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Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

forbes.com

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Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#21

Post by quickthrower2 »

starttoaster wrote: post #16
alistairSH wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, however the amount of student loan debt (in total) is still a staggering amount. And while state colleges have sticker prices well below those of privates, the pricey private schools are more likely to discount tuition. So students have to guess at where they’ll get the most aid/discount (most schools do a decent job getting these figures to prospects, but you have to apply to get them). IMO, “shopping” for…

> IMO, “shopping” for college shouldn’t be anything like buying a used car. The prices should be affordable and publicly shared. The price of a used car is more transparent than US universities. I think the main comparison for the cost of going to college is more similar to the cost of going to the emergency room. You get individual bills coming in from every doctor and nurse that gave a sideways glance at your X-Ray…

Food and accomodation shouldn’t be a surprise cost, as it wouldn’t be if you buy plane tickets to Thailand. Is there any real gotcha costs that you only find out later?

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#22

Post by xvedejas »

elliotec wrote: post #7
smt88 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The college system in the US works well. The vast majority of students go to community colleges or public schools and end up with very little debt (if any). The nightmare stories you hear are about the small, vocal minority that go to expensive private schools and/or major in something that doesn't pay well (like theatre) and/or get Masters degrees that put them in debt.

I don’t think so. > As of 2023, approximately 44 million Americans carry student loan debt, with the total student loan debt in the United States reaching $1.76 trillion according to the Federal Reserve. This figure includes both federal and private student loans. It's notable that the number of people with federal student loans is around 43.4 million, and there are about 3.5 million private student loan borrowers, l…

I held a similar level of student loan debt, and it was worth it. My earnings are much larger thanks to the degree it enabled me to pursue, and I was able to pay it off early. While I don't think the system is ideal, just the existence of student debt isn't indicative of an issue, we'd need to look at statistics around what proportion of borrowers have undue hardship as a result.

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#23

Post by fxd123 »

elliotec wrote: post #12
jmakov wrote: post #5

Isn't it cheaper to come to EU and attend the uni here then return?

Definitely. Uni in the EU is very inexpensive and all expenses will really be cost of living (or room and board if living on campus). Uni in the USA is outrageously expensive and is in addition to the cost of living.

> Uni in the EU is very inexpensive

For public universities, not private ones.

In the US, private universities are also the most expensive...

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#24

Post by whateveracct »

ipnon wrote: post #19

I will recommend my kids go to college outside the US unless they get into a household name university. It’s not worth the money anymore. If college was about education surely a benevolent government-university axis would conspire to lower the price by any means; if it were about signaling inclusion into a higher social strata perhaps we might expect college to become ever more expensive… Thiel and Will Hunting have…

in-state tuition for a CS/eng degree at a good school still seems affordable to me. I checked my alma mater in Indiana and I'd do it again.

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#25

Post by ttymck »

smt88 wrote: post #3
c0balt wrote: post #2

> “The original purpose of tuition discounting was to make higher education affordable to low-income students,” Bridgewater president David W. Bushman said in a press release explaining the dramatic shift. “But over time, the practice has resulted in higher and higher tuition sticker prices that bear little resemblance to the actual cost of education. This somehow seems inevitable in hindsight. It is quite bizarre, a…

The college system in the US works well. The vast majority of students go to community colleges or public schools and end up with very little debt (if any). The nightmare stories you hear are about the small, vocal minority that go to expensive private schools and/or major in something that doesn't pay well (like theatre) and/or get Masters degrees that put them in debt.

Source?

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#27

Post by soupfordummies »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #11

I question if half of high school seniors should apply to colleges that cost MORE than 40k. Some of the best educators I had were at community colleges with tuition ~1k per year. It didn't have the marble buildings and heated pools of my UC, but class size was 20 instead of 200 and the primary vocation of the professor was education, not Nobel prize research

Tuition has gone up a LOT lately though (like everything else I guess).

I remember my school was like ~2200/semester and last I checked it was now up to like ~5000/semester. So there's 40 grand right there if you finish in 4 years.

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#28

Post by leereeves »

elliotec wrote: post #18
leereeves wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That average is the mean (we can tell because it roughly equals $1.76 trillion divided by 46.9 million borrowers). The mean is notorious for being affected by outliers, that is, the few borrowers like doctors who owe tremendous sums. (As GP says, "the nightmare stories you hear are about the small, vocal minority") If 90% of borrowers only owed $10k each, and the other 10% owed 210k each, the average would be $30k pe…

The median amount of education debt in 2021 among those with any outstanding debt for their own education was between $20,000 and $24,999. This reflects the central tendency of student loan debts, providing a perspective less influenced by extreme high or low values compared to the average debt amount. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2022-economic-we...

Yeah, I just added a similar figure to my post.

To me, that seems consistent with "very little debt" as discussed above. It's less than the cost of an economy car, for an education that increases average lifetime earnings by over a million dollars.

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#29

Post by whateveracct »

whateveracct wrote: post #24
ipnon wrote: post #19

I will recommend my kids go to college outside the US unless they get into a household name university. It’s not worth the money anymore. If college was about education surely a benevolent government-university axis would conspire to lower the price by any means; if it were about signaling inclusion into a higher social strata perhaps we might expect college to become ever more expensive… Thiel and Will Hunting have…

in-state tuition for a CS/eng degree at a good school still seems affordable to me. I checked my alma mater in Indiana and I'd do it again.

i will say - the merit-based scholarships have dried up a bit though.

Re: Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k

#30

Post by DiscourseFan »

whateveracct wrote: post #24
ipnon wrote: post #19

I will recommend my kids go to college outside the US unless they get into a household name university. It’s not worth the money anymore. If college was about education surely a benevolent government-university axis would conspire to lower the price by any means; if it were about signaling inclusion into a higher social strata perhaps we might expect college to become ever more expensive… Thiel and Will Hunting have…

in-state tuition for a CS/eng degree at a good school still seems affordable to me. I checked my alma mater in Indiana and I'd do it again.

Yeah, public universities in the US are often comparably priced for in-state students--after financial aid does all their clerical bullshit--to the prices in the 70s and 80s, adjusting for inflation. And you can't replace the experience of being amongst other students, professors, club members, etc. who are all contributing to the ensemble of your intellectual and personal development. Sure there are things you can find in the library, but oftentimes you won't be embedded directly with those who are working on these problems, and you won't be thinking about/discussing them on a day in, day out basis.
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