62 ms·

U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to cost $100k per year

336 points by undefined1 7y ago

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quaquaqua1 7y ago
And to think that the benefit of the education has not changed since when I attended a similar school for a total cost of $25,000 per year just 10 years ago.
- mac01021 7y ago
  Surely UofChicago did not cost so little 10 years ago? A factor of 4 in ten years does not seem realistic.
  - kmano8 7y ago
    It looks like the parent went to a different school than UofC.
  - jackcarter 7y ago
    It was $39,381 in 2009, $58,230 in 2019 [1]. These are tuition-only, exclusive of room & board, books, etc. The $100k figure is a projection for 2025. [1] https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/university-of-chicago/cost-of-attendance/ https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/university-of-c...
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    From here: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/university-announces-increases-2010-11-undergraduate-tuition-and-financial-aid https://news.uchicago.edu/story/university-announces-increas... "The total cost of undergraduate education for the 2010-11 school year will be $53,244; of that amount, tuition is $40,188, and the remaining $13,056 is for room, board and fees. For about 60 percent of students, that cost is significantly reduced through need- or merit-based aid. And for the 49 percent of undergraduate students receiving need-based aid, the average amount of grant assistance from all sources, though not yet final, will be more than $35,000 per student in the coming year." So you are correct.
  - quaquaqua1 7y ago
    I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which had a "total cost of attendance" for out of state students at $40,000 in 2010. For in state students it was only $15,000 per year. I came from a "middle class" family and received "grants" from the school, such that my cost of attendance per year averaged to $25,000. Ever since I graduated, not a single person has ever asked me anything regarding my education, and I currently make $93,000 per year as a front end dev. Strange times!!
    - barneygumble742 7y ago
      Same here. I paid roughly $5k/year for undergrad and about $10k/year for grad. After graduation, only reason people ask me where I went to school was to see where it ranked in college sports. Since my school barely registered, it's easily dismissed. Even better for me since I don't follow sports. What I did find more interesting is that it all depends on your work ethic and how you carry yourself at the workplace. My lack of interest in sports has hindered me at work slightly because I'm not part of certain groups at work. I've come to find out that they all participate in fantasy sports and meet on Saturdays to talk sports and a little bit of work gets involved. Usually I wouldn't care but some important work-related decisions have come out of that.
      - quaquaqua1 7y ago
        Oh my god this. It's cancer. I had to learn all thse obscure facts about things I care about just to have a baseline credibility with those types of people. It's a hazing ritual similar to data structures and algorithms, but one is certainly more useful than the other.
        leotaku 7y ago
        > It's a hazing ritual similar to data structures and algorithms What do you mean by that? Genuinely curious.
        quaquaqua1 7y ago
sorenn111 7y ago
One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, and espouse generally liberal views then turn around and having tuition costs that having been rising at rates so far above inflation. Student debt is a major issue in the US and the ever increasing costs of tuition are a MAJOR culprit in pushing this crisis. Where are these costs coming from? How can you politically espouse free college while ratcheting up tuition costs?
- Finnucane 7y ago
  I work at one local university, and my wife works at another. One thing we've definitely noticed (and this is a widespread problem) is that the administration is becoming more top-heavy. There are cutbacks in faculty, support, and teaching staff, more reliance on adjuncts (academic temps, basically), and so on, while central administration grows. Expensive new buildings contribute, but less than people suppose. But that is a tangential problem, in that wealthy donors want to give big gifts for vanity projects rather than to, say, scholarship funds.
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    Ahh, the iron law of bureaucracy at work. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
  - wtvanhest 7y ago
    Yes, admin is a problem, but its not just admin. If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Colleges need dramatic, across the board cost cutting including professors, admins etc. Colleges are in for a world of pain in the next 50 years.
    - Finnucane 7y ago
      >If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Also, how much of your funding comes from unsavory sources like Jeffrey Epstein and the Saudi government.
nothrabannosir 7y ago
Honest question from an outsider: how realistic would it be for the government to stop guaranteeing student loans over a "public university" (community college?) level threshold? What are the unintended secondary effects? Would it help curb wild-growth of tuition fees?
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  It probably depends, more than anything else, on how much lobbying money is available to help convince our friends at Capitol Hill to keep the gravy train rolling.
- LanceH 7y ago
  The very first step should be to make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    Ah, I always assumed that was the same thing. Thanks. What I mean is: treating student loans (at least above community college tuition levels) like any other loan.
  - wtvanhest 7y ago
    I think the easy solution is to make loans over 20k dischargable. That would allow for some borrowing, but pretty soon that would be the max cost.
  - bluedevil2k 7y ago
    This would be a mistake I think. The nature of a loan is that the lender can reclaim the asset when a default occurs. This works well for assets like cars and houses but obviously fails for knowledge. Combine that with the age and overall assets of graduates (22 and near-zero) and a bankruptcy becomes a less risky proposition to the student. As more and more default on the loans, interest rates will start to skyrocket, to the point that no one will be able to afford one at all.
    - 7y ago
geogra4 7y ago
It's one thing for private universities to cost so much, but there needs to be a tuition free public option.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  That exists to some extent in 26 states, though generally at the community college (associates degree, 2 year) level: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2018-02-01/these-states-offer-tuition-free-college-programs https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...
  - geogra4 7y ago
    I've lived in many states in my life and none of them has had that so this is news to me. Still should be some kind of national program I think.
randyrand 7y ago
higher stocker price and more discounts + aid. It’s the clothing store pricing model.
bluetidepro 7y ago
Is University of Chicago even that good? Genuinely curious, as I know nothing about it. I live here in Chicago, and feel like I never hear about it, compared to say Northwestern or like UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago). Why would anyone ever pay that much for college yearly, if it wasn't like the #1 school, by a landslide, in the US? EDIT: I guess it is good? haha The more you know. Just surprising that I've been here in Chicago for almost 10 years now, and feel like I never hear about it compared to other colleges in the city. Maybe it's cause they aren't downtown or something? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- sorenn111 7y ago
  From US News, its #6 in national rankings so its pretty good. But the way the economy is structured around knowledge work and with the effect of credential signalling, our society is convinced of the need to get into the best school possible. This belief could be utter bullshit, have some truth (top rated schools teach better), or be somewhere in between. What is probably very true is that getting into a top school is a signal that you did very well in the competition of getting into a good school. And employers absolutely pay attention to where you went. so getting into a good school becomes a societal self fulfilling prophecy in terms of importance.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    According to US News, University of Chicago is "Unranked in Best Engineering Schools". https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/university-of-chicago-02453 https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering... The high school student needs to ask the question, "where is the best place to get a undergraduate degree in a specific field"? Generic rankings, especially ones that are heavily influenced by the university's research record, are pretty useless for undergraduate education quality.
    - OrangeMango 7y ago
      The University of Chicago doesn't have an engineering school, per say. They recently started a "School of Molecular Engineering" with a large donation from the governor of Illinois. But that is certainly not a general engineering school and isn't going to be, so it will never show up in these kind of ratings. > Our program was established as the Institute for Molecular Engineering in 2011 by the University in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory. In 2019, in recognition of our success, impact and expansion, and the support of the Pritzker Foundation, the institute was elevated to the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering—the first school in the nation dedicated to this emerging field. > At PME, our educational outreach initiatives begin with K-12 students. We offer youth-focused events, internships, and workshops throughout the year, from teaching molecular engineering fundamentals to extracting DNA from bananas. We also have a partnership with City Colleges of Chicago. The multi-year program connects city college students interested in STEM fields with our faculty and labs, with the goal of helping more students transfer into four-year STEM degree programs. https://pme.uchicago.edu/about/ https://pme.uchicago.edu/about/
chrischattin 7y ago
