More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years • Hacker News Board

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#111

Post by dpierce9 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

There are a lot of people blaming federal loans for the inflation in college costs, however, private secondary school (high school) tuition has also grown at a comparable rate (maybe even faster). There are not, to my knowledge, federal loans for private secondary schools. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

Edit: clarified that private secondary school = private high school. Of course federal student loans are available for accredited private colleges/universities.

Not sure the reliability of this source but the trend is there across sources: [0] https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-private-school

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#112

Post by Aperocky » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #80

Aperocky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't state colleges relatively affordable (while mostly OK academically)?

Relatively, yes, I believe so. But Oregon State still tells me to budget 30K/year for a resident undergrad. About half of that is living expenses, half is school.

$15K for living expenses in a year sounds pretty alright tbf. Although I did believe state school charged less for tuition. I guess time changes.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#113

Post by bart_spoon » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #96

rootusrootus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatively, yes, I believe so. But Oregon State still tells me to budget 30K/year for a resident undergrad. About half of that is living expenses, half is school.

WTF. My wife did the online OSU program and all we pay is in-state tuition (even if out of state!). She's an international student too! You will not be paying 30K a year for OSU e-campus. More like 10-15K a year or so.

Well they said they were told to budget 30K a year, half for school expenses, and half for living expenses, so it sounds like their experience isn't contradictory with yours.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#114

Post by The_rationalist » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

tomschlick wrote: post #70

bryanlarsen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has been very successful at preventing the original variants from spreading. So they provide an existence proof that it is possible, at least pre-Omicron. I'd rather live with ineffective American lockdowns than effective Chinese ones, but the Chinese example falsifies your statement.

Yeah I wouldn't believe anything related to the virus coming from China, especially numbers that make the CCP look good. They have too much of an incentive to lie, even more so that its finally not taboo to believe that the Wuhan lab was responsible for the outbreak.

Stop the cringe, China does not live outside of the World. Plenty of occidental people live in China and they would report if any member of their entourage was getting covid.

Also it's proven at this point that covid came from bats.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#115

Post by 999900000999 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

Theirs a few factors.

First birth rates are generally down. Not only in America,but worldwide.

>Wages at the bottom of the economy have increased dramatically, making minimum-wage jobs especially appealing to young people as an alternative to college.

This isn't an ether or situation. I worked full time while going to school full time. In fact this was my entire senior year of college.

I actually got to 6 figures without a degree, but the entire point of college for me was getting away from my horrible family. It's still a good way to get distance.

This is great news overall. Tuition will have to drop and schools will offer more flexibility to working students.

In my home state of California the UCs are hostile to anyone with a 9-5, I hope this changes.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#116

Post by _fat_santa » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #80

Aperocky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't state colleges relatively affordable (while mostly OK academically)?

Relatively, yes, I believe so. But Oregon State still tells me to budget 30K/year for a resident undergrad. About half of that is living expenses, half is school.

The dynamics of this play out different on various campuses but at my alma mater we had a bunch of "right off campus" apartments that competed heavily with the dorms. Well, it wasn't much of a competition, if you calculated your monthly rent based on what you paid for room and board, you got about $700/mo to live in a dorm with 3 others.

By comparison you could go off campus and rent an entire 1bd for like $750/mo. A similar living situation off campus with 3 roommates would set you back $300-400/mo and $550 if you really wanted the nice place.

The thing that always bugged me about dorms is they aren't treated as regular residences. School having a week long break? You have to be out of your dorm during the break with no where to go but back to your parents. Also that 30k for a year only covers two semesters, about 6-7 months of actual housing, which works out to $2.5k/mo for board if we take half of that 30k you mentioned.

I don't know where this college is but I'm going to bet that you can get a seriously nice place, probably a small house for that amount.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#117

Post by leetcrew » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

claytonjy wrote: post #59

Bostonian wrote: post #2

I've read that more Americans start college than in other developed countries but that the fraction of college graduates is similar. This suggests that there are too many unqualified students attending college in the U.S., and if the declining enrollments are coming primarily from that group, it's a good thing.

I am rather certain that, at least when I attended a decade ago, my university leaned into this as a revenue source. My school, Michigan Tech, is in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a remote location averaging over 200" of snow per year with the nearest major city over 5 hours away, and most students traveling 8+ hours from their parent's homes in SE Michigan. The application was 4 pages long: 1 page of info, 2 pages for…

I went to a state school with a similar strategy: accept basically everyone then thin the herd with some brutal weed out courses. I don't think it was some cynical strategy to raise revenue though; they also offered tons of remedial courses to give ill-prepared students a chance to catch up.

imo this is an appropriate way for a public school to operate. everyone gets a shot, but people that can't make it get failed out early. way less debt for the student than dropping out years later, and more frugal with public funds too.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#118

Post by baby-yoda » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #84

I hope this catches on: https://www.wsj.com/articles/instead-of-tuition-students-giv... If we can align the incentives of colleges and students to find jobs, it will also be a win for the economy. Let students bargain with their future earning potential, if they don’t make anything, the school doesn’t make anything.

skin in the game exposes what outcome a particular party is truly interested in. schools will avoid this like the plague, IMO.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#119

Post by sarchertech » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #88

ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

Yes, this is the issue right on the head. At a $0 income, federal and state grants + student loans will not cover tuition and housing costs at the most affordable of in state universities. We can't just look at tuition, but housing costs. The cost of housing sometimes rivals tuition. A fun fact is they make freshmen have to buy $2200 meal plans for their first year. They also prevent freshmen from better housing wher…

>The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans.

Private loans only make up about 8% of total student loan debt

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/stude... https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#120

Post by lumost » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #71

ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly im…

Would it really penalize disadvantaged households? I’d imagine that many such students lack a co-signer for these predatory loans, or would be further disadvantaged by a 200k degree that doesn’t meaningfully change their economic outcomes in 2022. To make college work you need to pick a dwindling number of high leverage disciplines such as CS, even picking something technical like Chemistry won’t yield a return on a 200k degree.