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I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

231 points by jseliger 7y ago

ohyes 7y ago
I feel that this is a disingenuous approach to the situation that the parents have put their children in. They put a very positive spin on having spent the money that should have gone to their child’s college tuition. Braces are a cliche, and cost an absolute max of 10k, a drop in the bucket compared to 300k worth of tuition. These people did not budget for children at all and probably (like everyone else) spent the money on stuff they don’t actually need. You encourage your child to do well in school and excel at something, but suddenly when the bill comes due it is their responsibility to pay for whatever you’ve encouraged them in, for the rest of their adult lives. I’m trying to say there’s a big financial literacy issue coming from the parents, not the children (although maybe also the children), and the culture around it is to blame everyone but the parents and saddle the child with indentured servant levels of debt... to pay for stuff the parents wanted at the time. (The 529 is basically free money! How did you not use it?) These parents do make enough money for them to have saved for this, they just didn’t. If they didn’t make enough, financial aid probably would have been there. (You can apply somewhere, get in and see what type of financial aid package they give you, then reject because the cost is too high). Schools with better endowments tend to have better aid packages. To me, this is someone justifying 20 years of their own bad financial decisions. Everyone is obsessed with the cost of college being “worth it” or send their kids into the life of backbreaking work trade school entails.
al2o3cr 7y ago
Can't wait for the followup article written by Ella in 15 years: "Today I told my parents they were going to have to get used to living in a cardboard box because they didn't save for retirement. They asked me to help pay for a nice assisted-living facility, but I explained to them how important it was not to make financial decisions that could complicate your life for a long time based on emotions."
NPMaxwell 7y ago
I did the same with my boys -- now both software engineers (duh). When raising children, are you going to omit how Physics affects your life? No, you'll tell about hot stoves and heavy objects on the other side of levers. You tell them about chemistry and biology: frying pan fires, food going bad, drink fluids when you're sick. We tell them about history and sociology: this group of people came to this country when they were being murdered in their own country; that group came because they were granted land by a government. We omit money and how it works. Many also omit romantic sex, even if their kids take sex ed. And, of course, we omit anything that we don't want to face ourselves, but that's probably another topic.
- thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  > that group came because they were granted land by a government. We omit money and how it works You also omit the part where the people already living there got genocided I guess.
  - NPMaxwell 7y ago
    Yes. I would categorize genocide by relatives as something that most people would not want to face -- it's "probably another topic" It's a mistake to omit that too.
    - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
      Fair :-)
deleted 7y ago
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vsskanth 7y ago
Serious question: how does a parent deal with their high school kids wanting to pursue college in a field with a low probability of high lifetime earnings (art, theatre etc.) ? Especially when they are middle class without generational wealth to insulate themselves
- dpcan 7y ago
  My son went to college for Physics. I stressed to him that getting a high paying career in Physics with all the competition out there will be like landing a major role in a movie, he'll need to be the best of the best, and still be ready for rejection, possibly putting him into a situation where he'll take any job to stay afloat. It took him 4 months in college before discovering an Engineering field he was more interested in than Physics. It wasn't my fear-speak that did it, he just discovered how interesting it was on his own and now wants to pursue it. My sigh of relief could be heard throughout the galaxy. We are also at a state school and paying all of his college expenses out of pocket except for books and a small stipend of financial aid. So, being in a career that would yield a high paying job after he left school was very important to us.
- jki275 7y ago
  Just say no.
- danharaj 7y ago
  Ask them to double major?
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    Or pick up a trade instead of a second degree. I think it might be easier to structure time for your artistic passions with a trade day job than a white-collar day job but I might be biased by on-call duty.
    - wainstead 7y ago
      Actually, this is excellent advice. Many of the people I know who went through art programs and hung out in the art scene later applied their aesthetics to things like the construction trade (fashioning complex plaster jobs, painting) or started some kind of small time manufacturing.
dna_polymerase 7y ago
The truth might be more nuanced though. Some colleges have better ROI than others. I assume there is a lack of good data on most colleges, because people who see the actual ROI on any given college wouldn't go to bad schools and schools had more pressure to lower their rates (or invest in their programs).
- BeetleB 7y ago
  > Some colleges have better ROI than others. As is always pointed out when someone mentions ROI: No one should look at ROI when it comes to colleges. You can end up with more wealth going to a lower ROI school. What matters is how much more you earn than your costs (difference, not ratio). Spending $10K total for a very cheap undergrad and earning $30K/year means an ROI of 3. Spending $100K total for undergrad and earning $120K/year is a lower ROI, but you'll be a lot wealthier.
  - mennis16 7y ago
    Additionally, you have to be careful how the rankings source the salary number. Obviously distribution of majors at different schools is a big factor, but on top of that many rankings look at earnings within 5 years of graduation. If your program tends to produce doctors, lawyers, etc. (in particular when they choose to further specialize) the salary 5 years after graduation is obviously not very good, but lifetime earning likely is. My guess is if you take a random Ivy and a random state school, the Ivy is going to have a notably higher percentage that pursues a graduate degree, which means those 5 year numbers probably underrate the Ivy.
sct202 7y ago
I think it can be a disservice to apply to so few schools on the presumption that you won't get aid or scholarships. I applied to only 3 schools and still slightly regret not applying to more, since I thought 2 of schools were going to toss my application into the trash but didn't. Lots of schools offer a lot of scholarships that the parents and the kids may not be aware of. I was very surprised by my offers, and I'm sure there are a lot of other kids out there who made 'pragmatic' choices like me who undershot because they thought they were being realistic. I still ended up going to my safety school that I was always planning on going and it was wonderful and cheap. But I still wonder what could have happened if I had tried a little bit harder or looked around a little bit more seriously. EDIT: In case no one read it, the teenager only applied to 2 schools after a lot of pressure from the parent to be pragmatic.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Some of the more expensive colleges rely on the psychological impact of "oh wow, they're offering a five figure discount!" to overcome resistance. I went to a school that's was $36k/year (now $60k); they had a $10k "merit" scholarship for a SAT/ACT score threshold that anyone eligible to attend would've qualified for. I wound up transferring to the local community college (for a tenth of the cost) for a year, and had quite a few of the same professors who'd adjunct there for a bit of side income.
toolslive 7y ago
What I don't understand is: why don't they go to a university in Europe? I just checked for my alma mater: tuition fee is ~500 euro for 1 year. You pay about 4k in rent per year (this is probably too high an estimate). The level of education is high, and the programs are available in English.
- ameister14 7y ago
  Tuition for EU residents is usually not the same as tuition for American students. It's still cheaper than school in the US, but not by nearly as much
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    University in Germany is just as cheap for foreigners as it is for Germans. It's only a few hundred Euros per semester, and comes with benefits like cheap public transportation and subsidized meals.
  - toolslive 7y ago
    Here's the tuition fee table for KULeuven. https://www.kuleuven.be/inschrijvingen/registration/fees https://www.kuleuven.be/inschrijvingen/registration/fees This university is located in Belgium (where people speak Dutch, English and French), and ranks quite well. https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2019/ku-leuven-rises-three-places-in-top-50-of-world-university-rankings-2020 https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2019/ku-leuven-rises-t... Travel time from NY is about 7h. Sure, you might be in for a culture shock, but someone coming from Alabama will have a shock going to MIT or Caltech too.
- xwdv 7y ago
  Because most European universities are crap compared to American ones. Crude, but the truth.
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rayiner 7y ago
These parents are heroes. > A couple months ago, my 17-year-old daughter’s guidance counselor called her into his office to ask pretty much the only question that adults ask high school seniors: “What colleges are you applying to?” When Ella tossed off a handful of universities, he said, “Have you thought about going to art school?” This is goddamn malpractice. > Like most parents, who save on average $18,000 for their kids’ education, we’d failed to sock away anything close to the $75,000 annual sticker price it would take for Ella to go to, say, Pratt in New York City. A friend of ours matriculated at a similar school, but dropped out and went into physical therapy instead. She and her husband managed to buy a house in their late 20s, have kids, etc.[1] Your job as a parent is to socialize your children. And that means telling them how the world works. The society that they see around them exists because people with valuable skills work hard to produce things. That doesn’t just mean doctors or engineers—the world needs accountants and roofers and HVAC technicians. The common thread is that these are skills that people and companies need every day to make the world around us keep humming. People are compensated based on the value and rarity of their skills. And money is necessary for security and supporting yourself. Kids need to learn these lessons from the earliest age. You abdicate that duty if you don’t teach them that, and instead allow a bunch of government workers fill your kids’ heads with nonsense. College, for most people, is a joke. Take a bunch of classes that don’t teach you anything useful, and then get a job that doesn’t require you to use anything you learned. It’s an elaborate shell game we have to play because we’ve bought into the nonsense peddled by teachers and guidance counselors. As parents, it’s your job to be smart and help your kids navigate this game. (We’re going through this with my wife’s younger brother right now.) Manage your courses to keep up your GPA, take prerequisites at community college for a fraction of the price, etc. The Kafkaesque administration of most colleges makes this hard enough. But teachers and administrators will fight you the whole way. They’ll talk about making sure kids get the “college experience” and telling kids to “pursue their bliss.” Its your job as a parent to do everything you can to fight back. [1] I don’t want to come across to much like judging people’s lifestyle. I know some people who are happy with the bohemian art world lifestyle. That makes them happy. But when you see people complain about student debt and the plight of millennials, that’s what keeps coming up: they can’t afford to buy a house or have kids. [2] That doesn’t mean I think doctors or aerospace engineers don’t need to go to college. But in 1960, less than 40% of the population graduated from high school and less than 10% had a bachelors degree. It’s incredible what a sophisticated economy we had with so little formal education.
helen___keller 7y ago