How to fix student loans... The .gov backs student loans. And, they are non-dischargeable. So, it is zero risk for the lender to give loan to the 2.7 GPA moron getting a worthless basket weaving degree from the local private lib arts school for $100k. So, they give as many loans as possible, since they can't lose (taxpayer on the hook). Colleges are incentivized to drive up costs of tuition b/c tons of free money. It's a classic moral hazard created by .gov guaranteeing the loans. Same thing we saw in the housing crisis. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy or take away the .gov guarantee and watch the market for student loans for worthless degrees dry up and tuition costs plummet.
- seiferteric 7y ago
  This is my thought as well. These universities have had very little incentive to cut costs for a long time and have padded out administrators and built opulent and unnecessary facilities driving costs ever upward. Universities used to be little more than professors and classrooms with very few administrators.
  - 1shooner 7y ago
    >Universities used to be little more than professors and classrooms with very few administrators. Correct. There was also no IT, counseling, healthcare, Title IX, and secondary public education was functional. Things are different now.
    - seiferteric 7y ago
      Why do those things have to be a part of a university?
    - nitwit005 7y ago
      I wish it was getting spent on IT, counseling, healthcare and other practical services. Somehow I doubt the tiny staff at my university clinic, or the four IT people, were soaking all that money up.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
nixass 7y ago
On the other hand, TUM (technical university in Munich) costs only 220 euro per semester, and you're still enrolled into top25 university in the world. The land of free..
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  How am I supposed to buy my way in there if I have to compete with the entirety of society for admissions??!!
  - nixass 7y ago
    Be good student perhaps? You'd rather have a bunch of money loaded people than people who earned their spot?
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      It’s a joke, but there’s no doubt people that have benefitted from the barrier to entry being cost.
- haditab 7y ago
  That's impressive. As someone who works in Robotics, I rate them very highly. Does it cost the same for international students?
  - DominikPeters 7y ago
    Yep, there are no additional fees. https://www.tum.de/en/studies/fees-and-financial-aid/ https://www.tum.de/en/studies/fees-and-financial-aid/ Compared to the U.S. situation, it's funny to see universities talking about financial aid for those that cannot afford the yearly fee of €258.80. Note that many other things are also vastly cheaper at German universities; for example textbook prices are reasonable, on-campus dining is dirt cheap, etc.
- rayiner 7y ago
  TUM has a $1.1 billion budget and 41,000 students. Chicago has a $2.6 billion budget and 16,000 students.
duxup 7y ago
>But fewer students are paying the full tuition. Is anyone paying the sticker price and if so what is their financial state / considerations?
- interlocutor 7y ago
  If you work for FAANG your kids have to pay full tuition because scholarships vanish when you have $250K or more in annual income.
agent008t 7y ago
How can these universities be so expensive, if you can instead go to a just-as-good university in the UK for a fraction of the cost, even as a foreign student? Why does anyone agree to pay such fees?
- adrr 7y ago
  You can attend a public university in the US for a fraction of the cost. UCLA is $12,000 a year for tuition. You can also do two years at a community college which costs almost nothing like $50 a credit and transfer to a 4 year university for the the remaining two years.
  - interlocutor 7y ago
    If you add room and board UCLA is $65,000 for out-of-state students: http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/budget.htm http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/budget.htm Compare that to $74,000 for Stanford. Suddenly Stanford looks not so bad! https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/index.html https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/index.htm...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- matz1 7y ago
  The title is kind a click bait. The content is actually about very few actually pay for the sticker price. In essence the sticker price is becoming kind a meaningless.
- DominikPeters 7y ago
  Oxford (UK) tuition for overseas students is $35-45k/year (and people generally pay sticker price), so not radically cheaper, though you get the B.A. in 3 years not 4. Other EU countries are much cheaper, but with a language barrier (except maybe NL).
  - agent008t 7y ago
skywhopper 7y ago
The data is this article are pretty misleadingly framed. The only time they quote the current cost, they use the base tuition number of $57,642. In the next sentence they say that in six years the cost is projected to be over $100,000. But the latter number includes all additional costs: tuition, room and board, books, fees, supplies, transportation, and living expenses. The former number is just tuition. UChicago is crazy expensive, but it's not doubling in cost in the next six years.
ChaosDegenerate 7y ago
Graduating in Europe with Master's that cost me nothing, I always feel so bad thinking about the debt my coworkers who studied in the US have to repay. It's just so wrong and stupid. On top of that I can always go back "home" to get free healthcare too. US is (at times) so much better when you are an immigrant. And then so many (who actually have student loans to repay and expensive healthcare to pay for) feel sorry for me because of discrimination (perceived only by them!)
- fooker 7y ago
  Same here, got free education in my home country, upto a Masters. Came to the US for a PhD, also free (+ a small stipend and internships). I just don't see undergrad education here being a good deal.
pojntfx 7y ago
Why not just do it like any other developed country on earth, make the universities public and drop tuition altogether. Works very well here in Germany.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Conservatives in America literally liken such proposals to the socialist takeover of America, with the actual belief that authoritarianism and basic social programs are inescapably intertwined. So half the country is resisting those sorts of programs with all of their might.
- sgregnt 7y ago
  Compared to USA Germany is a relatively poor, so it doesn't work, you see.
ttcbj 7y ago
For those interested in background on this, Paul Tough's 'The Years that Matter Most'[1] has a lot of really interesting, surprising facts about college admissions. Many of the ideas touched on in the comments here so far are covered in much more detail in that book. One interesting fact is that although there is a lot of publicity from colleges about reaching out to lower income students, there are massive incentives (often necessities) for admissions offices to take less qualified kids who can pay full price. Overall, I found the book a nuanced and surprising view of the realities of trying to manage college admissions, and of trying to deal with inequality in access to higher education. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Years-That-Matter-Most-College/dp/0544944488/ref=sr_1_2?crid=C8FMCYCPK4UT&keywords=paul+tough&qid=1572885672&s=books&sprefix=Paul+TOugh%2Caps%2C154&sr=1-2 https://www.amazon.com/Years-That-Matter-Most-College/dp/054...
- lonelappde 7y ago
  People who pay "full price" are paying extra for the poor students. Schools need both.
chimi 7y ago
Throughout history, every time loans are invented to pay for something, the price skyrockets. House, Cars, Education... except credit cards. What credit cards did is flatten the salary curve, filling the gap between where salaries should be if they increased as much or more than inflation and the cost of living, with debt. Debt is a powerful tool when used correctly, but most people are unskilled in tool use, financial equations and themselves thus, debt is a Market for Lemons. Consumers do not know what they are buying. They are buying cash and paying for it with future income. People are generally more optimistic about their futures and irrationally excited about what they consume. The banks have been allowed to sell cash with impunity. We have to stop that. We're just cooking the books as an entire society.
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  "People are generally more optimistic about their futures and irrationally excited about what they consume." I don't think that's quite it. People get comfort from following a plan. Go to college, take a bunch of loans, and it will all work out. They think if it doesn't, someone will bail them out because they followed the plan. Everyone else is in the same boat anyway, and maybe one of them will find a solution, or they can band together and demand something from someone else. That doesn't line up with reality though. A lot of people do get left behind. The people with the "plan" are nowhere to be found, and were just repeating what worked for them without looking at the new numbers.
- wholepointofcc 7y ago
  > Debt is a powerful tool when used correctly, Could you expand on that? It's a very interesting perspective
  - FrozenTuna 7y ago
    Companies (and people) take on debt to invest in themselves, knowing the growth can (hopefully) pay off the debt and generate more income in the long run. Here's a fun list of companies with debt: https://wolfstreet.com/2019/07/26/the-most-indebted-companies-in-america/ https://wolfstreet.com/2019/07/26/the-most-indebted-companie... In the case of students, the idea is to take some debt now and pay it off with increased earnings. The problem is, those increased earnings aren't guaranteed and students are way worse at determining the return on their debt than companies with dedicated teams.
fortran77 7y ago
Why not!? If our next president will just wipe out student debt--without ending government backed loans--why not charge $1MM/year?
- asdfman123 7y ago
  I guess you're being downvoted for your sarcasm but I do think a giant uneven payoff is a bad idea and cheap populism. Part of the reason the price keeps going up is the ready availability of money via student loans.
misiti3780 7y ago
