41–50 of 92 posts
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
> “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.
From an educational standpoint, this is arguable, as most students are forced to take classes unrelated to their area of study simply to fill out a the credit requirements. But overall our schools are world class. It's the money side that's a wreck.
> 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.
This is just the exact opposite of the truth, with literally no room for interpretation. The vast majority of students graduate with debt, the number is about 64%. Average debt from non-profit schools is about $35k of debt, and about $60k of debt from for-profit colleges. This is two thirds of students, and the amount rivals car loans, which are NOT insignificant.
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.
Some back-of-the-envelope math:
- K-12 enrollment in 2021 was 49.4MM [1]
- Assuming even distribution across 13 grades, that's 3.8MM / academic year.
- 1MM ~= 25%, though if one factors in that drop-outs increase as years advance, this is conservative.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372#PK12-enroll...
[edit] formatting
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
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.
Probably worth speaking about in the same vein as high tuition costs and the loans taken to cover them, is that parents (like mine) will have their kids take out student loans so they can supplement their own income. I’ve known a lot of people that managed to go to reasonably priced schools but ended up taking out $20,000 in debt for their parents. There are a few reasons why that range from unfortunate to opportunistic (in my case, my parents are not good people). The fact that university costs so much that tens of thousands of dollars in debt is acceptable to be freely loaned to be arbitraged is a huge problem.
I have a feeling (but no evidence) that this applies upward pressure on the amount that can be loaned and that this increased lending reinforces upward tuition costs.
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.
I don't think that's common. I especially don't think it was common ~45 years ago.
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
Two were philosophy teachers and one was a history teacher.
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 tel…
Some people just don't learn as effectively in an online environment.
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.
Does the tuition depend on the course?
I remember a 1 credit hour horseback riding class having a rather steep extra fee attached to it.