The author briefly transitions from arts schools to engineering schools which- in my opinion- are a totally different beast. If you graduate with 30k-50k in debt and a six figure salary then it's not too bad
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  But..you can get a six figure salary with an in-state public school too.
  - will4274 7y ago
    Sometimes. The fancy consulting firms place a huge premium on those elite private schools and pay huge salaries. University prestige matters for jobs and salary, even if it doesn't matter for how much you learn.
    - mennis16 7y ago
      Yeah but the truly elite private schools are pretty good at aid, I think it's the "borderline" elites where one would end up with substantially more debt than staying in state (on average anyway). I don't have any data but I would guess the fancy consulting firm recruitment potential drops off at a similar rate as the aid amounts do.
  - helen___keller 7y ago
    Agreed but the host of smaller concerns that dominate high school college choice advice (eg pick a place you feel you fit in, yadda yadda) make a lot more sense if your debt is a tiny fraction of your future income. FWIW I went to CMU (non-CS) for some squishy reason, like it "felt right". I realized I needed a better degree for taking on 30k debt partway through freshman year and transferred to CS. The education was rock solid. If anything it was too good - I spent so much time learning and working that I did very little else. Debt has not really been a concern post graduation, compared to cost of buying a house where I want to live it's barely worth mentioning.
throwaway72873 7y ago
You saved your daughter from a life of debt slavery. Now she can have a life, children and maybe even become a painter.
joshuaheard 7y ago
It's not a simple binary choice between going to college on a loan or not going because the parents can't afford it or don't want a loan. I worked my way through college over 5 years with only a small loan. One can spend the first two years at a community college for very low tuition then transfer to a university. Large state universities have lower tuition than small private universities. There are other means of financial aid besides loans, like grants and scholarships. But, not everyone needs to go to a university. Society needs to encourage more vocational education for the trades, and encourage apprenticeships.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
I wish the headline was: "I Helped My Teenager Grow Up. You Should, Too." Student debt sucks. But the myth that these institutions are somehow kidnapping high school students and forcing them to take on massive loans is a myth that needs to be crushed. The market has been flood with cheap easy to get money. Families are lining up to bite off more than they should or could. This (i.e., demand) drives up cost. The cycle continues.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  This myth you've created is a strawman. No one is suggesting colleges physically hold students ransom. The argument is that society is increasingly forcing people to get degrees to keep up with the job climate and it is effectively the same as forcing people into debt.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    I'm not questioning the need for a degree or the value. What I'm questing is students (and parents) who insist on attending higher edus that amount to over-priced out-of-state country clubs. No one is going to die if sushi isn't served for lunch/dinner. "Eat great food" and "Best gym ever" will never be on anyone's CV. Furthermore, in many cases, it's possible to do your first two years "on a budget" and then transfer into a "big name" big budget school with a more valuable degree. No one cares where you did English 101. There are choices. There are alternatives. However, entitlement and keeping up with the Jones keeps superceding common sense and basic fiscal responsibility. No one is being forced into excessive debt. They are lining up and volunteering. Over and over and over again.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    For the record, the bit about country clue unis is also mentioned in the book The Coddling of the American Mind. https://www.thecoddling.com/ https://www.thecoddling.com/
- BeetleB 7y ago
  > But the myth that these institutions are somehow kidnapping high school students and forcing them to take on massive loans is a myth that needs to be crushed. Well, yes. Same with the push for credit card advertising being banned on campuses. Same with the ban on tobacco advertising. And so on.
will4274 7y ago
> One friend recently told me that her son has his heart set on a pricey out-of-state engineering program, despite the fact that a fantastic engineering program exists at the public university in our town. “It’s a reach school, but if he gets in he’ll probably go there—and I guess deal with a lot of student loan debt afterward,” she said with a laugh. I don't understand this from the article. I went to a pricey out-of-state engineering school, took out significant loans, got a good engineering job, and paid them off in less than 5 years. Taking out loans to obtain a fancy degree in a low paying profession isn't the same as taking out loans to obtain fancy degrees in a high paying profession, but the article gives them similar treatment.
sethammons 7y ago
Some eye openers there for me. They saved 40k for their kid and on average parents save 18k for their kids?! We saved exactly $0.00 for my oldest. My middle kid is a freshman. $0.00. And my youngest is 9, also $0.00. The number one thing you must save for is your own retirement. I just this last year started funding that adequately due to life circumstances. We are just recently able to help out with education costs and do plan to open 529 plans this year. The (very massive) downside to not having saved for the kid's education is that for us to help now, we are spending like nearly $30k a year to cover our oldest's classes. She is working part time and saving, and we are asking her to pay us back 50%. The other option is loans. We would have to cosign for them anyway, so no reason to use her poor credit. But having recently paid off all our debts sans a small mortgage, I'm not excited to take out any more debts. I had told all my kids since they were young that they were going to pay for their own college. It is hard to follow through with that when the loans they could get are terrible and I still have to cosign for them. Glad I finally have the income to help.
- 2sk21 7y ago
  Your approach is right - you need to save for your own retirement as the highest priority.
- turk73 7y ago
  529 plans are bullshit, don't bother.
hajile 7y ago
And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll be in demand and getting a decent wage. Banks understand this fact and will do the math to give a loan anyway. Some of my kids seem like they enjoy academics, but others do not. I'll be pushing the latter toward trade school. Average IBEW (electrical union) pay is about $20/hr for an apprentice and $33 for a journeyman. $40,000 to $66,000 with ZERO DEBT right out the gate is nothing to ignore (and that pay can easily double -- especially in your younger years -- if you're willing to travel and put in those extra hours). It sure beats minimum wage at a crappy service job.
- mmmBacon 7y ago
  Additionally student loans should be something you can refinance. When I took out loans in the early 90s, interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans were about 8%. As interest rates dropped during the course of my education, I was locked into that interest rate and the only way to get a lower rate on those high interest early loans was to consolidate loans. Loan consolidation doesn’t get you a market rate new interest rate instead you get the average of the 2 interest rates.
  - teddyc 7y ago
    My student loans have auto re-financed to lower interest rates with no action on my part. But I got them in the 00's, maybe the rules changed.
- newguy1234 7y ago
  Military is also a good option to college, especially if your specialty is a skilled trade. My brother did this straight out of high school. Spent a few years overseas and then eventually changed his specialty to biomedical equipment repair. When he left the service he made 60k/year and after 5 years he is at 125k/year. Also when you are in the service, you are getting paid and if you are overseas, all your bills are paid too. He never had any student loans ever or school expenses. When he was young he just saved most of his money....most of which has doubled or tripled in value due to how good the stock market has been.
ptmcc 7y ago
One of the best things my parents ever did for me (and themselves) was tell me, despite getting accepted, that I was not going to a fancy 40k+/yr school for undergrad. I was angsty about it at the time, but I got over it pretty quick and now looking back appreciate how much stress and debt they saved me from. I went to a magnet high school so there was a lot of pressure to go to a "prestigious" school, and "settling" for a public university was uncool. But of course ultimately something like 10% of my graduating class went to the local public university. I had a phenomenal time there. I keep in touch with many folks from high school, and while some of them that went on to expensive private schools have been very successful (usually rather wealthy already), I'd say that on balance the kids who went to affordable-but-respected programs are doing better 10-15 years after graduation than the kids who went to expensive elite schools on debt. The debt burden of those expensive schools can be truly devastating, financially and emotionally. I am seeing the long-term effects of it on my peers still after 15 years. And the costs have gotten even higher now. As a parent, one should think very very carefully about whether it is truly worth it.
- whateveracct 7y ago
  Same here. Got into MIT for engineering and went to a (still good) in-state school for engineering. My parents made it clear that they had saved enough to pay for the in-state tuition (+ an academic scholarship) but that I'd have to go into debt for MIT. Some of my peers were kind of shitty about it. "So-and-so doesn't like to try so I get their decision." There was definitely a cult of Ivy League there. I'm very happy with the decision. The in-state school was plenty challenging and I learned a bunch. Work in software now and got a job at a FAANG out of school (thanks to a referral from a college friend), so outcome-wise I can't imagine that sticker price being worth it. Not to mention that culturally I now know that MIT isn't exactly my vibe lol so I probably would've been unhappy.
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jawns 7y ago
Perhaps one way to help college-bound teenagers make these sorts of decisions is not by asking, "What careers most interest you?" but "What lifestyle do you want to live as an adult?" and then work backward from there. Teens who envision themselves living in a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and dining out frequently could then be counseled to pursue jobs that earn enough to support that lifestyle. And teens who would be OK living in a modest ranch home in a small midwestern town, driving a 10-year-old car, and making most of their meals at home could be counseled to pursue jobs that earn enough to support that lifestyle. In other words, instead of saying, "Identify the jobs you would be interested in doing, then choose the one with the best earnings potential or work/life balance," parents should be saying, "Identify the lifestyle you would like to lead, then choose the job that is capable of supporting that lifestyle."
- pnathan 7y ago
  This is a good approach for some. I am - and have always been - disinclined to do work I don't really enjoy. Some people - I have a good friend like this! - don't have that bit flipped in them, and for those people, your approach would be fantastic. but without a doubt, the material economic reality needs to be discussed early on in high school.
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    >I am - and have always been - disinclined to do work I don't really enjoy. Sounds like you live a life of privilege then. Guess what, 99.9% of humans over the course of history have done work they didn't really enjoy. It's a good approach for everyone. When people can't afford rent suddenly "work you don't enjoy" isn't such a big deal anymore.
- asdff 7y ago
  Interesting angle to think about. A lot of high schoolers are applying to majors basically blind of what the job at the other end is like. Everyone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer until the slow realization of the realities of these career paths hit, and in a panic they change to business or econ, wrangle excel macros in a cubicle until 65, and wonder where it all went wrong.
s17n 7y ago
"Culturally upper-class person with middle-bracket income treats college exactly the same way as everybody else in their income bracket, writes article about how different they are"