As a US citizen, I see the US debt bomb ending it two different ways 1. Sanders/Warren get elected and somehow forgive 1.5 trillion in student loans and make education free going forward. 2. 2008 level crisis with (2) is the more probable I think universities tuition is way too expensive in our country, but I'm against (1) currently because I don't think retroactively forgiving debt is a good policy. The students took those loans out, signed the docs, and knew (or should have known) what they were getting themselves into. I think forgiving all of the debt would be obviously ridiculously expensive (1.5 trillion is a lot of money) but also possibly creates moral hazard. I would be more supportive of (1) if the government took more of a "Canadian pharma industry" approach and just said "this is how much we will pay for this citizen to go to Harvard, take it or leave it". I have no faith that any of the current presidential candidates will be able to negotiate and pass that type of law, so I currently cant support (1). Is my line of thinking wrong here? I think education should be more affordable but have no faith we have leaders that can get us there.
- fortran77 7y ago
  I'm completely against forgiving student loans. I want to solve the problem, which means no more Government backed student loans. (I'm all for the Government building more low-cost public Universities, though.) But if they are going to forgive them, certainly the students who prided themselves on being the best and the brightest should have known better! Therefore, anyone in the top 10% of SAT scores or at the top 100 schools should not be eligible for discharge. If you're smart enough to get into Chicago or Harvard, you're smart enough to know how loans work.
  - mc3 7y ago
    In addition, forgiving loans is probably not practical - where is all the money going to come from? More tax or less spending on some other service.
  - asdfman123 7y ago
    I would be angry because I lived in the cheapest apartment I could and biked as much as I could until I paid everything off. Had I been less responsible, I would get more money under debt forgiveness. The incentives are inverted. I'm all for wealth redistribution but messing with incentives is shown over and over again to be a bad idea. Also, my perspective as the kind of frugal guy that everyone else calls cheap is that we live in the most rampantly consumerist society that has ever existed on the planet earth and we think we need all kinds of things that we really don't. I just can't stomach the idea of throwing money to people who knew what they signed up for but then decided paying back what they owed was too hard.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
UChicago 2011 graduate here. When I attended, I paid about $20k/year in tuition, given that I had various merit scholarships, worked for the university, and that my siblings also attended school. My parents were in for a RUDE awakening in my fourth year, however, when my brother graduated his undergraduate program...UChicago found out via a survey, that I was now the sole college attendee, and without warning they jacked the tuition from $20k to $32k for my final year. My parents were absolutely livid and it left a terrible taste in our mouths. I must say, it was not a pleasant undergraduate experience. On top of being expensive and working very long hours daily, it was immensely competitive and the social life was very poor for me. I have always had numerous friends in life, but I constantly felt lonely at that school, not to mention receiving MUCH worse marks due to grade deflation, which made medical school applications a nightmare. In hindsight, I absolutely should have gone to my state school, and I'd be a Tesla and a Steinway piano richer for it if I had. I think these ridiculously expensive, 4 year educational vacations need to end...let's encourage our young, bright minds to stay local, to save money, and to use their brightness and talents to lead very productive and EFFICIENT lives.
- mortivore 7y ago
  I'm curious what you think could have convinced you to attend a state school as opposed to where you went? Did you know the state school was a viable option at the time? Did your parents push you toward a state school, were they upfront with you about the cost difference? I agree with your last line, but am unsure how we would best implement that as a practicality. Young people tend not to always think in the most efficient ways, and parents aren't always knowledgeable nor around to help.
  - asdff 7y ago
    One thing I remember from my college admission process years ago was how overhyped it all was, especially the soap opera aspect. Everything was about numbers, and where you would get in, and where you would 'fit,' which was far more ambiguous, sinister, and completely unrooted in any logic or reasoning because you just aren't going to ever understand what your personal experience will be like until you get there. Fretting about 'fit' keeps schools like u chicago alive. A radically unwise decision in pursuit of some romantic youthful ideal. Otherwise, everyone would just go to a state school, have largely the same college experience, end up with largely the same career outcomes, but with far less debt.
phkahler 7y ago
Let's assume a full time student taking 4 courses at a time. A professor might (should) be able to teach 4 classes. I'm not sure how much profs make, but let's assume between 1 and 3 students could pay them. Now where does the money from all the other students in the classes go? Sure, there's admin overhead, room costs, etc, but that stuff is hopefully less than the prof costs. So 6 students max to cover costs for a class. Where does the money go from all the others?
- ohazi 7y ago
  > Sure, there's admin overhead, room costs, etc, but that stuff is hopefully less than the prof costs. Not by a long shot.
oliwarner 7y ago
But why? Why does it cost as much as a full time teacher to get extremely part time access to university faculty? This stinks.
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
They don't even have big time athletics and facilites, do they? And probably a huge endowment that if properly applied would remove any need of tuition.
stefano 7y ago
What I find funny in these discussions on HN is how most people seem to be completely oblivious to the obvious solution, proven to work in many developed countries around the world: have the state directly fund universities and don't charge tuition to students (or charge them a small amount). Why is the assumption "universities are private endeavours that should make a profit" something that goes unchallenged on HN?
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  The US has state funded universities that charge an order of magnitude less than 100k. In fact there are 3 of them in Chicago. Generally, anyone with acceptable high school grades can find a spot in a state university if they want. Students attending U of Chicago would have specifically decided not to attend a state university, typically because their local state university is less prestigious.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    I’m not sure Chicago State is going to be around much longer...
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      I buy it. I'm just going off the Wikipedia list, I don't actually know anything about Chicago.
  - wolco 7y ago
    U of Chicago doesn't have the prestigious rep that other schools who are charging less do. Is this a way of increasing their prestige?
- gtirloni 7y ago
  The US is traditionally against socialist ideas.
  - brycesbeard 7y ago
codedokode 7y ago
The prices in USA look exorbitant. If a worker works full year for minimum wage, they earn $7.25 * 8 * 253 = $14674. Such worker will have to work for 6 years and 9 months to pay tuition costs for 1 year, if we assume that they don't have to pay taxes, buy food, visit a doctor and pay the rent. A house may cost several hundred thousands dollars or higher. If that worker has paid for a university, no way they will be able to buy a house in their remaining lifespan. Who is going to study in this university? Billionaires' kids?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Or those with scholarships.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  Minimum wage in Chicago is $12, not that it makes a huge difference in the math. I think you can make the argument that if someone is going to be making minimum wage after getting their degree, they should go to a cheaper school like a community college or a trade school. Or just start working right out of high school.
- war1025 7y ago
  Private school tuition is the same as healthcare in the US. Everything has an enormous sticker price for anyone who asks, but no one is expected to actually pay that amount. And if you do pay that amount, it's just because you're a sucker who didn't get in on the fact that it's just a made up number. Rich kids may pay that amount, but it probably gets flipped around into some tax-advantaged "donation" that also helps people feel good about themselves. Poor people get "scholarships", which are really just the university cutting the sticker price down to what they actually need from the person, with some creative shuffling of funds to make it look like they are paying "sticker price". Healthcare works exactly the same. The key is to have enough layers of bureaucracy that no one can quite figure it all out.
Carioca 7y ago
At what point doesn't it just become feasible to hire a full-time tutor?
- Someone1234 7y ago
  The point of college is a name and certificate. If it was about actual education and learning, we'd see online classes with in-person exams in the forefront. So, never? A tutor cannot give you a magic piece of "job qualification" paper.
alkonaut 7y ago
I can’t imagine paying $100k even for a 4- or 5 year degree. My student loans (zero tuition, only food/rent/books) was $35k for 5 years I think. I have paid over $200/month for 15 years and I’ll be done paying it back this year. I just can’t even imagine my calculation if the loan had been 10x. My US paycheck would certainly be bigger, but I still fail to see how it could be a good investment.
- Kalium 7y ago
  Chicago is one of the private schools where the sticker price is essentially fictional. There may be a small number of students each year from wealthy families who pay that, but I'm reasonably sure it's nowhere near what the average student actually pays.
kingkawn 7y ago
High tuition costs and loan burdens were and are an integral part of the de-radicalization of American college students.
gok 7y ago
The key is in the subtitle: > But fewer students are paying the full tuition Any seller who can legally charge different prices based on means is under impossibly strong pressure to exercise that power. Universities do this by having "full" tuition rates that almost no one pays.
tanilama 7y ago
How come it can be this expensive? Can't see how a degree would worth 400k seriously
jimbob45 7y ago
