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For me it was the reverse. Parents that grew up poor and saw college as the way out but didn’t understand dynamics beyond that, so it was, “Go to the best (most

For me it was the reverse. Parents that grew up poor and saw college as the way out but didn’t understand dynamics beyond that, so it was, “Go to the best (most expensive) college you can, study anything at all, and you’ve got it made” which is either OK advice or terrible advice depending on what college that is and what you happen to study.

faitswulff 9y ago
I got similar advice from my parents and followed it, somewhat bitterly. My dad regrets dropping out of college, but he also paid $400/semester for tuition, not $20,000 like I did. I feel like "any degree == $$$" was much more true in the 70s and 80s than it was when I graduated.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  A much smaller fraction of the population earned a college degree 30-40 years ago so it was more of a differentiator. It's still pretty clear that a (4 year) degree changes access to jobs, I guess it's less clear that it will matter for a given person.
  - dpark 9y ago
    A 4-year still matters a lot. The issue is that a 4-year from a state school has almost as much value as a 4-year from an Ivy League. A prestigious university on your resume will open a few extra doors, but in most disciplines it’s just not worth the extra cost. The University of Washington is $5.5k/semester (resident tuition). If you’re spending 20k/semester, you better be getting a degree from somewhere very prestigious and you better have a plan to leverage the network you build there. Otherwise you’re just wasting ~90k on your 4-year degree. And of course the less in demand your degree is, the more the math favors cheaper schools.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      For people where the $15K difference matters a great deal, the tuition at the elite school is increasingly likely to be greatly reduced or free. Such policy is even trickling down to public schools with big endowments: https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ The place where people get killed is when they go to a private school that is expensive and not particularly an academic standout (of course there's many more mediocre private schools than elite private schools).
      - dpark 9y ago
        > For people where the $15K difference matters a great deal, the tuition at the elite school is increasingly likely to be greatly reduced or free. This isn’t entirely true. Tuition aid for most students is based on the parents’ income. My parents are (and were when I went to school) upper middle class on paper. They have never been great with money, though, so they couldn’t cover tuition out of picket and hadn’t set aside funding in advance. They definitely helped with living costs but tuition was covered by loans (and scholarships partially). So I left with loans to cover virtually all of my tuition. If your parents are middle class and can’t cover your tuition, you’re probably in a similar situation. Combined with a low-demand degree, this could easily result in crippling debt. > The place where people get killed is when they go to a private school that is expensive and not particularly an academic standout My sister did this. A couple of years at a private religious school before she transferred to a public school. The student loans from those couple of years are absurd and dwarf the rest of her loans. She’s still paying them off a decade later.
        lambda_lover 9y ago
        Exactly the same experience here -- my mother got a bachelor's right before my brothers and I went to college, which just ended up penalizing us because it looked like we should have a lot more savings than we really had. I think there's a very very small portion of the population who gets their tuition reduced enough to be comfortable. Loans end up covering the rest, so yeah, your average student really does pay close to $20k a semester at most schools if you account for room & board + tuition.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

faitswulff 9y ago

I got similar advice from my parents and followed it, somewhat bitterly. My dad regrets dropping out of college, but he also paid $400/semester for tuition, not $20,000 like I did. I feel like "any degree == $$$" was much more true in the 70s and 80s than it was when I graduated.

maxerickson 9y ago
A much smaller fraction of the population earned a college degree 30-40 years ago so it was more of a differentiator. It's still pretty clear that a (4 year) degree changes access to jobs, I guess it's less clear that it will matter for a given person.
- dpark 9y ago
  A 4-year still matters a lot. The issue is that a 4-year from a state school has almost as much value as a 4-year from an Ivy League. A prestigious university on your resume will open a few extra doors, but in most disciplines it’s just not worth the extra cost. The University of Washington is $5.5k/semester (resident tuition). If you’re spending 20k/semester, you better be getting a degree from somewhere very prestigious and you better have a plan to leverage the network you build there. Otherwise you’re just wasting ~90k on your 4-year degree. And of course the less in demand your degree is, the more the math favors cheaper schools.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    For people where the $15K difference matters a great deal, the tuition at the elite school is increasingly likely to be greatly reduced or free. Such policy is even trickling down to public schools with big endowments: https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ The place where people get killed is when they go to a private school that is expensive and not particularly an academic standout (of course there's many more mediocre private schools than elite private schools).
    - dpark 9y ago
      > For people where the $15K difference matters a great deal, the tuition at the elite school is increasingly likely to be greatly reduced or free. This isn’t entirely true. Tuition aid for most students is based on the parents’ income. My parents are (and were when I went to school) upper middle class on paper. They have never been great with money, though, so they couldn’t cover tuition out of picket and hadn’t set aside funding in advance. They definitely helped with living costs but tuition was covered by loans (and scholarships partially). So I left with loans to cover virtually all of my tuition. If your parents are middle class and can’t cover your tuition, you’re probably in a similar situation. Combined with a low-demand degree, this could easily result in crippling debt. > The place where people get killed is when they go to a private school that is expensive and not particularly an academic standout My sister did this. A couple of years at a private religious school before she transferred to a public school. The student loans from those couple of years are absurd and dwarf the rest of her loans. She’s still paying them off a decade later.
      - lambda_lover 9y ago
        Exactly the same experience here -- my mother got a bachelor's right before my brothers and I went to college, which just ended up penalizing us because it looked like we should have a lot more savings than we really had. I think there's a very very small portion of the population who gets their tuition reduced enough to be comfortable. Loans end up covering the rest, so yeah, your average student really does pay close to $20k a semester at most schools if you account for room & board + tuition.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]