pnathan 7y ago
> While other parents cheerfully promise that “if you get in, we’ll figure out the money part,” That is literally the worst mindset to go in to this about. I profoundly want to see college be free for all, and debt zeroed out. Failing that rather utopian vision, the smart bet is to get a degree that you can pay off in under 10 years without a miracle. I plan to save up enough to help my kid out, which might well involve "we'll send you internationally: those colleges are just as good, you'll get more independent, and you will be about debt free when you get out".
- tim333 7y ago
  >Failing that rather utopian vision When I went to university in the UK in 1983 university was free, both undergraduate and graduate, there was a means tested grant for living expenses and student debt wasn't really a thing. So it's possible. On the downside there was only so much money from tax hence only about 15% of the people got to do undergrad degrees and postgrad was maybe 10% of that.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    the downside there was only so much money from tax hence only about 15% of the people got to do undergrad degrees and postgrad was maybe 10% of that. I’m not sure this is true; were there any cases of kids who got 3 A’s at A-level (back when that meant something) being turned away because the colleges were full? It was actually the case that if you got the grades, there would be a place for you. Nowadays it’s different of course, but that is because of lowering standards both in the exams and in the entry requirements.
    - tim333 7y ago
      Yes if you got good grades you got to go. That was the main criteria for the limited number of places. Whether that's a good system or not is debatable.
- learc83 7y ago
  Public student loans have income based repayment. Assuming you go to a state school and don't live on campus, the debt isn't a big deal. And if you get into very top tier private school, the networking alone is definitely worth it.
irrational 7y ago
What we've done with our kids is tell them from an early age that we will help them with the first year of college and after that they are on their own. So far we have 2 in college and that has been how it worked out. They knew up front that we would not help them after the first year, and neither has come to us asking for help because we were upfront with them long before they started going to college. Bottom line, set expectations early.
CloverMuzak 7y ago
As someone who made this choice (not going away to an expensive school), I still regret it. I went to a local school and lived at home, almost everyone I knew moved away. I never developed the same social circle as my friends who went away did. There were so many experiences I missed out on and opportunities that were closed to me because I wasn’t where the action was. I don’t have any memorable college stories to tell or any connections with reach outside of the local community. It stifled my growth professionally and socially, and I would not recommend it.
sys_64738 7y ago
Guidance Counsellors are the problem here.
frankbreetz 7y ago
I think at least part of the solution is to involve your children in your finances. I think if they are able to understand your families monthly/yearly budget, they will be much less likely to take on a ton of debt, as they will more likely understand the consequences of their decisions. The financial literacy in this country(USA) is absolutely terrible and I think this is one of the most important things a parent can teach there children, because they will not learn this in school. Part of the problem is that most parents themselves are not financially literate and do not have savings or budgets. Life is so much easier if you have a good understanding of money. People like to say "Money doesn't matter", security matters and freedom matters, good luck getting either of those things without money. At this point it is very obvious the government or universities are not looking out for us in this regard, so this will be one thing my children understand.
- jays 7y ago
  Agreed. Showing a teenager how much they will make with the career their interested in and then figuring out how much they might afford in student loans is pretty easy to roughly estimate. It’s what should be taught in schools and banks should have limits as well. But banks and universities don’t wait those things, because it’d jeopardize the easy money.
- ip26 7y ago
  There's a big catch with this though, your teenager/college student can't budget & spend like a mid career professional. $10k is far dearer to them than you. (They also have far fewer expenses) I don't know what the answer is, perhaps you start with basic financial literacy & later mock up what their life might look like with X debt and Y income.
baron816 7y ago
There’s some weird things about this article. 1) Their daughter likely would’ve qualified for quite a bit of financial aid, which potentially could have brought a fancy art college to within reason for her. That she never even applied to her dream schools means she will never know if they would’ve been competitively priced. 2) Collectively, student debt is $1.6T, but that doesn’t tell you much about the per graduate burden. Here’s some data: https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/ https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/. Average debt load is $30K or $7.5K per year of study (just living on that amount of money seems like a good deal). That’s is quite a bit of money, but not insurmountable. Median payment is $222/month. Also pretty feasible for most graduates, especially when inflation and wage gains are factored in.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  Median payment seems like a misleading statistic because there are many repayment plans: the default is 10 years for student loans; but income-based repayment could extend that. Affordable monthly payments across the board is good for all graduates, but it doesn't necessarily imply it's $222/month for 10 years for all debtors.
  - learc83 7y ago
    You'll never owe more than 10% of income over 1.5x the federal poverty rate though assuming you don't get private loans (90% of loan disbursements are public).
- baking 7y ago
  My biggest issue with it was that you are in the "too well-off to get aid but not well-off enough to pay cash" gap, then you should be expanding the number of schools you are applying too, not reducing. In-state and out-of-state public schools, and a wide mix of small to large private schools in both the "reach" and "safety" categories to see what kind of financial offers you get. With the caveat that if it turns out you hate the school that offered you money and end up transferring out, you lose all those other offers and you will be pretty much limited to public schools.
therealmarv 7y ago
Lived in many EU countries. Never seen a problem close to this one in that countries regarding education.
- turk73 7y ago
  This is a thoroughly American debacle brought on by Bill Clinton and abetted by every US President since then. Their simplistic idea was to make education "affordable" for all, and in their infinite wisdom, they fucked up higher education beyond all recognition. They invited Wall Street bankers to come in and wreak financial havoc. The schools were all in on the scheme, so if they eventually all go under, remember, they have it coming.
throwaway713 7y ago
My sister and I basically copied what our parents did. I got a degree in engineering like my dad (but pivoted to data science), and my sister got a degree in elementary education like my mom. She works much harder than me but earns significantly less and frequently comments about how massive of a mistake it was to go into teaching. I'm not really sure what the lesson is here other than that the world isn't fair. From my perspective, my sister is generating much more value for the world than I am, and yet all of her efforts result in very little reward. I'm mixed on what to tell my future children. I want them to do what they love (or what they feel is important), but that may result in a very difficult future financially. I suppose I'll just try to make the trade-offs in career choices as clear as possible and hope they make decisions they won't regret later.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  People are not compensated to their value, they are compensated to their rarity. A lot of people can (in theory) teach elementary aged kids, a lot fewer folks can architect skyscrapers or perform brain surgery.
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- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > She works much harder than me but earns significantly less and frequently comments about how massive of a mistake it was to go into teaching. Still time to get out. There are data science and other boot camps.
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gbronner 7y ago
Private colleges increasingly practice perfect price discrimination making it an incredibly high income tax on the middle class. A small few give breaks for academically better students, or don't attempt to fully maximize their price (e.g. Harvard could easily charge $100k/year), but for the great majority, the price you pay is basically "as much as you can". Because of subsidized student loans and jobs that require "credentialization", there's guaranteed supply and guaranteed demand for these rather expensive slots, and no incentive to deliver quality education at a lower price. Until there's either a dramatic decline in wealthy college students, a drop in government loan support, a decline in the proportion of jobs that absolutely require a BA, or some sort of innovation in virtual college, I don't see this changing. Telling a kid that you aren't willing to
justinph 7y ago
This article needlessly and incorrectly shits on art school. There are many, many good careers that come out of going to art school, or better yet getting a design degree at an art school. So, maybe have a talk with your kid about _applied_ arts, not just blindly writing off a BFA. No college teaches creative problem solving and critical thinking better than art school. Not every art school costs $75k, either (which is a price almost no one pays anyway thanks to financial aid). I went to art school. I work in software engineering now and make good money. Art school made me fearless and pragmatic in a way I wouldn’t have gotten with a state engineering program. It was worth every cent.
DocG 7y ago
Uh, school is more than education, specially in art, and more about connections. For 40k I would consider three years abroad. I think this would cover cost in a good university in Europe. This would give invaluable experience living abroad, give top class education and probably be within budget.
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hereme888 7y ago
For many degrees, there could simply be some sort of national board exam (or a series of them), administered by a testing center (like Prometric). Students can study on their own then pay to present the exams. Since the best lectures and material can be obtained cheaply or for free (Khan, Coursera, etc), "college" debt would be massively reduced. I don't speak for degrees that truly require lab work, like STEM.
wy35 7y ago
Sometimes fancy art school is worth it, though. My sister decided to go to CalArts and stomach the high tuition costs. She dropped out two years later after receiving a job offer from Sony Pictures, and Netflix ended up headhunting her a few months later. Now she's debt-free and making a comfortable living, all from the connections and internships she got from CalArts. Sometimes, a name brand school is worth it compared to a cheap school "with a great art program".
moosey 7y ago
I personally think that as the are cohort that finished school with the dot com crash then followed up crushed under the weight of the housing crash, start to send kids to college, there will be a general reckoning. While my wife and I are doing well financially and professionally at the moment, these events have made us distrustful of the current economic model of low taxes and high wealth, which I am practically certain leads to these hours of economic malaise. We had our first at a relatively young age, and the realities of our wealth and savings are not as good as the author of this piece... We only have one salary, which is a particularly huge benefit. Regardless, one can only hope we decide that a well educated populace is such an improvement to general welfare that we don't continually stuck the costs of raising children on the parents alone. I know that there are tax benefits, but those are a joke.
GreeniFi 7y ago
