And yet, college enrollment continues to trend upward. The price continues to climb, but it's clearly not unaffordable yet.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_302.60.as...
College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
21–30 of 213 posts
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#22My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. We estimated the expenses fo…
"assuming costs rise at the same rate as the last 30 years" I just can't believe that will happen. The millennial generation has been burned HARD by higher education. I'm guessing the demand for expensive programs loaded with amenities that provide little value will plummet by the time their kids come of age. I expect huge growth in low-frills low-cost technical programs. Also, the insane cost of higher education is…
Theres no network, no alumni connection, no shared sense of pride for an alma mater in a low cost no frills technical program. Like they say, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#23My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. We estimated the expenses fo…
You aren't having kids because they would go into debt if they decide to go to college? You are aware that the bulk of human knowledge is available for free on the internet right?
You are aware that for most professions, having a college on your CV is minimum table stakes, right?
Not everyone works in CS.
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry if I misunderstood, but you're not having kids because you might not afford to send them to college? Edit: I just wanted to point out that the sticker price is usually not what people pay for college. Grants are very common and so are scholarships of various kinds and sizes. But beyond all that, you can opt-in to this repayment plan https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education... which caps the…
We aren't going to have kids we can't support. Right now we absolutely cannot, and even in five years time things will still be looking relatively tight. We might be able by then to scrape together a down payment on a mortgage, or have a child, but not both. The biological window gets smaller by the day. Why bother?
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Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#25My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. We estimated the expenses fo…
You aren't having kids because they would go into debt if they decide to go to college? You are aware that the bulk of human knowledge is available for free on the internet right?
As I said elsewhere, there is no network in learning to code by yourself, or what have you. Assuming my children could learn everything they need from the Internet to give them stable, well paying jobs while competing against twice the number of global applicants as I did is truly wishful thinking.
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#26My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. We estimated the expenses fo…
Why not send your future kids to community college and then have them transfer?
If I understand this strategy, you send them to community college for the first two years, where they take their general ed requirements. Then they transfer to a "real" (expensive) college for the last two years, for the deeper/more specialized courses. It's not a bad strategy (we may do it with one of our children). But if higher cost is the problem, this solves less than half of it. Half because they still go to an expensive college for two years. Less than half, because the two years at a community college aren't free, either.
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#27My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. We estimated the expenses fo…
Why not send your future kids to community college and then have them transfer?
Assuming they can get into college after that. If you think competition is fierce in a world of 7 billion people, imagine how it will look with 8 or 9 or 10.
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#28Solutions -- 1) Wait for the bubble to pop and see if prices reach a new equilibrium. 2) Double-down on current solutions, i.e. more subsidies. 3) Impose a head tax on everyone a la Obamacare.
Don't more subsidies put upward pressure on prices?[1][2][3] Also, how would a head tax improve the cost of education? [1] http://college.usatoday.com/2015/08/20/report-federal-aid-ri... [2] https://fee.org/articles/student-loan-subsidies-cause-almost... [3] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/09/08/student_loans...
Yes they do. I didn't say the solutions would actually WORK. But this is America, so we'll deal with this problem the way we've dealt with health care.
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#29My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. We estimated the expenses fo…
I don't know your numbers, and the following is thus presumptuous, for which I apologize in advance. But: from what you've written, it seems like you're overthinking it. You're still paying off student loans and you're worrying about a child-bearing decision that you could put off until almost 40 years of age?
Somewhere between now and then, one of your assumptions may change.
Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets
#30I think a reality that will hopefully soon catch up with societal stigma in the United States is that college isn't right for everyone. I understand this as a separate point from college being unattainably expensive, but it is an important point. I have friends who would be mechanics, Peace Corps volunteers, electricians, or plumbers if they hadn't instead gone to a private 4-year institution, pressured to attend the…
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