I see a lot of people telling everyone to just go to another university if the one you want is too expensive or isn't up your standard in the degree you're chasing. Remember that out-of-state tuition effectively bars students from attending any university outside of their state and, if you're in a smallish state like Oregon, your options can be pretty limited, particularly if you'd like to stay in one geographical region.
- Vysero 7y ago
  Not really, out of state tuition per term at Montana state university Bozeman (go cats!) is only 6k/term.
  - panzagl 7y ago
    Don't know when you went, but Montana State is more than that now.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Which state schools have out-of-state tuition rates north of 100k a year? Not all of them, that's for sure. U of Chicago is notable for how expensive it is, meaning that virtually any other option is a cheaper option, almost certainly including out of state tuition in another state. > "particularly if you'd like to stay in one geographical region." A luxury I can scarcely comprehend...
- triceratops 7y ago
  Go to community college for a year in the state that you want to go to college to, become a resident, and also complete some pre-reqs for cheap in the meanwhile.
IronWolve 7y ago
How does a 400k degree compare to a state ran online degree for 24k? http://www.wgu.edu http://www.wgu.edu as an example.
ilamont 7y ago
It's not stated, so I assume that the current "all in" cost is about $75-80k. Some private universities in the Boston area are not far behind, including Brandeis, BU, BC, Tufts, and I believe MIT. I have a high school senior and have been visiting many schools across the U.S. and Canada since last summer. The schools with sky-high all-in costs are not even consideration. If they lop off $10k-$15k per year, we will still be paying a quarter of a million dollars for a four-year education. There are no guarantees of this, either, considering grades and our middle class AGI. The schools we have looked at are mostly public. Our in-state dream option, UMass Amherst, is "only" ~$30k/year all in, but is now super-competitive, likely because of outrageous private college costs driving families to the affordable options. The only comparable values are the schools we have seen in Canada - University of Ottawa, Carleton University, and Concordia. Out-of-state public universities for out of state students in New England (URI, UConn, UVM) plus Pitt and Temple are generally high 40s/low 50s. CU Boulder was mid-upper 50s. I can't remember UCSD but it in that range, plus travel considerations.
- tzs 7y ago
  > I have a high school senior and have been visiting many schools across the U.S. and Canada since last summer. The schools with sky-high all-in costs are not even consideration. If they lop off $10k-$15k per year, we will still be paying a quarter of a million dollars for a four-year education. There are no guarantees of this, either, considering grades and our middle class AGI. You might want to reconsider those "schools with sky-high all-in costs". Many of them have very generous non-loan aid packages, which for many people can actually bring the effective cost below those of state schools. For example, take Harvard, which totals about $74k/year. A family of 3 (2 parents, 1 child) with $160k/year gross income only ends up having to cover $25k/year. A similar family with $120k/year pays $13k/year. They have a net price calculator here [1] if you want to see what it would cost you. [1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...
  - ilamont 7y ago
    I've seen private schools promoting such aid, but for most there is no clarity on A) whether your student will qualify and B) what the amount will be over the 4-year period. I've heard from friends with students already in college that there are often ad hoc negotiations between parents and financial aid offices about the size of the discount, which is frustrating, unfair, and open to abuse.
alpineidyll3 7y ago
Ouch! The ole Alma mater ain't what she used to be.
AcerbicZero 7y ago
The vast majority of jobs/careers/professions do not require sitting in a classroom for 4 years to learn enough to do them. Even less require sitting in an extremely expensive classroom for 4 years. At the same time learning has never been more accessible. I can study Python, mechanical engineering, calculus, aviation ground school, etc all without leaving the house if I wanted. So how does a commodity like education, which is basically free for the people who want to learn, increase in price?
- munificent 7y ago
  You're assuming the entire point of college is to make you a worker. But a lberal arts education has always been about making you a complete human. If nothing else, it's important for citizens to be well-rounded enough to be informed voters.
  - comicjk 7y ago
    If some more education is needed to make people informed voters, maybe we should add a couple more years to the end of high school. Effectively, community college for all. After all, we expect everyone to be a voter, not just those who go to college.
contingencies 7y ago
A few years ago an American friend told me the cost of his masters at Colombia was about USD$180K for 1 year, taking all expenses in to consideration. Journalism.... insane... no way that money is coming back without a pivot to public policy!
whafro 7y ago
One big problem here is that they'll be rewarded in the rankings. A bit part of the various rankings models (US News, etc) is how much money is spent on each student. So squandering $10k more on students next year is, in certain respects, a good investment for a university with decent cash flow. And the question of how much money is spent on a student can be disconnected from the question of tuition, at least at top-tier schools: At my alma mater, Bowdoin, the college spends just shy of $100k per student each year. The comprehensive fee (incl. room & board) is around $72k per year, and for students qualifying for financial aid (abour half), the college provides grants that bring it down to about $24k per year, which almost resembles something sensible. But if you're a donor, and you give an unrestricted gift to a top-tier college or university, there should be absolutely no expectation that your donation will be spent frugally. In fact, for rankings purposes (which help all the cash flow stuff above), it just matters that it gets raised and spent. I think this is one of the biggest problems in American higher ed, and I'm hoping there are a few institutions with the fortitude of character to stand against it and work toward, rather than against, a cost-effective education model in the US.
svanwaa 7y ago
The liberal arts college my wife teaches at recently introduced a more "transparent" tuition pricing scheme. Advertised price $18,600 down from $38,600! https://news.central.edu/2019/09/central-announces-new-tuition/ https://news.central.edu/2019/09/central-announces-new-tuiti...
rubidium 7y ago
More people need to talk about what Purdue is doing. They’ve held tuition constant for 8 years since Mitch Daniels took over. https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q1/purdue-announces-ongoing-tuition-freeze,-staff-appreciation-payment-for-west-lafayette-campus.html https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q1/purdue-anno...
bluedino 7y ago
Is there any data on what % of student loans are spent on things other than tuition? You have things that could be school-related like laptops but then you have kids paying credit cards with student loan money.
every 7y ago
No degree, no matter how gold-plated, is worth $400K. Go to a community college, get a degree in accounting or whatever and spend the rest of your life laughing at the idiots still paying off their tuition debt...
j_m_b 7y ago
Are we ready to admit that government-backed, non-defaultable student loans are a bad idea?
andutu 7y ago
I'm a student attending UT Dallas. Not only am I in the honors programs there, but I also have an AES scholarship which grants me a stipend of $3,000 per semester. I know several people who've gotten into prestigious institutions such as John Hopkins who are going to UTD instead. It's not like options don't exist. Yeah UTD isn't some brand name, but it's a good starting point. I blame universities to some degree for this problem, but I also blame consumers. I was once a starry-eyed high school student who applied to the likes of CMU and got rejected from all save UTD and A&M, with A&M basically giving me nothing. People realize that these schools open doors through elite social connections, more so than say UTD, but you can still network outside these elite institutions, it'll just be a little harder.
gigatexal 7y ago
A year?! Sheesh. Things are getting out of control.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Communitivity 7y ago
Not Harvard, not Yale, not MIT, not Cornell...but U of Chicago? Why would they be able to charge so much more than the other big name schools? It may very well be they have a specialty they are the best in that I'm not aware of. Also, if you are in Maryland take advantage of the MD program that lets you pay your kids college while they're in high school and lock in the college price as of when you enroll in the program. At the average 8% rate of college price increases you could save around %57 of the money you'd pay otherwise.
adipandas 7y ago
Education should not be this expensive. If at all, it can be competitive. But it should be available and affordable to all. U of Chicago is not a best place to be in.
prirun 7y ago
This comment stood out: "It also manages a staff that receives more than $1 billion in salary, $230 million of which is for its roughly 1,350 instructional staff and faculty, according to federal data for 2017-18. Producing and employing Nobel laureates does not come cheap." In other words, only 25% of expense is for instructional staff and faculty, while 75% is not. I'd love to know how much of the $750M salary goes to administrative execs who don't actual do anything.
mister_hn 7y ago
I still fail to understand why in US the university is so expensive, compared to 99% of universities in Europe. Not even private universities in Europe are so expensive like there, plus there are countries where university is free (e.g. Germany). Is the American Dream just the one who wants their kids don't go to university because it's so much expensive? The boomer generation has really broken it. Imagine now that millennials could not send their kids to colleges because of the high tuition fee, connected to low salaries. It's a system that has its destiny doomed and that a day will collapse badly