I sometimes wonder if the main difference between the US and EU economies is that in the EU, the state(s) have largely identified demand inelastic goods and services and regulated their supply: health, tertiary education, housing (more or less). Where these are not regulated, two things happen: prices shoot up and finance providers move in to finance access, creating debt traps. I’m trying not to think about Brexit too much, but one of my indicators for, “this was a bad/good idea” is the extent to which the health, education, housing sectors are further deregulated.
thescriptkiddie 7y ago
Just. Make. College. Free.
- turk73 7y ago
  Troll. Free = infinite demand. I don't think that will ever work anymore than throwing open the floodgates at the border and letting in all the world's surplus population who want to come and get free benes from us and wipe their asses on our flag. When something is given away for free, people value it less. So making college "tuition free" e.g. saddled to the taxpayer, is not going to produce quality graduates or get us any kind of ROI for us lowly, un-represented, long-suffering American taxpayers. So I suppose if we make it "free" that could be final nail in the coffin. With the limitless debt situation we have in the US right now, the Fed could just print off another $2-3 Trillion and paper over the whole damn thing. All of us will be poorer, of course. You like getting paid in Monopoly money, right? Zimbabwe dollars all right with you?
freistil 7y ago
So... why not Europe? Germany, Switzerland, France...?
Balanceinfinity 7y ago
A degree from an expensive private school or out of state school is a luxury item, and parents need to treat them like the Jaguar or Porsche with a comparable value. If your child got their license and asked for a Range Rover, would you plunk down $100,000? Then why on earth would you do it for an undergraduate degree to an expensive school. If anything, the money should be saved for graduate school, where the big payoff happens. If they can get through undergrad at the instate school (or maybe an out-of-state public school) with the grades and pedigree for grad school, then maybe Duke Law School, or University of Chicago Medical School (or a masters from Stanford in engineering) is a worthwhile financial investment, but never for undergrad.
- bgorman 7y ago
  An undergraduate degree from an elite school helps with networking and gives the student a "brand" that will help with getting all subsequent jobs. Same phenomenon for business school- the curriculum isn't much better but the connections and brand are much better.
  - Balanceinfinity 7y ago
    That misses the point. Jaguars are better (and more fun) than a Ford Focus. The question is whether the branded school is worth the delta, and the answer is that in most undergrad programs, it isn't. Let's take an example: Steve wants to go to school for Computer Science. He'd really like to go to Duke, but he also gets in at UC Irvine in California. If he's really good, he'll get good grades at UCI, and he can go to Duke for a Masters (maybe on a free ride). If he's only an average student, then he had no business going to Duke because he wouldn't really be able to leverage the high powered degree anyways (a C+ average from Duke isn't opening a ton of doors). Let's change the hypo and make the major French Literature. Now, we know Steve will never be able to repay Duke tuition with that degree, no matter how many influential people he meets or how good his grades are. The upshot: it's not that Duke isn't better than UCI - it clearly is. The point is, is it a good investment. And it rarely is...unless you have the extra money and can do it without the debt and without limiting your future options. That's what makes it a luxury item.
- 7y ago
sebastianconcpt 7y ago
I loved this part: To give my daughter a hard no on something she really, really wants—and that I in theory want for her!—makes me feel like a monster. While other parents cheerfully promise that “if you get in, we’ll figure out the money part,” I’m over here sounding a Greek chorus of caution and lament. Sometimes I long to just say yes. Saying yes feels good. Yes makes people happy. On the other hand, saying no is part of my job as a parent. Hasn’t it been my role all along to steer my kid toward smarter but seemingly less desirable choices? Carrots instead of Kit Kats, an early bedtime instead of an all-night YouTube binge? Children naturally hate those kinds of limits. They may temporarily hate us. But they’re too young and myopic to see how this one decision could make their lives harder for a long, long time. We can.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
I know HN is really sensitive about this, but this sounds like a very culturally white thing. Many other cultures have a mentality of "get an employable major, period" and we are now seeing how superior that mentality really is, considering the impending generational student debt crisis. If you have rich parents who can support you for life and set you up with an inheritance, knock yourself out with the Art major (like the daughter in the article). If you don't, then pursue your passions and expect a difficult life... or just choose a more employable major or career path.
gwbas1c 7y ago
(After going to a fancy private school...) IMO, Fancy private schools are like fancy luxury cars. Expensive, and get you from point A to point B just as fast as the ultra-reliable mass market cars. The only difference is that you pay more, and you might be slightly more comfortable... And the fancy cars tend to break down more often. In my case, my parents really pushed me towards a fancy private school. (I wanted to go to the cheaper state school.) When applying, I noticed that the state school was accredited in Computer Science, but the private school was not. While in school, I realized that my professors were clueless. A few years later, I learned that the state school had one of the best computer science departments in the world, but no one heard of my fancy private school. I realized that my parents were clueless about how education works, but because they didn't get to go to college right out of high school, they equated cost with quality. Some times it's nice to pay extra money to sit in traffic in a fancy luxury car; but it's only worth it if you aren't going into extensive debt for that car.
Tomte 7y ago
"Don't Go to Art School": https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/dont-go-to-art-school-138c5efd45e9 https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/dont-go-to-art-school-138c5efd45e...
turk73 7y ago
I have two children and one is coming up on college age. I'm not advocating for "Ivy League" for her. There would have to be a really strong argument for that because the prices have skyrocketed in the past 20 years. Nobody is "working all summer to pay for college" unless it's at some corporate internship that actually pays decent. My kids need to be practical people, understand money and especially debt, and be able to make strong investments choices--and also take the risks I couldn't take. College debt is not a risk, it's a surefire way of being poor and having fewer options. You have to have a plan you can articulate whenever you are taking on debt. The only reason I can see stretching to some rarefied school is because you want to connect socially with people who are more well off than you are in hopes of "marrying up." I think that what I just said did pretty much worked out for me--after all the hard work I put in, a fundamental irony of my life is that my happiness didn't come from schooling, it came from marrying the right woman whom I would not have met had I not sought out a PhD. You can't overlook the indirect benefits.
iamleppert 7y ago
I had a friend who went to Academy of Art. He was from very humble beginnings. He now runs a 100 million dollar fine art studio in SF. He made all the connections and learned the business of high end art while in art school. The article reads like the “crabs in a barrel” only applied to family circumstances. Despite obvious talent, the father doesn’t want his child to succeed and has systematically destroyed her dreams. It’s very sad.
peter303 7y ago
50 years ago parents didnt always pay for a college education. A student could pretty much earn his/her way through working quarter-time during school year and full time in the summer. Thats what I did (at MIT). These days college costs are proportionally much higher.
RickJWagner 7y ago
My oldest child is currently a senior in college. The school is full of kids who think nothing of racking up student debt, and all of them seem to have nice phones, cars and clothes. It's madness. They'll be paying for that 4-year vacation for the rest of their lives. And I will be mad as a wet hen if some politician forgives student debts. It's not right that everybody else has to pay for this frivolity. (It's also not right for those kids who don't go on to college-- they miss the free vacation and they are disadvantaged in the workplace.)
m0zg 7y ago
Yeah, at some point you have to consider the ROI. "Art school" is not going to pay for itself. I'm not sure it's even useful for anyone truly talented, and it's definitely not useful for someone who doesn't have talent. So I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is.
StanislavPetrov 7y ago
>So we finance it, or our kids do, 45 million of us owing a collective $1.6 trillion in student debt that not even Bernie Sanders could make disappear. Considering $1.6 trillion dollars is about what we spend annually to maintain our global military empire (when you include all the legacy costs including paying for veterans healthcare), it really wouldn't be very difficult to make it disappear at all. Of course, its a matter of priorities.
gtm1260 7y ago
I'm not sure about this. I've taken out some loans to finance my education, but overall I would say both experience and financial ROI have been totally worth it. If I went to any other program, I doubt that it would have been that way (given, the thing I went to school for is weirdly specialized).
- throwaway100773 7y ago
  Your school may be an exception. There are exceptions for most people, but the acceptance rates are low. For example, a well adjusted middle class child would be a foolish in most circumstances not to take out debt to attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford (and a select few other universities where you can maximize the chances of vastly increasing the status of your social network with four years of camaraderie). However, after you dip below a certain level of status, the benefits are much less clear. A middle class child may never have the opportunity to get exposure to one or two notches up save for education. But this only exists in a select few places.
song 7y ago
What I never understand about articles like this written from the perspective of Americans is that they don't seem to consider that there are other countries than the US? Why limit yourself to the US when education is much cheaper in other countries. And, it's not like a Art degree from a European country is going to be worse than from a US school, it'll probably open more doors not to mention that learning the language will be useful... People all over the world think internationally when selecting universities yet people in the US somehow limit themselves only to their own country.
- albertshin 7y ago
  Schools are a place for education but also a signalling tool for recruiting. I imagine it's difficult to get recruited back in your home country with a degree from a foreign institution unless it's a pretty named school. The simple and harsh reality being that they may have no idea or the bandwidth to figure out how to interpret the grades you received or the education you had. (Of course, CS or hard sciences are likely an exception to this with portfolios or research results being pretty universal...) And then there's the issue of visa issues should you attempt to work abroad post graduation in that country.
  - song 7y ago
    I would tend to say that an experience abroad in fields like Arts is also extremely valuable and there are internationally recognized schools abroad. For example, the beaux arts in France or The Berlin University of the Arts. So, while I agree with you that schools are a signaling tool for recruiting, this is not necessarily the case for non top schools in the US and given that a art education is extremely cheap in Europe, the money saved can also open doors later. Visa issues are not that much of a problem as one might think as long as the student gets a master degree (most countries give a one year visa immediately after the obtention of a master that can then easily be renewed if the visa holder is employed). In general, master degrees make getting visa much easier. I'd also argue that returning to the US after a couple years of employments will give the graduate more opportunities because at that point they will have an edge by having had an international experience.

