and how on a generation
| basis how much more significantly expensive it is.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Gen z grew up hearing stories about their older cousins or even
| parents going $100,000 in student loan debt for nothing.
|
| Now all of a sudden the colleges are like, well technically we
| can get that down to 85,000 of student loan debt for an English
| degree. Don't you want to come to college and have a lot of fun!
|
| I still think college is a net positive for most people, but you
| seriously need to evaluate where you're at and decide what you
| want to spend. Unless you get into a dream school, or something
| extremely specific for your major almost everyone should go to
| community college .
|
| The reason why is if you have a bad year at community college and
| you just don't want to do it, you're only out a few thousand
| dollars versus 20 or 30.
|
| Second, when you're ready to transfer you should have a good idea
| of what you actually want to do and then you can pick a college
| appropriately. Optimistically you'll graduate with half the
| student loan debt .
|
| You can have just as much fun going to a cheap community college,
| and then a cheap state school. And outside of a small handful of
| outliers the net results are going to be the same. If you get in
| the Harvard, go ahead and go to Harvard. But if you get into
| Billy's weird expensive private school, that's not worth the
| money.
|
| Between birth rates dropping and student loan reality, we're
| going to see an absolute tsunami of small school closures. Which
| isn't good or bad, it's just a sign of the times.
|
| While I'm ranting, I absolutely resent this notion of college
| being necessary to obtain an upper middle-class lifestyle. It's
| just not, and I know this from personal experience despite
| finishing college years later. You end up putting a lot of people
| in a really nasty loop, you can't afford college unless you have
| money, and you can't earn money unless you go to college. That
| also justifies indefinite debt loads, so what you have to go
| $200,000 in student loan debt. The nice salesperson said you're
| practically guaranteed a six figure job when you graduate!
|
| You graduated into a bad economy and end up working at Vons.
| Sucks to be you, by the way Sallie Mae expects your first payment
| in 60 days. May the odds be in your favor.
| paulpauper wrote:
| High school, in the past, prepared people for college, so those
| who were not cut out already had a clear indication during high
| school. But due to dumbing-down and grade inflation, they now
| learn the hard way during college.
|
| _you can 't afford college unless you have money, and you
| can't earn money unless you go to college._
|
| not really. there are tons of scholarships and other
| assistance. hardly anyone who goes to college is writing
| $30-100k checks.
| anonym29 wrote:
| A lot of those scholarships are locked along racial and
| gender lines. Immutable traits that, as a society, we have
| decided, as a foundational principle, are an unfair, unjust,
| unkind, and uncivil basis to discriminate upon. Equal
| representation is great. What's not great is producing a
| system that's so financially unsustainable for working class
| people that they're told to go solve what is framed as a
| merit-based challenge in exchange for money, but the
| qualification criteria for some crazy high percentage
| (something like 2/3rds, if my memory serves correct) of the
| challenges exclude certain cohorts of people based on
| demographic traits they have no control over, including race
| and gender. It's just a very unbecoming look for a
| progressive institution, it feels like we're deliberately
| trying to relive the racial and gender conflict of the last
| century by continuing to deliberately view all human
| interaction through the lense of race and gender, and framing
| race and gender filters as "merit" filters, almost as if to
| suggest that you can be a fundamentally flawed person by
| having the wrong chromosomes or ethnicity, rather than by
| viewing human interaction through the lense of interacting
| with actual individual people, who all have incredibly rich,
| deep, unique lived experiences that are not defined
| exclusively by demographic traits.
|
| I believe it's this point of view that leads to the common
| perception of higher education among the actual working class
| - that the American college experience was once something
| great, but got so watered down in pursuit of ideals other
| than education that it has essentially turned into a big
| summer camp for the adolscent offspring of the rich to extend
| the "party" of youth for a little bit longer, hopefully
| increasing their social credit score in the process, with
| actual learning being a "nice to have" along the way.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _framing race and gender filters as "merit" filters_
|
| Do you have examples? I haven't gone systematically digging
| into this, but the general impression I've gotten is that
| this sort of explicit demographic filters are largely
| associated with the "equity" crowd rather than the "merit"
| crowd.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| I suspect such reframing is very recent.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| _extend the "party" of youth for a little bit longer_
|
| Extending the party of youth is roughly one of the benefits
| of social welfare. When we took the children out of the
| factories in the 1920s, we extended their youth. When we
| sent them to college, we extended their youth. When we
| economically constrained them with high real estate prices,
| we extended their youth.