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quaquaqua1 7y ago

And to think that the benefit of the education has not changed since when I attended a similar school for a total cost of $25,000 per year just 10 years ago.

mac01021 7y ago
Surely UofChicago did not cost so little 10 years ago? A factor of 4 in ten years does not seem realistic.
- kmano8 7y ago
  It looks like the parent went to a different school than UofC.
- jackcarter 7y ago
  It was $39,381 in 2009, $58,230 in 2019 [1]. These are tuition-only, exclusive of room & board, books, etc. The $100k figure is a projection for 2025. [1] https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/university-of-chicago/cost-of-attendance/ https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/university-of-c...
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  From here: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/university-announces-increases-2010-11-undergraduate-tuition-and-financial-aid https://news.uchicago.edu/story/university-announces-increas... "The total cost of undergraduate education for the 2010-11 school year will be $53,244; of that amount, tuition is $40,188, and the remaining $13,056 is for room, board and fees. For about 60 percent of students, that cost is significantly reduced through need- or merit-based aid. And for the 49 percent of undergraduate students receiving need-based aid, the average amount of grant assistance from all sources, though not yet final, will be more than $35,000 per student in the coming year." So you are correct.
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which had a "total cost of attendance" for out of state students at $40,000 in 2010. For in state students it was only $15,000 per year. I came from a "middle class" family and received "grants" from the school, such that my cost of attendance per year averaged to $25,000. Ever since I graduated, not a single person has ever asked me anything regarding my education, and I currently make $93,000 per year as a front end dev. Strange times!!
  - barneygumble742 7y ago
    Same here. I paid roughly $5k/year for undergrad and about $10k/year for grad. After graduation, only reason people ask me where I went to school was to see where it ranked in college sports. Since my school barely registered, it's easily dismissed. Even better for me since I don't follow sports. What I did find more interesting is that it all depends on your work ethic and how you carry yourself at the workplace. My lack of interest in sports has hindered me at work slightly because I'm not part of certain groups at work. I've come to find out that they all participate in fantasy sports and meet on Saturdays to talk sports and a little bit of work gets involved. Usually I wouldn't care but some important work-related decisions have come out of that.
    - quaquaqua1 7y ago
      Oh my god this. It's cancer. I had to learn all thse obscure facts about things I care about just to have a baseline credibility with those types of people. It's a hazing ritual similar to data structures and algorithms, but one is certainly more useful than the other.
      - leotaku 7y ago
        > It's a hazing ritual similar to data structures and algorithms What do you mean by that? Genuinely curious.
        quaquaqua1 7y ago

sorenn111 7y ago

One thing I find crazy is the very same institutions that are generally very left leaning, decry income inequality, and espouse generally liberal views then turn around and having tuition costs that having been rising at rates so far above inflation. Student debt is a major issue in the US and the ever increasing costs of tuition are a MAJOR culprit in pushing this crisis. Where are these costs coming from? How can you politically espouse free college while ratcheting up tuition costs?

Finnucane 7y ago
I work at one local university, and my wife works at another. One thing we've definitely noticed (and this is a widespread problem) is that the administration is becoming more top-heavy. There are cutbacks in faculty, support, and teaching staff, more reliance on adjuncts (academic temps, basically), and so on, while central administration grows. Expensive new buildings contribute, but less than people suppose. But that is a tangential problem, in that wealthy donors want to give big gifts for vanity projects rather than to, say, scholarship funds.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Ahh, the iron law of bureaucracy at work. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
- wtvanhest 7y ago
  Yes, admin is a problem, but its not just admin. If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Colleges need dramatic, across the board cost cutting including professors, admins etc. Colleges are in for a world of pain in the next 50 years.
  - Finnucane 7y ago
    >If you are a professor making 150k+, you have to ask yourself how much of your salary is being funded by rampant, unsustainable borrowing. Also, how much of your funding comes from unsavory sources like Jeffrey Epstein and the Saudi government.

nothrabannosir 7y ago

Honest question from an outsider: how realistic would it be for the government to stop guaranteeing student loans over a "public university" (community college?) level threshold? What are the unintended secondary effects? Would it help curb wild-growth of tuition fees?

mumblemumble 7y ago
It probably depends, more than anything else, on how much lobbying money is available to help convince our friends at Capitol Hill to keep the gravy train rolling.
LanceH 7y ago
The very first step should be to make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  Ah, I always assumed that was the same thing. Thanks. What I mean is: treating student loans (at least above community college tuition levels) like any other loan.
- wtvanhest 7y ago
  I think the easy solution is to make loans over 20k dischargable. That would allow for some borrowing, but pretty soon that would be the max cost.
- bluedevil2k 7y ago
  This would be a mistake I think. The nature of a loan is that the lender can reclaim the asset when a default occurs. This works well for assets like cars and houses but obviously fails for knowledge. Combine that with the age and overall assets of graduates (22 and near-zero) and a bankruptcy becomes a less risky proposition to the student. As more and more default on the loans, interest rates will start to skyrocket, to the point that no one will be able to afford one at all.
  - 7y ago

geogra4 7y ago

It's one thing for private universities to cost so much, but there needs to be a tuition free public option.

dredmorbius 7y ago
That exists to some extent in 26 states, though generally at the community college (associates degree, 2 year) level: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2018-02-01/these-states-offer-tuition-free-college-programs https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...
- geogra4 7y ago
  I've lived in many states in my life and none of them has had that so this is news to me. Still should be some kind of national program I think.

randyrand 7y ago

higher stocker price and more discounts + aid. It’s the clothing store pricing model.

bluetidepro 7y ago

Is University of Chicago even that good? Genuinely curious, as I know nothing about it. I live here in Chicago, and feel like I never hear about it, compared to say Northwestern or like UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago). Why would anyone ever pay that much for college yearly, if it wasn't like the #1 school, by a landslide, in the US? EDIT: I guess it is good? haha The more you know. Just surprising that I've been here in Chicago for almost 10 years now, and feel like I never hear about it compared to other colleges in the city. Maybe it's cause they aren't downtown or something? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sorenn111 7y ago
From US News, its #6 in national rankings so its pretty good. But the way the economy is structured around knowledge work and with the effect of credential signalling, our society is convinced of the need to get into the best school possible. This belief could be utter bullshit, have some truth (top rated schools teach better), or be somewhere in between. What is probably very true is that getting into a top school is a signal that you did very well in the competition of getting into a good school. And employers absolutely pay attention to where you went. so getting into a good school becomes a societal self fulfilling prophecy in terms of importance.
- Merrill 7y ago
  According to US News, University of Chicago is "Unranked in Best Engineering Schools". https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/university-of-chicago-02453 https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering... The high school student needs to ask the question, "where is the best place to get a undergraduate degree in a specific field"? Generic rankings, especially ones that are heavily influenced by the university's research record, are pretty useless for undergraduate education quality.
  - OrangeMango 7y ago
    The University of Chicago doesn't have an engineering school, per say. They recently started a "School of Molecular Engineering" with a large donation from the governor of Illinois. But that is certainly not a general engineering school and isn't going to be, so it will never show up in these kind of ratings. > Our program was established as the Institute for Molecular Engineering in 2011 by the University in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory. In 2019, in recognition of our success, impact and expansion, and the support of the Pritzker Foundation, the institute was elevated to the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering—the first school in the nation dedicated to this emerging field. > At PME, our educational outreach initiatives begin with K-12 students. We offer youth-focused events, internships, and workshops throughout the year, from teaching molecular engineering fundamentals to extracting DNA from bananas. We also have a partnership with City Colleges of Chicago. The multi-year program connects city college students interested in STEM fields with our faculty and labs, with the goal of helping more students transfer into four-year STEM degree programs. https://pme.uchicago.edu/about/ https://pme.uchicago.edu/about/

chrischattin 7y ago

How to fix student loans... The .gov backs student loans. And, they are non-dischargeable. So, it is zero risk for the lender to give loan to the 2.7 GPA moron getting a worthless basket weaving degree from the local private lib arts school for $100k. So, they give as many loans as possible, since they can't lose (taxpayer on the hook). Colleges are incentivized to drive up costs of tuition b/c tons of free money. It's a classic moral hazard created by .gov guaranteeing the loans. Same thing we saw in the housing crisis. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy or take away the .gov guarantee and watch the market for student loans for worthless degrees dry up and tuition costs plummet.

seiferteric 7y ago
This is my thought as well. These universities have had very little incentive to cut costs for a long time and have padded out administrators and built opulent and unnecessary facilities driving costs ever upward. Universities used to be little more than professors and classrooms with very few administrators.
- 1shooner 7y ago
  >Universities used to be little more than professors and classrooms with very few administrators. Correct. There was also no IT, counseling, healthcare, Title IX, and secondary public education was functional. Things are different now.
  - seiferteric 7y ago
    Why do those things have to be a part of a university?
  - nitwit005 7y ago
    I wish it was getting spent on IT, counseling, healthcare and other practical services. Somehow I doubt the tiny staff at my university clinic, or the four IT people, were soaking all that money up.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago

nixass 7y ago

On the other hand, TUM (technical university in Munich) costs only 220 euro per semester, and you're still enrolled into top25 university in the world. The land of free..