231 points by jseliger 7y ago

I feel that this is a disingenuous approach to the situation that the parents have put their children in. They put a very positive spin on having spent the money that should have gone to their child’s college tuition. Braces are a cliche, and cost an absolute max of 10k, a drop in the bucket compared to 300k worth of tuition. These people did not budget for children at all and probably (like everyone else) spent the money on stuff they don’t actually need. You encourage your child to do well in school and excel at something, but suddenly when the bill comes due it is their responsibility to pay for whatever you’ve encouraged them in, for the rest of their adult lives. I’m trying to say there’s a big financial literacy issue coming from the parents, not the children (although maybe also the children), and the culture around it is to blame everyone but the parents and saddle the child with indentured servant levels of debt... to pay for stuff the parents wanted at the time. (The 529 is basically free money! How did you not use it?) These parents do make enough money for them to have saved for this, they just didn’t. If they didn’t make enough, financial aid probably would have been there. (You can apply somewhere, get in and see what type of financial aid package they give you, then reject because the cost is too high). Schools with better endowments tend to have better aid packages. To me, this is someone justifying 20 years of their own bad financial decisions. Everyone is obsessed with the cost of college being “worth it” or send their kids into the life of backbreaking work trade school entails.

al2o3cr 7y ago

Can't wait for the followup article written by Ella in 15 years: "Today I told my parents they were going to have to get used to living in a cardboard box because they didn't save for retirement. They asked me to help pay for a nice assisted-living facility, but I explained to them how important it was not to make financial decisions that could complicate your life for a long time based on emotions."

NPMaxwell 7y ago

I did the same with my boys -- now both software engineers (duh). When raising children, are you going to omit how Physics affects your life? No, you'll tell about hot stoves and heavy objects on the other side of levers. You tell them about chemistry and biology: frying pan fires, food going bad, drink fluids when you're sick. We tell them about history and sociology: this group of people came to this country when they were being murdered in their own country; that group came because they were granted land by a government. We omit money and how it works. Many also omit romantic sex, even if their kids take sex ed. And, of course, we omit anything that we don't want to face ourselves, but that's probably another topic.

thatfrenchguy 7y ago
> that group came because they were granted land by a government. We omit money and how it works You also omit the part where the people already living there got genocided I guess.
- NPMaxwell 7y ago
  Yes. I would categorize genocide by relatives as something that most people would not want to face -- it's "probably another topic" It's a mistake to omit that too.
  - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    Fair :-)

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vsskanth 7y ago

Serious question: how does a parent deal with their high school kids wanting to pursue college in a field with a low probability of high lifetime earnings (art, theatre etc.) ? Especially when they are middle class without generational wealth to insulate themselves

dpcan 7y ago
My son went to college for Physics. I stressed to him that getting a high paying career in Physics with all the competition out there will be like landing a major role in a movie, he'll need to be the best of the best, and still be ready for rejection, possibly putting him into a situation where he'll take any job to stay afloat. It took him 4 months in college before discovering an Engineering field he was more interested in than Physics. It wasn't my fear-speak that did it, he just discovered how interesting it was on his own and now wants to pursue it. My sigh of relief could be heard throughout the galaxy. We are also at a state school and paying all of his college expenses out of pocket except for books and a small stipend of financial aid. So, being in a career that would yield a high paying job after he left school was very important to us.
jki275 7y ago
Just say no.
danharaj 7y ago
Ask them to double major?
- wavefunction 7y ago
  Or pick up a trade instead of a second degree. I think it might be easier to structure time for your artistic passions with a trade day job than a white-collar day job but I might be biased by on-call duty.
  - wainstead 7y ago
    Actually, this is excellent advice. Many of the people I know who went through art programs and hung out in the art scene later applied their aesthetics to things like the construction trade (fashioning complex plaster jobs, painting) or started some kind of small time manufacturing.

dna_polymerase 7y ago

The truth might be more nuanced though. Some colleges have better ROI than others. I assume there is a lack of good data on most colleges, because people who see the actual ROI on any given college wouldn't go to bad schools and schools had more pressure to lower their rates (or invest in their programs).

BeetleB 7y ago
> Some colleges have better ROI than others. As is always pointed out when someone mentions ROI: No one should look at ROI when it comes to colleges. You can end up with more wealth going to a lower ROI school. What matters is how much more you earn than your costs (difference, not ratio). Spending $10K total for a very cheap undergrad and earning $30K/year means an ROI of 3. Spending $100K total for undergrad and earning $120K/year is a lower ROI, but you'll be a lot wealthier.
- mennis16 7y ago
  Additionally, you have to be careful how the rankings source the salary number. Obviously distribution of majors at different schools is a big factor, but on top of that many rankings look at earnings within 5 years of graduation. If your program tends to produce doctors, lawyers, etc. (in particular when they choose to further specialize) the salary 5 years after graduation is obviously not very good, but lifetime earning likely is. My guess is if you take a random Ivy and a random state school, the Ivy is going to have a notably higher percentage that pursues a graduate degree, which means those 5 year numbers probably underrate the Ivy.

sct202 7y ago

I think it can be a disservice to apply to so few schools on the presumption that you won't get aid or scholarships. I applied to only 3 schools and still slightly regret not applying to more, since I thought 2 of schools were going to toss my application into the trash but didn't. Lots of schools offer a lot of scholarships that the parents and the kids may not be aware of. I was very surprised by my offers, and I'm sure there are a lot of other kids out there who made 'pragmatic' choices like me who undershot because they thought they were being realistic. I still ended up going to my safety school that I was always planning on going and it was wonderful and cheap. But I still wonder what could have happened if I had tried a little bit harder or looked around a little bit more seriously. EDIT: In case no one read it, the teenager only applied to 2 schools after a lot of pressure from the parent to be pragmatic.

ceejayoz 7y ago
Some of the more expensive colleges rely on the psychological impact of "oh wow, they're offering a five figure discount!" to overcome resistance. I went to a school that's was $36k/year (now $60k); they had a $10k "merit" scholarship for a SAT/ACT score threshold that anyone eligible to attend would've qualified for. I wound up transferring to the local community college (for a tenth of the cost) for a year, and had quite a few of the same professors who'd adjunct there for a bit of side income.

toolslive 7y ago

What I don't understand is: why don't they go to a university in Europe? I just checked for my alma mater: tuition fee is ~500 euro for 1 year. You pay about 4k in rent per year (this is probably too high an estimate). The level of education is high, and the programs are available in English.

ameister14 7y ago
Tuition for EU residents is usually not the same as tuition for American students. It's still cheaper than school in the US, but not by nearly as much
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  University in Germany is just as cheap for foreigners as it is for Germans. It's only a few hundred Euros per semester, and comes with benefits like cheap public transportation and subsidized meals.
- toolslive 7y ago
  Here's the tuition fee table for KULeuven. https://www.kuleuven.be/inschrijvingen/registration/fees https://www.kuleuven.be/inschrijvingen/registration/fees This university is located in Belgium (where people speak Dutch, English and French), and ranks quite well. https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2019/ku-leuven-rises-three-places-in-top-50-of-world-university-rankings-2020 https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2019/ku-leuven-rises-t... Travel time from NY is about 7h. Sure, you might be in for a culture shock, but someone coming from Alabama will have a shock going to MIT or Caltech too.
xwdv 7y ago
Because most European universities are crap compared to American ones. Crude, but the truth.
- deleted 7y ago
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- 7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