|
| Extending youthhood is fine, so long as we do it
| appropriately. For example, if we did it right, someone
| entering retirement enters a new youthhood of carefreeness.
| If we do it wrong, someone enters youthhood in theirs 20s
| as a dependent of their parents. There's a lot of wrong
| versions of the last thing I said, where people are kept
| children in academia to be parented indefinitely by tenor.
|
| It's delicate. We want to provide as much youthhood as
| possible in a good way, if we can.
|
| As to your first point, you can only be speaking of white
| men. To this I'll say, white men that come from the same
| economic situation should have access to the same
| scholarships. That's a easy one to fix. If you are working
| class then you are working class, this life is hard enough
| already.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >not really. there are tons of scholarships and other
| assistance. hardly anyone who goes to college is writing
| $30-100k checks.
|
| What was all this student loan forgiveness talk about then?
| Scholarships apparently haven't been cutting it, otherwise
| there wouldn't be a trillion plus of outstanding student loan
| debt.
| paulpauper wrote:
| My point still stands though. The idea is people get jobs
| and pay the loans back.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, how's those working class wages going?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I had plenty of scholarships and even the GI bill covering
| me. But I still ended up with 40k in debt at a state school
| (note that I took 5 years in college).
|
| Luckily, software jobs in the beginning of my career was a
| strong market, so I aggressively paid them off early into
| the pandemic. About 3-4 years post grad. But I know that's
| not the normal story.
| bluGill wrote:
| High school is often sending the best kidsto college with
| half their first year done already with AP classes.
| vidanay wrote:
| Between AP and dual credit, my kid should graduate HS with
| somewhere around 30 hours of college credit.
| zamadatix wrote:
| College graduation vs dropout rates have been trending in the
| opposite direction than this take would suggest though. It
| could be because to be secondary education being better than
| you say or because colleges experienced the same kinds of
| changes. Either way though, the numbers suggest fewer people
| are finding out they aren't actually cut out for college
| after graduating high school.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Also a person with a degree in a subject (years of sunk cost)
| often feels pigeonholed into that field which may not be
| enjoyable, well-paid or require you to move to hunt for a job
| in the field. All negative outcomes.
| jart wrote:
| There's no point in going to university anymore when you can
| just go straight into big tech. If you're doing anything
| mathematical, your late teens and early twenties are going to
| be some of your most productive years. Why should universities
| benefit from those years when they don't do frontier research
| anymore and have degenerated into quasi religious institutions
| that hand out credentials to anyone with a pulse in order to
| get rich shackling you with debt? Big tech will literally give
| you money to be educated.
| thayne wrote:
| > This means that there's often a chasm between the published
| cost of attendance, or sticker price, and what people actually
| pay once financial aid is factored in, or the net price.
|
| Maybe it's different now from when I applied to colleges, and
| it's anecdotal, but coming from a middle class family with a 4.0
| GPA, I didn't qualify for financial aid at most of the colleges I
| looked at. I could get some merit based scholarship money, but
| not enough to make a significant dent in tuition, much less total
| cost (including food and housing). My parents' income was too
| high for me to qualify for financial aid, but they didn't have
| enough money to afford for me to go to the colleges I wanted
| either, and even if they could, they wanted me to pay for college
| myself. As a result, I ended up going to a much cheaper, less
| prestigious college, rather than the more prestigious ones I
| initially wanted, in order to avoid mountains of student debt.
| javagram wrote:
| I came from a middle class family (both parents college
| educated with white collar jobs) and received significant
| financial aid offers from multiple colleges (2 decade ago). A
| mix of grants and subsidized federal loans.