Scoundreller 7y ago
How am I supposed to buy my way in there if I have to compete with the entirety of society for admissions??!!
- nixass 7y ago
  Be good student perhaps? You'd rather have a bunch of money loaded people than people who earned their spot?
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    It’s a joke, but there’s no doubt people that have benefitted from the barrier to entry being cost.
haditab 7y ago
That's impressive. As someone who works in Robotics, I rate them very highly. Does it cost the same for international students?
- DominikPeters 7y ago
  Yep, there are no additional fees. https://www.tum.de/en/studies/fees-and-financial-aid/ https://www.tum.de/en/studies/fees-and-financial-aid/ Compared to the U.S. situation, it's funny to see universities talking about financial aid for those that cannot afford the yearly fee of €258.80. Note that many other things are also vastly cheaper at German universities; for example textbook prices are reasonable, on-campus dining is dirt cheap, etc.
rayiner 7y ago
TUM has a $1.1 billion budget and 41,000 students. Chicago has a $2.6 billion budget and 16,000 students.

duxup 7y ago

>But fewer students are paying the full tuition. Is anyone paying the sticker price and if so what is their financial state / considerations?

interlocutor 7y ago
If you work for FAANG your kids have to pay full tuition because scholarships vanish when you have $250K or more in annual income.

agent008t 7y ago

How can these universities be so expensive, if you can instead go to a just-as-good university in the UK for a fraction of the cost, even as a foreign student? Why does anyone agree to pay such fees?

adrr 7y ago
You can attend a public university in the US for a fraction of the cost. UCLA is $12,000 a year for tuition. You can also do two years at a community college which costs almost nothing like $50 a credit and transfer to a 4 year university for the the remaining two years.
- interlocutor 7y ago
  If you add room and board UCLA is $65,000 for out-of-state students: http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/budget.htm http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/budget.htm Compare that to $74,000 for Stanford. Suddenly Stanford looks not so bad! https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/index.html https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/index.htm...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
matz1 7y ago
The title is kind a click bait. The content is actually about very few actually pay for the sticker price. In essence the sticker price is becoming kind a meaningless.
DominikPeters 7y ago
Oxford (UK) tuition for overseas students is $35-45k/year (and people generally pay sticker price), so not radically cheaper, though you get the B.A. in 3 years not 4. Other EU countries are much cheaper, but with a language barrier (except maybe NL).
- agent008t 7y ago

skywhopper 7y ago

The data is this article are pretty misleadingly framed. The only time they quote the current cost, they use the base tuition number of $57,642. In the next sentence they say that in six years the cost is projected to be over $100,000. But the latter number includes all additional costs: tuition, room and board, books, fees, supplies, transportation, and living expenses. The former number is just tuition. UChicago is crazy expensive, but it's not doubling in cost in the next six years.

ChaosDegenerate 7y ago

Graduating in Europe with Master's that cost me nothing, I always feel so bad thinking about the debt my coworkers who studied in the US have to repay. It's just so wrong and stupid. On top of that I can always go back "home" to get free healthcare too. US is (at times) so much better when you are an immigrant. And then so many (who actually have student loans to repay and expensive healthcare to pay for) feel sorry for me because of discrimination (perceived only by them!)

fooker 7y ago
Same here, got free education in my home country, upto a Masters. Came to the US for a PhD, also free (+ a small stipend and internships). I just don't see undergrad education here being a good deal.

pojntfx 7y ago

Why not just do it like any other developed country on earth, make the universities public and drop tuition altogether. Works very well here in Germany.

asdfman123 7y ago
Conservatives in America literally liken such proposals to the socialist takeover of America, with the actual belief that authoritarianism and basic social programs are inescapably intertwined. So half the country is resisting those sorts of programs with all of their might.
sgregnt 7y ago
Compared to USA Germany is a relatively poor, so it doesn't work, you see.

ttcbj 7y ago

For those interested in background on this, Paul Tough's 'The Years that Matter Most'[1] has a lot of really interesting, surprising facts about college admissions. Many of the ideas touched on in the comments here so far are covered in much more detail in that book. One interesting fact is that although there is a lot of publicity from colleges about reaching out to lower income students, there are massive incentives (often necessities) for admissions offices to take less qualified kids who can pay full price. Overall, I found the book a nuanced and surprising view of the realities of trying to manage college admissions, and of trying to deal with inequality in access to higher education. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Years-That-Matter-Most-College/dp/0544944488/ref=sr_1_2?crid=C8FMCYCPK4UT&keywords=paul+tough&qid=1572885672&s=books&sprefix=Paul+TOugh%2Caps%2C154&sr=1-2 https://www.amazon.com/Years-That-Matter-Most-College/dp/054...

lonelappde 7y ago
People who pay "full price" are paying extra for the poor students. Schools need both.

chimi 7y ago

Throughout history, every time loans are invented to pay for something, the price skyrockets. House, Cars, Education... except credit cards. What credit cards did is flatten the salary curve, filling the gap between where salaries should be if they increased as much or more than inflation and the cost of living, with debt. Debt is a powerful tool when used correctly, but most people are unskilled in tool use, financial equations and themselves thus, debt is a Market for Lemons. Consumers do not know what they are buying. They are buying cash and paying for it with future income. People are generally more optimistic about their futures and irrationally excited about what they consume. The banks have been allowed to sell cash with impunity. We have to stop that. We're just cooking the books as an entire society.

jeffdavis 7y ago
"People are generally more optimistic about their futures and irrationally excited about what they consume." I don't think that's quite it. People get comfort from following a plan. Go to college, take a bunch of loans, and it will all work out. They think if it doesn't, someone will bail them out because they followed the plan. Everyone else is in the same boat anyway, and maybe one of them will find a solution, or they can band together and demand something from someone else. That doesn't line up with reality though. A lot of people do get left behind. The people with the "plan" are nowhere to be found, and were just repeating what worked for them without looking at the new numbers.
wholepointofcc 7y ago
> Debt is a powerful tool when used correctly, Could you expand on that? It's a very interesting perspective
- FrozenTuna 7y ago
  Companies (and people) take on debt to invest in themselves, knowing the growth can (hopefully) pay off the debt and generate more income in the long run. Here's a fun list of companies with debt: https://wolfstreet.com/2019/07/26/the-most-indebted-companies-in-america/ https://wolfstreet.com/2019/07/26/the-most-indebted-companie... In the case of students, the idea is to take some debt now and pay it off with increased earnings. The problem is, those increased earnings aren't guaranteed and students are way worse at determining the return on their debt than companies with dedicated teams.

fortran77 7y ago

Why not!? If our next president will just wipe out student debt--without ending government backed loans--why not charge $1MM/year?

asdfman123 7y ago
I guess you're being downvoted for your sarcasm but I do think a giant uneven payoff is a bad idea and cheap populism. Part of the reason the price keeps going up is the ready availability of money via student loans.