These parents are heroes. > A couple months ago, my 17-year-old daughter’s guidance counselor called her into his office to ask pretty much the only question that adults ask high school seniors: “What colleges are you applying to?” When Ella tossed off a handful of universities, he said, “Have you thought about going to art school?” This is goddamn malpractice. > Like most parents, who save on average $18,000 for their kids’ education, we’d failed to sock away anything close to the $75,000 annual sticker price it would take for Ella to go to, say, Pratt in New York City. A friend of ours matriculated at a similar school, but dropped out and went into physical therapy instead. She and her husband managed to buy a house in their late 20s, have kids, etc.[1] Your job as a parent is to socialize your children. And that means telling them how the world works. The society that they see around them exists because people with valuable skills work hard to produce things. That doesn’t just mean doctors or engineers—the world needs accountants and roofers and HVAC technicians. The common thread is that these are skills that people and companies need every day to make the world around us keep humming. People are compensated based on the value and rarity of their skills. And money is necessary for security and supporting yourself. Kids need to learn these lessons from the earliest age. You abdicate that duty if you don’t teach them that, and instead allow a bunch of government workers fill your kids’ heads with nonsense. College, for most people, is a joke. Take a bunch of classes that don’t teach you anything useful, and then get a job that doesn’t require you to use anything you learned. It’s an elaborate shell game we have to play because we’ve bought into the nonsense peddled by teachers and guidance counselors. As parents, it’s your job to be smart and help your kids navigate this game. (We’re going through this with my wife’s younger brother right now.) Manage your courses to keep up your GPA, take prerequisites at community college for a fraction of the price, etc. The Kafkaesque administration of most colleges makes this hard enough. But teachers and administrators will fight you the whole way. They’ll talk about making sure kids get the “college experience” and telling kids to “pursue their bliss.” Its your job as a parent to do everything you can to fight back. [1] I don’t want to come across to much like judging people’s lifestyle. I know some people who are happy with the bohemian art world lifestyle. That makes them happy. But when you see people complain about student debt and the plight of millennials, that’s what keeps coming up: they can’t afford to buy a house or have kids. [2] That doesn’t mean I think doctors or aerospace engineers don’t need to go to college. But in 1960, less than 40% of the population graduated from high school and less than 10% had a bachelors degree. It’s incredible what a sophisticated economy we had with so little formal education.

helen___keller 7y ago

The author briefly transitions from arts schools to engineering schools which- in my opinion- are a totally different beast. If you graduate with 30k-50k in debt and a six figure salary then it's not too bad

akhilcacharya 7y ago
But..you can get a six figure salary with an in-state public school too.
- will4274 7y ago
  Sometimes. The fancy consulting firms place a huge premium on those elite private schools and pay huge salaries. University prestige matters for jobs and salary, even if it doesn't matter for how much you learn.
  - mennis16 7y ago
    Yeah but the truly elite private schools are pretty good at aid, I think it's the "borderline" elites where one would end up with substantially more debt than staying in state (on average anyway). I don't have any data but I would guess the fancy consulting firm recruitment potential drops off at a similar rate as the aid amounts do.
- helen___keller 7y ago
  Agreed but the host of smaller concerns that dominate high school college choice advice (eg pick a place you feel you fit in, yadda yadda) make a lot more sense if your debt is a tiny fraction of your future income. FWIW I went to CMU (non-CS) for some squishy reason, like it "felt right". I realized I needed a better degree for taking on 30k debt partway through freshman year and transferred to CS. The education was rock solid. If anything it was too good - I spent so much time learning and working that I did very little else. Debt has not really been a concern post graduation, compared to cost of buying a house where I want to live it's barely worth mentioning.

throwaway72873 7y ago

You saved your daughter from a life of debt slavery. Now she can have a life, children and maybe even become a painter.

joshuaheard 7y ago

It's not a simple binary choice between going to college on a loan or not going because the parents can't afford it or don't want a loan. I worked my way through college over 5 years with only a small loan. One can spend the first two years at a community college for very low tuition then transfer to a university. Large state universities have lower tuition than small private universities. There are other means of financial aid besides loans, like grants and scholarships. But, not everyone needs to go to a university. Society needs to encourage more vocational education for the trades, and encourage apprenticeships.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

I wish the headline was: "I Helped My Teenager Grow Up. You Should, Too." Student debt sucks. But the myth that these institutions are somehow kidnapping high school students and forcing them to take on massive loans is a myth that needs to be crushed. The market has been flood with cheap easy to get money. Families are lining up to bite off more than they should or could. This (i.e., demand) drives up cost. The cycle continues.

WilliamEdward 7y ago
This myth you've created is a strawman. No one is suggesting colleges physically hold students ransom. The argument is that society is increasingly forcing people to get degrees to keep up with the job climate and it is effectively the same as forcing people into debt.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  I'm not questioning the need for a degree or the value. What I'm questing is students (and parents) who insist on attending higher edus that amount to over-priced out-of-state country clubs. No one is going to die if sushi isn't served for lunch/dinner. "Eat great food" and "Best gym ever" will never be on anyone's CV. Furthermore, in many cases, it's possible to do your first two years "on a budget" and then transfer into a "big name" big budget school with a more valuable degree. No one cares where you did English 101. There are choices. There are alternatives. However, entitlement and keeping up with the Jones keeps superceding common sense and basic fiscal responsibility. No one is being forced into excessive debt. They are lining up and volunteering. Over and over and over again.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  For the record, the bit about country clue unis is also mentioned in the book The Coddling of the American Mind. https://www.thecoddling.com/ https://www.thecoddling.com/
BeetleB 7y ago
> But the myth that these institutions are somehow kidnapping high school students and forcing them to take on massive loans is a myth that needs to be crushed. Well, yes. Same with the push for credit card advertising being banned on campuses. Same with the ban on tobacco advertising. And so on.

will4274 7y ago

> One friend recently told me that her son has his heart set on a pricey out-of-state engineering program, despite the fact that a fantastic engineering program exists at the public university in our town. “It’s a reach school, but if he gets in he’ll probably go there—and I guess deal with a lot of student loan debt afterward,” she said with a laugh. I don't understand this from the article. I went to a pricey out-of-state engineering school, took out significant loans, got a good engineering job, and paid them off in less than 5 years. Taking out loans to obtain a fancy degree in a low paying profession isn't the same as taking out loans to obtain fancy degrees in a high paying profession, but the article gives them similar treatment.

sethammons 7y ago

Some eye openers there for me. They saved 40k for their kid and on average parents save 18k for their kids?! We saved exactly $0.00 for my oldest. My middle kid is a freshman. $0.00. And my youngest is 9, also $0.00. The number one thing you must save for is your own retirement. I just this last year started funding that adequately due to life circumstances. We are just recently able to help out with education costs and do plan to open 529 plans this year. The (very massive) downside to not having saved for the kid's education is that for us to help now, we are spending like nearly $30k a year to cover our oldest's classes. She is working part time and saving, and we are asking her to pay us back 50%. The other option is loans. We would have to cosign for them anyway, so no reason to use her poor credit. But having recently paid off all our debts sans a small mortgage, I'm not excited to take out any more debts. I had told all my kids since they were young that they were going to pay for their own college. It is hard to follow through with that when the loans they could get are terrible and I still have to cosign for them. Glad I finally have the income to help.

2sk21 7y ago
Your approach is right - you need to save for your own retirement as the highest priority.
turk73 7y ago
529 plans are bullshit, don't bother.

hajile 7y ago

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll be in demand and getting a decent wage. Banks understand this fact and will do the math to give a loan anyway. Some of my kids seem like they enjoy academics, but others do not. I'll be pushing the latter toward trade school. Average IBEW (electrical union) pay is about $20/hr for an apprentice and $33 for a journeyman. $40,000 to $66,000 with ZERO DEBT right out the gate is nothing to ignore (and that pay can easily double -- especially in your younger years -- if you're willing to travel and put in those extra hours). It sure beats minimum wage at a crappy service job.

mmmBacon 7y ago
Additionally student loans should be something you can refinance. When I took out loans in the early 90s, interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans were about 8%. As interest rates dropped during the course of my education, I was locked into that interest rate and the only way to get a lower rate on those high interest early loans was to consolidate loans. Loan consolidation doesn’t get you a market rate new interest rate instead you get the average of the 2 interest rates.
- teddyc 7y ago
  My student loans have auto re-financed to lower interest rates with no action on my part. But I got them in the 00's, maybe the rules changed.
newguy1234 7y ago
Military is also a good option to college, especially if your specialty is a skilled trade. My brother did this straight out of high school. Spent a few years overseas and then eventually changed his specialty to biomedical equipment repair. When he left the service he made 60k/year and after 5 years he is at 125k/year. Also when you are in the service, you are getting paid and if you are overseas, all your bills are paid too. He never had any student loans ever or school expenses. When he was young he just saved most of his money....most of which has doubled or tripled in value due to how good the stock market has been.

ptmcc 7y ago

One of the best things my parents ever did for me (and themselves) was tell me, despite getting accepted, that I was not going to a fancy 40k+/yr school for undergrad. I was angsty about it at the time, but I got over it pretty quick and now looking back appreciate how much stress and debt they saved me from. I went to a magnet high school so there was a lot of pressure to go to a "prestigious" school, and "settling" for a public university was uncool. But of course ultimately something like 10% of my graduating class went to the local public university. I had a phenomenal time there. I keep in touch with many folks from high school, and while some of them that went on to expensive private schools have been very successful (usually rather wealthy already), I'd say that on balance the kids who went to affordable-but-respected programs are doing better 10-15 years after graduation than the kids who went to expensive elite schools on debt. The debt burden of those expensive schools can be truly devastating, financially and emotionally. I am seeing the long-term effects of it on my peers still after 15 years. And the costs have gotten even higher now. As a parent, one should think very very carefully about whether it is truly worth it.

