Live data from Hacker News

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

forbes.com

31–40 of 92 posts

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

#31
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.

You get what you pay for though. As with a lot of things, universities in the UK rank highly but I would say - as someone that went to oxbridge - that they are nowhere near the quality of American universities. Smart people attend, the smartest in europe by a wide margin, but still lag behind.

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

#32
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.

Does the tuition depend on the course?

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

#33
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…

The trick is to have them move out on their own for a gap year in a state that provides free tuition below a certain income threshold.

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

#34
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…

> Thiel and Will Hunting have said it better: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”

I used to think this is true. Moving to SFBA has disabused me of any notion that expensive college is about the education. Seeing the network that Stanford kids have access to is wild.

Me: "Oh hey this company just raised ". Friend: "Oh yeah I know Joe, he's great, his best friend was my room-mate in college. We've already been talking for a few months about hiring them as a vendor at our company. Happy to see they finally announced the raise I heard about last year"

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

#35
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…

Depends on the field. CS can be learned better online than in a school, probably because the people who built the internet are cs nerds, but medical fields, law fields, and some areas of engineering are much less accessible. The big issue imo is employers using a college degree as an easy filter for applicants results in everyone needing one to be competitive regardless of any utility. It’s gotten to where people tell me I oughta go to grad school to look better than the average applicant.

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

#36
post #34
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…

> Thiel and Will Hunting have said it better: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.” I used to think this is true. Moving to SFBA has disabused me of any notion that expensive college is about the education. Seeing the network that Stanford kids have access to is wild. Me: "Oh hey this company just raised ". Friend: "Oh yeah I know Joe, he's great,…

That's true at Stanford and Harvard, perhaps a few other schools, but it's not the experience of 99% of college students.

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

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's true, unfortunately. If we had more funding for public universities, the aid would be re-appropriated, but for now they're struggling to make it affordable for students who are just "average."

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

#38

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

Can you direct me to my UC’s marble heated pools pls

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

#39

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.

Is that a community college or destination University? Some of the community colleges near me are going in the opposite direction and have even eliminated tuition altogether.

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

#40
post #20
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think those figures support the GP's "small, vocal minority" argument. Assuming students carry their debt for 45 years (across their earning lifetime -- my gf and her ex both carry student debt in their 50s) that's only 1 MM students per annum, which is 5-6% of the number of students any given year. And most of them aren't complaining.

Working for an international company has really opened my eyes. It's actually fucking insane that someone could be paying off school in their 50s. The cast majority of European schools are in the single digit thousands per semester. The US needs to immediately allow tuition to be discharged in bankruptcy which would at least fix some of the copious problems with our higher education system.
Post reply on HN