misiti3780 7y ago

As a US citizen, I see the US debt bomb ending it two different ways 1. Sanders/Warren get elected and somehow forgive 1.5 trillion in student loans and make education free going forward. 2. 2008 level crisis with (2) is the more probable I think universities tuition is way too expensive in our country, but I'm against (1) currently because I don't think retroactively forgiving debt is a good policy. The students took those loans out, signed the docs, and knew (or should have known) what they were getting themselves into. I think forgiving all of the debt would be obviously ridiculously expensive (1.5 trillion is a lot of money) but also possibly creates moral hazard. I would be more supportive of (1) if the government took more of a "Canadian pharma industry" approach and just said "this is how much we will pay for this citizen to go to Harvard, take it or leave it". I have no faith that any of the current presidential candidates will be able to negotiate and pass that type of law, so I currently cant support (1). Is my line of thinking wrong here? I think education should be more affordable but have no faith we have leaders that can get us there.

fortran77 7y ago
I'm completely against forgiving student loans. I want to solve the problem, which means no more Government backed student loans. (I'm all for the Government building more low-cost public Universities, though.) But if they are going to forgive them, certainly the students who prided themselves on being the best and the brightest should have known better! Therefore, anyone in the top 10% of SAT scores or at the top 100 schools should not be eligible for discharge. If you're smart enough to get into Chicago or Harvard, you're smart enough to know how loans work.
- mc3 7y ago
  In addition, forgiving loans is probably not practical - where is all the money going to come from? More tax or less spending on some other service.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  I would be angry because I lived in the cheapest apartment I could and biked as much as I could until I paid everything off. Had I been less responsible, I would get more money under debt forgiveness. The incentives are inverted. I'm all for wealth redistribution but messing with incentives is shown over and over again to be a bad idea. Also, my perspective as the kind of frugal guy that everyone else calls cheap is that we live in the most rampantly consumerist society that has ever existed on the planet earth and we think we need all kinds of things that we really don't. I just can't stomach the idea of throwing money to people who knew what they signed up for but then decided paying back what they owed was too hard.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

UChicago 2011 graduate here. When I attended, I paid about $20k/year in tuition, given that I had various merit scholarships, worked for the university, and that my siblings also attended school. My parents were in for a RUDE awakening in my fourth year, however, when my brother graduated his undergraduate program...UChicago found out via a survey, that I was now the sole college attendee, and without warning they jacked the tuition from $20k to $32k for my final year. My parents were absolutely livid and it left a terrible taste in our mouths. I must say, it was not a pleasant undergraduate experience. On top of being expensive and working very long hours daily, it was immensely competitive and the social life was very poor for me. I have always had numerous friends in life, but I constantly felt lonely at that school, not to mention receiving MUCH worse marks due to grade deflation, which made medical school applications a nightmare. In hindsight, I absolutely should have gone to my state school, and I'd be a Tesla and a Steinway piano richer for it if I had. I think these ridiculously expensive, 4 year educational vacations need to end...let's encourage our young, bright minds to stay local, to save money, and to use their brightness and talents to lead very productive and EFFICIENT lives.

mortivore 7y ago
I'm curious what you think could have convinced you to attend a state school as opposed to where you went? Did you know the state school was a viable option at the time? Did your parents push you toward a state school, were they upfront with you about the cost difference? I agree with your last line, but am unsure how we would best implement that as a practicality. Young people tend not to always think in the most efficient ways, and parents aren't always knowledgeable nor around to help.
- asdff 7y ago
  One thing I remember from my college admission process years ago was how overhyped it all was, especially the soap opera aspect. Everything was about numbers, and where you would get in, and where you would 'fit,' which was far more ambiguous, sinister, and completely unrooted in any logic or reasoning because you just aren't going to ever understand what your personal experience will be like until you get there. Fretting about 'fit' keeps schools like u chicago alive. A radically unwise decision in pursuit of some romantic youthful ideal. Otherwise, everyone would just go to a state school, have largely the same college experience, end up with largely the same career outcomes, but with far less debt.

phkahler 7y ago

Let's assume a full time student taking 4 courses at a time. A professor might (should) be able to teach 4 classes. I'm not sure how much profs make, but let's assume between 1 and 3 students could pay them. Now where does the money from all the other students in the classes go? Sure, there's admin overhead, room costs, etc, but that stuff is hopefully less than the prof costs. So 6 students max to cover costs for a class. Where does the money go from all the others?

ohazi 7y ago
> Sure, there's admin overhead, room costs, etc, but that stuff is hopefully less than the prof costs. Not by a long shot.

oliwarner 7y ago

But why? Why does it cost as much as a full time teacher to get extremely part time access to university faculty? This stinks.

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

They don't even have big time athletics and facilites, do they? And probably a huge endowment that if properly applied would remove any need of tuition.

stefano 7y ago

What I find funny in these discussions on HN is how most people seem to be completely oblivious to the obvious solution, proven to work in many developed countries around the world: have the state directly fund universities and don't charge tuition to students (or charge them a small amount). Why is the assumption "universities are private endeavours that should make a profit" something that goes unchallenged on HN?

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
The US has state funded universities that charge an order of magnitude less than 100k. In fact there are 3 of them in Chicago. Generally, anyone with acceptable high school grades can find a spot in a state university if they want. Students attending U of Chicago would have specifically decided not to attend a state university, typically because their local state university is less prestigious.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  I’m not sure Chicago State is going to be around much longer...
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I buy it. I'm just going off the Wikipedia list, I don't actually know anything about Chicago.
- wolco 7y ago
  U of Chicago doesn't have the prestigious rep that other schools who are charging less do. Is this a way of increasing their prestige?
gtirloni 7y ago
The US is traditionally against socialist ideas.
- brycesbeard 7y ago

codedokode 7y ago

The prices in USA look exorbitant. If a worker works full year for minimum wage, they earn $7.25 * 8 * 253 = $14674. Such worker will have to work for 6 years and 9 months to pay tuition costs for 1 year, if we assume that they don't have to pay taxes, buy food, visit a doctor and pay the rent. A house may cost several hundred thousands dollars or higher. If that worker has paid for a university, no way they will be able to buy a house in their remaining lifespan. Who is going to study in this university? Billionaires' kids?

saagarjha 7y ago
Or those with scholarships.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Rebelgecko 7y ago
Minimum wage in Chicago is $12, not that it makes a huge difference in the math. I think you can make the argument that if someone is going to be making minimum wage after getting their degree, they should go to a cheaper school like a community college or a trade school. Or just start working right out of high school.
war1025 7y ago
Private school tuition is the same as healthcare in the US. Everything has an enormous sticker price for anyone who asks, but no one is expected to actually pay that amount. And if you do pay that amount, it's just because you're a sucker who didn't get in on the fact that it's just a made up number. Rich kids may pay that amount, but it probably gets flipped around into some tax-advantaged "donation" that also helps people feel good about themselves. Poor people get "scholarships", which are really just the university cutting the sticker price down to what they actually need from the person, with some creative shuffling of funds to make it look like they are paying "sticker price". Healthcare works exactly the same. The key is to have enough layers of bureaucracy that no one can quite figure it all out.

Carioca 7y ago

At what point doesn't it just become feasible to hire a full-time tutor?

Someone1234 7y ago
The point of college is a name and certificate. If it was about actual education and learning, we'd see online classes with in-person exams in the forefront. So, never? A tutor cannot give you a magic piece of "job qualification" paper.

alkonaut 7y ago

I can’t imagine paying $100k even for a 4- or 5 year degree. My student loans (zero tuition, only food/rent/books) was $35k for 5 years I think. I have paid over $200/month for 15 years and I’ll be done paying it back this year. I just can’t even imagine my calculation if the loan had been 10x. My US paycheck would certainly be bigger, but I still fail to see how it could be a good investment.

Kalium 7y ago
Chicago is one of the private schools where the sticker price is essentially fictional. There may be a small number of students each year from wealthy families who pay that, but I'm reasonably sure it's nowhere near what the average student actually pays.

kingkawn 7y ago

High tuition costs and loan burdens were and are an integral part of the de-radicalization of American college students.

gok 7y ago

The key is in the subtitle: > But fewer students are paying the full tuition Any seller who can legally charge different prices based on means is under impossibly strong pressure to exercise that power. Universities do this by having "full" tuition rates that almost no one pays.

tanilama 7y ago

How come it can be this expensive? Can't see how a degree would worth 400k seriously

jimbob45 7y ago

I see a lot of people telling everyone to just go to another university if the one you want is too expensive or isn't up your standard in the degree you're chasing. Remember that out-of-state tuition effectively bars students from attending any university outside of their state and, if you're in a smallish state like Oregon, your options can be pretty limited, particularly if you'd like to stay in one geographical region.