whateveracct 7y ago
Same here. Got into MIT for engineering and went to a (still good) in-state school for engineering. My parents made it clear that they had saved enough to pay for the in-state tuition (+ an academic scholarship) but that I'd have to go into debt for MIT. Some of my peers were kind of shitty about it. "So-and-so doesn't like to try so I get their decision." There was definitely a cult of Ivy League there. I'm very happy with the decision. The in-state school was plenty challenging and I learned a bunch. Work in software now and got a job at a FAANG out of school (thanks to a referral from a college friend), so outcome-wise I can't imagine that sticker price being worth it. Not to mention that culturally I now know that MIT isn't exactly my vibe lol so I probably would've been unhappy.
- deleted 7y ago
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jawns 7y ago

Perhaps one way to help college-bound teenagers make these sorts of decisions is not by asking, "What careers most interest you?" but "What lifestyle do you want to live as an adult?" and then work backward from there. Teens who envision themselves living in a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and dining out frequently could then be counseled to pursue jobs that earn enough to support that lifestyle. And teens who would be OK living in a modest ranch home in a small midwestern town, driving a 10-year-old car, and making most of their meals at home could be counseled to pursue jobs that earn enough to support that lifestyle. In other words, instead of saying, "Identify the jobs you would be interested in doing, then choose the one with the best earnings potential or work/life balance," parents should be saying, "Identify the lifestyle you would like to lead, then choose the job that is capable of supporting that lifestyle."

pnathan 7y ago
This is a good approach for some. I am - and have always been - disinclined to do work I don't really enjoy. Some people - I have a good friend like this! - don't have that bit flipped in them, and for those people, your approach would be fantastic. but without a doubt, the material economic reality needs to be discussed early on in high school.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  >I am - and have always been - disinclined to do work I don't really enjoy. Sounds like you live a life of privilege then. Guess what, 99.9% of humans over the course of history have done work they didn't really enjoy. It's a good approach for everyone. When people can't afford rent suddenly "work you don't enjoy" isn't such a big deal anymore.
asdff 7y ago
Interesting angle to think about. A lot of high schoolers are applying to majors basically blind of what the job at the other end is like. Everyone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer until the slow realization of the realities of these career paths hit, and in a panic they change to business or econ, wrangle excel macros in a cubicle until 65, and wonder where it all went wrong.

s17n 7y ago

"Culturally upper-class person with middle-bracket income treats college exactly the same way as everybody else in their income bracket, writes article about how different they are"

pnathan 7y ago

> While other parents cheerfully promise that “if you get in, we’ll figure out the money part,” That is literally the worst mindset to go in to this about. I profoundly want to see college be free for all, and debt zeroed out. Failing that rather utopian vision, the smart bet is to get a degree that you can pay off in under 10 years without a miracle. I plan to save up enough to help my kid out, which might well involve "we'll send you internationally: those colleges are just as good, you'll get more independent, and you will be about debt free when you get out".

tim333 7y ago
>Failing that rather utopian vision When I went to university in the UK in 1983 university was free, both undergraduate and graduate, there was a means tested grant for living expenses and student debt wasn't really a thing. So it's possible. On the downside there was only so much money from tax hence only about 15% of the people got to do undergrad degrees and postgrad was maybe 10% of that.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  the downside there was only so much money from tax hence only about 15% of the people got to do undergrad degrees and postgrad was maybe 10% of that. I’m not sure this is true; were there any cases of kids who got 3 A’s at A-level (back when that meant something) being turned away because the colleges were full? It was actually the case that if you got the grades, there would be a place for you. Nowadays it’s different of course, but that is because of lowering standards both in the exams and in the entry requirements.
  - tim333 7y ago
    Yes if you got good grades you got to go. That was the main criteria for the limited number of places. Whether that's a good system or not is debatable.
learc83 7y ago
Public student loans have income based repayment. Assuming you go to a state school and don't live on campus, the debt isn't a big deal. And if you get into very top tier private school, the networking alone is definitely worth it.

irrational 7y ago

What we've done with our kids is tell them from an early age that we will help them with the first year of college and after that they are on their own. So far we have 2 in college and that has been how it worked out. They knew up front that we would not help them after the first year, and neither has come to us asking for help because we were upfront with them long before they started going to college. Bottom line, set expectations early.

CloverMuzak 7y ago

As someone who made this choice (not going away to an expensive school), I still regret it. I went to a local school and lived at home, almost everyone I knew moved away. I never developed the same social circle as my friends who went away did. There were so many experiences I missed out on and opportunities that were closed to me because I wasn’t where the action was. I don’t have any memorable college stories to tell or any connections with reach outside of the local community. It stifled my growth professionally and socially, and I would not recommend it.

sys_64738 7y ago

Guidance Counsellors are the problem here.

frankbreetz 7y ago

I think at least part of the solution is to involve your children in your finances. I think if they are able to understand your families monthly/yearly budget, they will be much less likely to take on a ton of debt, as they will more likely understand the consequences of their decisions. The financial literacy in this country(USA) is absolutely terrible and I think this is one of the most important things a parent can teach there children, because they will not learn this in school. Part of the problem is that most parents themselves are not financially literate and do not have savings or budgets. Life is so much easier if you have a good understanding of money. People like to say "Money doesn't matter", security matters and freedom matters, good luck getting either of those things without money. At this point it is very obvious the government or universities are not looking out for us in this regard, so this will be one thing my children understand.

jays 7y ago
Agreed. Showing a teenager how much they will make with the career their interested in and then figuring out how much they might afford in student loans is pretty easy to roughly estimate. It’s what should be taught in schools and banks should have limits as well. But banks and universities don’t wait those things, because it’d jeopardize the easy money.
ip26 7y ago
There's a big catch with this though, your teenager/college student can't budget & spend like a mid career professional. $10k is far dearer to them than you. (They also have far fewer expenses) I don't know what the answer is, perhaps you start with basic financial literacy & later mock up what their life might look like with X debt and Y income.

baron816 7y ago

There’s some weird things about this article. 1) Their daughter likely would’ve qualified for quite a bit of financial aid, which potentially could have brought a fancy art college to within reason for her. That she never even applied to her dream schools means she will never know if they would’ve been competitively priced. 2) Collectively, student debt is $1.6T, but that doesn’t tell you much about the per graduate burden. Here’s some data: https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/ https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/. Average debt load is $30K or $7.5K per year of study (just living on that amount of money seems like a good deal). That’s is quite a bit of money, but not insurmountable. Median payment is $222/month. Also pretty feasible for most graduates, especially when inflation and wage gains are factored in.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
Median payment seems like a misleading statistic because there are many repayment plans: the default is 10 years for student loans; but income-based repayment could extend that. Affordable monthly payments across the board is good for all graduates, but it doesn't necessarily imply it's $222/month for 10 years for all debtors.
- learc83 7y ago
  You'll never owe more than 10% of income over 1.5x the federal poverty rate though assuming you don't get private loans (90% of loan disbursements are public).
baking 7y ago
My biggest issue with it was that you are in the "too well-off to get aid but not well-off enough to pay cash" gap, then you should be expanding the number of schools you are applying too, not reducing. In-state and out-of-state public schools, and a wide mix of small to large private schools in both the "reach" and "safety" categories to see what kind of financial offers you get. With the caveat that if it turns out you hate the school that offered you money and end up transferring out, you lose all those other offers and you will be pretty much limited to public schools.

therealmarv 7y ago

Lived in many EU countries. Never seen a problem close to this one in that countries regarding education.

turk73 7y ago
This is a thoroughly American debacle brought on by Bill Clinton and abetted by every US President since then. Their simplistic idea was to make education "affordable" for all, and in their infinite wisdom, they fucked up higher education beyond all recognition. They invited Wall Street bankers to come in and wreak financial havoc. The schools were all in on the scheme, so if they eventually all go under, remember, they have it coming.

throwaway713 7y ago

My sister and I basically copied what our parents did. I got a degree in engineering like my dad (but pivoted to data science), and my sister got a degree in elementary education like my mom. She works much harder than me but earns significantly less and frequently comments about how massive of a mistake it was to go into teaching. I'm not really sure what the lesson is here other than that the world isn't fair. From my perspective, my sister is generating much more value for the world than I am, and yet all of her efforts result in very little reward. I'm mixed on what to tell my future children. I want them to do what they love (or what they feel is important), but that may result in a very difficult future financially. I suppose I'll just try to make the trade-offs in career choices as clear as possible and hope they make decisions they won't regret later.

vorpalhex 7y ago
People are not compensated to their value, they are compensated to their rarity. A lot of people can (in theory) teach elementary aged kids, a lot fewer folks can architect skyscrapers or perform brain surgery.
- deleted 7y ago
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barry-cotter 7y ago
> She works much harder than me but earns significantly less and frequently comments about how massive of a mistake it was to go into teaching. Still time to get out. There are data science and other boot camps.

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gbronner 7y ago

Private colleges increasingly practice perfect price discrimination making it an incredibly high income tax on the middle class. A small few give breaks for academically better students, or don't attempt to fully maximize their price (e.g. Harvard could easily charge $100k/year), but for the great majority, the price you pay is basically "as much as you can". Because of subsidized student loans and jobs that require "credentialization", there's guaranteed supply and guaranteed demand for these rather expensive slots, and no incentive to deliver quality education at a lower price. Until there's either a dramatic decline in wealthy college students, a drop in government loan support, a decline in the proportion of jobs that absolutely require a BA, or some sort of innovation in virtual college, I don't see this changing. Telling a kid that you aren't willing to

justinph 7y ago

This article needlessly and incorrectly shits on art school. There are many, many good careers that come out of going to art school, or better yet getting a design degree at an art school. So, maybe have a talk with your kid about _applied_ arts, not just blindly writing off a BFA. No college teaches creative problem solving and critical thinking better than art school. Not every art school costs $75k, either (which is a price almost no one pays anyway thanks to financial aid). I went to art school. I work in software engineering now and make good money. Art school made me fearless and pragmatic in a way I wouldn’t have gotten with a state engineering program. It was worth every cent.