|
| I think it depends a lot on the family's position within the
| middle class. Upper middle class families will not be eligible
| for financial aid, while members of the lower middle class have
| significant non-merit based aid available.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| Just in case people haven't heard this, here is my
| straightforward advice (for those in the US considering college):
|
| 1. Unless you have schools falling all over trying to recruit
| you, go to an in-state public university. By "trying to recruit
| you" I mean schools literally flying you out to visit and
| offering you full scholarship because you are an ungodly talent
| in whatever you do (sports, music, etc.). Schools mailing you
| letters and offering you $5k doesn't count, that can't offset the
| cost of private or out of state tuitions. For most middle class
| people, the jobs you'll be getting don't care about whether you
| went to UNC or VT, or K-State, or whatever- public state
| universities are kind of all judged the same and it's not worth
| the extra cost to go out of state. a. If you want
| to really get a good deal, go to a community college for a year
| or two and live with your parents, then transfer to the state
| school when you have done your core classes and are ready to
| focus on your major. b. Still apply for scholarships
| even if you're going to a state school with in state tuition.
| Pretty much anyone can swing a few grand in grants and
| scholarships, and if you get a job (or are lucky enough for your
| parents to pitch in) you can graduate debt free. Being debt-free
| from a state school is far better than having $40k or more in
| debt from a private school with moderate name recognition.
|
| 2. Don't go to a private school unless you get a full scholarship
| or your parents are so rich they will foot the bill for you
| without taking out any loans. Most private schools aren't worth
| it. Probably the only private schools that are really worth it
| are the ones with undeniable networking opportunties- Harvard,
| Yale, MIT, Stanford. Maybe a couple others but the list is very
| short (and if you're thinking about where to go to college you
| probably weren't admitted to these).
|
| 3. Definitely don't go to a small private liberal arts college. I
| have good friends that teach at these kinds of schools, and while
| they are a nice community to work in, they are a bad deal for
| students. People are starting to figure this out, smaller liberal
| arts colleges are at higher risk of shutting down. They unite the
| costs of a private school with the faculty the size of a
| community college, with the uncertainty of not knowing if your
| school will be open in four years to give you a degree.
|
| If you do #1 above you'll have done the common sense thing and
| you'll really appreciate it as an adult when you hear your
| coworkers complaining about their mountain of debt from their
| college that sounded cool but turned out to be kinda crappy.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| I do not believe this article at all. The evidence they provided
| is not compelling. Who ya gonna believe, them or your own eyes?
|
| Behold Simpsons Paradox. The question isn't "are people paying
| more or less out of pocket". The question is "how much is the
| school I want to go to going to cost me". Perhaps costs are
| "down" because people can't attend the good schools they got into
| and they're choosing to go to lesser schools. The author would
| have you believe this is a good thing!
|
| The school I went to and the degree I earned in 2007 costs more
| than 3x today what it cost me then. But yeah sure go ahead and
| tell me the real price is going down.
|
| What an imbecile.
| but_whole wrote:
| Im certain this doesnt include the quality and value both real
| and perceived, lets assume that it is cheaper, so is the quality
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Like others mentioned in comments, the article entirely neglects
| to address the distinction between grants and loans, talking only
| about "financial aid". If you have to pay back a loan later,
| that's still part of the cost.
|
| The article also switches back and forth talking about different
| timeframes. It starts off by talking about tuition trajectory
| since 2014. Usually when I hear people lamenting the increase in
| college costs, they're talking about a much longer timeframe,
| like since the 1970s. And indeed the article says:
|
| > This pricing strategy took hold in the early 1980s. Since then,
| Levine has found, the sticker cost of attending a four-year
| public or private university--tuition plus fees and room and
| board--has almost tripled after adjusting for inflation.
|
| But then in the next paragraph:
|
| > Only students whose families make more than about $300,000 a
| year and who attend private institutions with very large
| endowments pay more than they did a decade ago, Levine said.
|
| Those are two different timeframes. Either may be useful, but you
| can't support a statement like "well costs haven't really gone
| up" by just cherry-picking random numbers from decades apart.
|
| The last two paragraphs of the article talk about colleges
| "advertising their value proposition" and how they "can't afford
| to push students away". This smacks of a corporate viewpoint
| towards higher education that makes me suspicious of the whole
| piece.
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