Vysero 7y ago
Not really, out of state tuition per term at Montana state university Bozeman (go cats!) is only 6k/term.
- panzagl 7y ago
  Don't know when you went, but Montana State is more than that now.
catalogia 7y ago
Which state schools have out-of-state tuition rates north of 100k a year? Not all of them, that's for sure. U of Chicago is notable for how expensive it is, meaning that virtually any other option is a cheaper option, almost certainly including out of state tuition in another state. > "particularly if you'd like to stay in one geographical region." A luxury I can scarcely comprehend...
triceratops 7y ago
Go to community college for a year in the state that you want to go to college to, become a resident, and also complete some pre-reqs for cheap in the meanwhile.

IronWolve 7y ago

How does a 400k degree compare to a state ran online degree for 24k? http://www.wgu.edu http://www.wgu.edu as an example.

ilamont 7y ago

It's not stated, so I assume that the current "all in" cost is about $75-80k. Some private universities in the Boston area are not far behind, including Brandeis, BU, BC, Tufts, and I believe MIT. I have a high school senior and have been visiting many schools across the U.S. and Canada since last summer. The schools with sky-high all-in costs are not even consideration. If they lop off $10k-$15k per year, we will still be paying a quarter of a million dollars for a four-year education. There are no guarantees of this, either, considering grades and our middle class AGI. The schools we have looked at are mostly public. Our in-state dream option, UMass Amherst, is "only" ~$30k/year all in, but is now super-competitive, likely because of outrageous private college costs driving families to the affordable options. The only comparable values are the schools we have seen in Canada - University of Ottawa, Carleton University, and Concordia. Out-of-state public universities for out of state students in New England (URI, UConn, UVM) plus Pitt and Temple are generally high 40s/low 50s. CU Boulder was mid-upper 50s. I can't remember UCSD but it in that range, plus travel considerations.

tzs 7y ago
> I have a high school senior and have been visiting many schools across the U.S. and Canada since last summer. The schools with sky-high all-in costs are not even consideration. If they lop off $10k-$15k per year, we will still be paying a quarter of a million dollars for a four-year education. There are no guarantees of this, either, considering grades and our middle class AGI. You might want to reconsider those "schools with sky-high all-in costs". Many of them have very generous non-loan aid packages, which for many people can actually bring the effective cost below those of state schools. For example, take Harvard, which totals about $74k/year. A family of 3 (2 parents, 1 child) with $160k/year gross income only ends up having to cover $25k/year. A similar family with $120k/year pays $13k/year. They have a net price calculator here [1] if you want to see what it would cost you. [1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...
- ilamont 7y ago
  I've seen private schools promoting such aid, but for most there is no clarity on A) whether your student will qualify and B) what the amount will be over the 4-year period. I've heard from friends with students already in college that there are often ad hoc negotiations between parents and financial aid offices about the size of the discount, which is frustrating, unfair, and open to abuse.

alpineidyll3 7y ago

Ouch! The ole Alma mater ain't what she used to be.

AcerbicZero 7y ago

The vast majority of jobs/careers/professions do not require sitting in a classroom for 4 years to learn enough to do them. Even less require sitting in an extremely expensive classroom for 4 years. At the same time learning has never been more accessible. I can study Python, mechanical engineering, calculus, aviation ground school, etc all without leaving the house if I wanted. So how does a commodity like education, which is basically free for the people who want to learn, increase in price?

munificent 7y ago
You're assuming the entire point of college is to make you a worker. But a lberal arts education has always been about making you a complete human. If nothing else, it's important for citizens to be well-rounded enough to be informed voters.
- comicjk 7y ago
  If some more education is needed to make people informed voters, maybe we should add a couple more years to the end of high school. Effectively, community college for all. After all, we expect everyone to be a voter, not just those who go to college.

contingencies 7y ago

A few years ago an American friend told me the cost of his masters at Colombia was about USD$180K for 1 year, taking all expenses in to consideration. Journalism.... insane... no way that money is coming back without a pivot to public policy!

whafro 7y ago

One big problem here is that they'll be rewarded in the rankings. A bit part of the various rankings models (US News, etc) is how much money is spent on each student. So squandering $10k more on students next year is, in certain respects, a good investment for a university with decent cash flow. And the question of how much money is spent on a student can be disconnected from the question of tuition, at least at top-tier schools: At my alma mater, Bowdoin, the college spends just shy of $100k per student each year. The comprehensive fee (incl. room & board) is around $72k per year, and for students qualifying for financial aid (abour half), the college provides grants that bring it down to about $24k per year, which almost resembles something sensible. But if you're a donor, and you give an unrestricted gift to a top-tier college or university, there should be absolutely no expectation that your donation will be spent frugally. In fact, for rankings purposes (which help all the cash flow stuff above), it just matters that it gets raised and spent. I think this is one of the biggest problems in American higher ed, and I'm hoping there are a few institutions with the fortitude of character to stand against it and work toward, rather than against, a cost-effective education model in the US.

svanwaa 7y ago

The liberal arts college my wife teaches at recently introduced a more "transparent" tuition pricing scheme. Advertised price $18,600 down from $38,600! https://news.central.edu/2019/09/central-announces-new-tuition/ https://news.central.edu/2019/09/central-announces-new-tuiti...

rubidium 7y ago

More people need to talk about what Purdue is doing. They’ve held tuition constant for 8 years since Mitch Daniels took over. https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q1/purdue-announces-ongoing-tuition-freeze,-staff-appreciation-payment-for-west-lafayette-campus.html https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q1/purdue-anno...

bluedino 7y ago

Is there any data on what % of student loans are spent on things other than tuition? You have things that could be school-related like laptops but then you have kids paying credit cards with student loan money.

every 7y ago

No degree, no matter how gold-plated, is worth $400K. Go to a community college, get a degree in accounting or whatever and spend the rest of your life laughing at the idiots still paying off their tuition debt...

j_m_b 7y ago

Are we ready to admit that government-backed, non-defaultable student loans are a bad idea?

andutu 7y ago

I'm a student attending UT Dallas. Not only am I in the honors programs there, but I also have an AES scholarship which grants me a stipend of $3,000 per semester. I know several people who've gotten into prestigious institutions such as John Hopkins who are going to UTD instead. It's not like options don't exist. Yeah UTD isn't some brand name, but it's a good starting point. I blame universities to some degree for this problem, but I also blame consumers. I was once a starry-eyed high school student who applied to the likes of CMU and got rejected from all save UTD and A&M, with A&M basically giving me nothing. People realize that these schools open doors through elite social connections, more so than say UTD, but you can still network outside these elite institutions, it'll just be a little harder.

gigatexal 7y ago

A year?! Sheesh. Things are getting out of control.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Communitivity 7y ago

Not Harvard, not Yale, not MIT, not Cornell...but U of Chicago? Why would they be able to charge so much more than the other big name schools? It may very well be they have a specialty they are the best in that I'm not aware of. Also, if you are in Maryland take advantage of the MD program that lets you pay your kids college while they're in high school and lock in the college price as of when you enroll in the program. At the average 8% rate of college price increases you could save around %57 of the money you'd pay otherwise.

adipandas 7y ago

Education should not be this expensive. If at all, it can be competitive. But it should be available and affordable to all. U of Chicago is not a best place to be in.

prirun 7y ago

This comment stood out: "It also manages a staff that receives more than $1 billion in salary, $230 million of which is for its roughly 1,350 instructional staff and faculty, according to federal data for 2017-18. Producing and employing Nobel laureates does not come cheap." In other words, only 25% of expense is for instructional staff and faculty, while 75% is not. I'd love to know how much of the $750M salary goes to administrative execs who don't actual do anything.

mister_hn 7y ago

I still fail to understand why in US the university is so expensive, compared to 99% of universities in Europe. Not even private universities in Europe are so expensive like there, plus there are countries where university is free (e.g. Germany). Is the American Dream just the one who wants their kids don't go to university because it's so much expensive? The boomer generation has really broken it. Imagine now that millennials could not send their kids to colleges because of the high tuition fee, connected to low salaries. It's a system that has its destiny doomed and that a day will collapse badly