DocG 7y ago

Uh, school is more than education, specially in art, and more about connections. For 40k I would consider three years abroad. I think this would cover cost in a good university in Europe. This would give invaluable experience living abroad, give top class education and probably be within budget.

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hereme888 7y ago

For many degrees, there could simply be some sort of national board exam (or a series of them), administered by a testing center (like Prometric). Students can study on their own then pay to present the exams. Since the best lectures and material can be obtained cheaply or for free (Khan, Coursera, etc), "college" debt would be massively reduced. I don't speak for degrees that truly require lab work, like STEM.

wy35 7y ago

Sometimes fancy art school is worth it, though. My sister decided to go to CalArts and stomach the high tuition costs. She dropped out two years later after receiving a job offer from Sony Pictures, and Netflix ended up headhunting her a few months later. Now she's debt-free and making a comfortable living, all from the connections and internships she got from CalArts. Sometimes, a name brand school is worth it compared to a cheap school "with a great art program".

moosey 7y ago

I personally think that as the are cohort that finished school with the dot com crash then followed up crushed under the weight of the housing crash, start to send kids to college, there will be a general reckoning. While my wife and I are doing well financially and professionally at the moment, these events have made us distrustful of the current economic model of low taxes and high wealth, which I am practically certain leads to these hours of economic malaise. We had our first at a relatively young age, and the realities of our wealth and savings are not as good as the author of this piece... We only have one salary, which is a particularly huge benefit. Regardless, one can only hope we decide that a well educated populace is such an improvement to general welfare that we don't continually stuck the costs of raising children on the parents alone. I know that there are tax benefits, but those are a joke.

GreeniFi 7y ago

I sometimes wonder if the main difference between the US and EU economies is that in the EU, the state(s) have largely identified demand inelastic goods and services and regulated their supply: health, tertiary education, housing (more or less). Where these are not regulated, two things happen: prices shoot up and finance providers move in to finance access, creating debt traps. I’m trying not to think about Brexit too much, but one of my indicators for, “this was a bad/good idea” is the extent to which the health, education, housing sectors are further deregulated.

thescriptkiddie 7y ago

Just. Make. College. Free.

turk73 7y ago
Troll. Free = infinite demand. I don't think that will ever work anymore than throwing open the floodgates at the border and letting in all the world's surplus population who want to come and get free benes from us and wipe their asses on our flag. When something is given away for free, people value it less. So making college "tuition free" e.g. saddled to the taxpayer, is not going to produce quality graduates or get us any kind of ROI for us lowly, un-represented, long-suffering American taxpayers. So I suppose if we make it "free" that could be final nail in the coffin. With the limitless debt situation we have in the US right now, the Fed could just print off another $2-3 Trillion and paper over the whole damn thing. All of us will be poorer, of course. You like getting paid in Monopoly money, right? Zimbabwe dollars all right with you?

freistil 7y ago

So... why not Europe? Germany, Switzerland, France...?

Balanceinfinity 7y ago

A degree from an expensive private school or out of state school is a luxury item, and parents need to treat them like the Jaguar or Porsche with a comparable value. If your child got their license and asked for a Range Rover, would you plunk down $100,000? Then why on earth would you do it for an undergraduate degree to an expensive school. If anything, the money should be saved for graduate school, where the big payoff happens. If they can get through undergrad at the instate school (or maybe an out-of-state public school) with the grades and pedigree for grad school, then maybe Duke Law School, or University of Chicago Medical School (or a masters from Stanford in engineering) is a worthwhile financial investment, but never for undergrad.

bgorman 7y ago
An undergraduate degree from an elite school helps with networking and gives the student a "brand" that will help with getting all subsequent jobs. Same phenomenon for business school- the curriculum isn't much better but the connections and brand are much better.
- Balanceinfinity 7y ago
  That misses the point. Jaguars are better (and more fun) than a Ford Focus. The question is whether the branded school is worth the delta, and the answer is that in most undergrad programs, it isn't. Let's take an example: Steve wants to go to school for Computer Science. He'd really like to go to Duke, but he also gets in at UC Irvine in California. If he's really good, he'll get good grades at UCI, and he can go to Duke for a Masters (maybe on a free ride). If he's only an average student, then he had no business going to Duke because he wouldn't really be able to leverage the high powered degree anyways (a C+ average from Duke isn't opening a ton of doors). Let's change the hypo and make the major French Literature. Now, we know Steve will never be able to repay Duke tuition with that degree, no matter how many influential people he meets or how good his grades are. The upshot: it's not that Duke isn't better than UCI - it clearly is. The point is, is it a good investment. And it rarely is...unless you have the extra money and can do it without the debt and without limiting your future options. That's what makes it a luxury item.
7y ago

sebastianconcpt 7y ago

I loved this part: To give my daughter a hard no on something she really, really wants—and that I in theory want for her!—makes me feel like a monster. While other parents cheerfully promise that “if you get in, we’ll figure out the money part,” I’m over here sounding a Greek chorus of caution and lament. Sometimes I long to just say yes. Saying yes feels good. Yes makes people happy. On the other hand, saying no is part of my job as a parent. Hasn’t it been my role all along to steer my kid toward smarter but seemingly less desirable choices? Carrots instead of Kit Kats, an early bedtime instead of an all-night YouTube binge? Children naturally hate those kinds of limits. They may temporarily hate us. But they’re too young and myopic to see how this one decision could make their lives harder for a long, long time. We can.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

I know HN is really sensitive about this, but this sounds like a very culturally white thing. Many other cultures have a mentality of "get an employable major, period" and we are now seeing how superior that mentality really is, considering the impending generational student debt crisis. If you have rich parents who can support you for life and set you up with an inheritance, knock yourself out with the Art major (like the daughter in the article). If you don't, then pursue your passions and expect a difficult life... or just choose a more employable major or career path.

gwbas1c 7y ago

(After going to a fancy private school...) IMO, Fancy private schools are like fancy luxury cars. Expensive, and get you from point A to point B just as fast as the ultra-reliable mass market cars. The only difference is that you pay more, and you might be slightly more comfortable... And the fancy cars tend to break down more often. In my case, my parents really pushed me towards a fancy private school. (I wanted to go to the cheaper state school.) When applying, I noticed that the state school was accredited in Computer Science, but the private school was not. While in school, I realized that my professors were clueless. A few years later, I learned that the state school had one of the best computer science departments in the world, but no one heard of my fancy private school. I realized that my parents were clueless about how education works, but because they didn't get to go to college right out of high school, they equated cost with quality. Some times it's nice to pay extra money to sit in traffic in a fancy luxury car; but it's only worth it if you aren't going into extensive debt for that car.

Tomte 7y ago

"Don't Go to Art School": https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/dont-go-to-art-school-138c5efd45e9 https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/dont-go-to-art-school-138c5efd45e...

turk73 7y ago

I have two children and one is coming up on college age. I'm not advocating for "Ivy League" for her. There would have to be a really strong argument for that because the prices have skyrocketed in the past 20 years. Nobody is "working all summer to pay for college" unless it's at some corporate internship that actually pays decent. My kids need to be practical people, understand money and especially debt, and be able to make strong investments choices--and also take the risks I couldn't take. College debt is not a risk, it's a surefire way of being poor and having fewer options. You have to have a plan you can articulate whenever you are taking on debt. The only reason I can see stretching to some rarefied school is because you want to connect socially with people who are more well off than you are in hopes of "marrying up." I think that what I just said did pretty much worked out for me--after all the hard work I put in, a fundamental irony of my life is that my happiness didn't come from schooling, it came from marrying the right woman whom I would not have met had I not sought out a PhD. You can't overlook the indirect benefits.

iamleppert 7y ago

I had a friend who went to Academy of Art. He was from very humble beginnings. He now runs a 100 million dollar fine art studio in SF. He made all the connections and learned the business of high end art while in art school. The article reads like the “crabs in a barrel” only applied to family circumstances. Despite obvious talent, the father doesn’t want his child to succeed and has systematically destroyed her dreams. It’s very sad.

peter303 7y ago

50 years ago parents didnt always pay for a college education. A student could pretty much earn his/her way through working quarter-time during school year and full time in the summer. Thats what I did (at MIT). These days college costs are proportionally much higher.

RickJWagner 7y ago

My oldest child is currently a senior in college. The school is full of kids who think nothing of racking up student debt, and all of them seem to have nice phones, cars and clothes. It's madness. They'll be paying for that 4-year vacation for the rest of their lives. And I will be mad as a wet hen if some politician forgives student debts. It's not right that everybody else has to pay for this frivolity. (It's also not right for those kids who don't go on to college-- they miss the free vacation and they are disadvantaged in the workplace.)

m0zg 7y ago

Yeah, at some point you have to consider the ROI. "Art school" is not going to pay for itself. I'm not sure it's even useful for anyone truly talented, and it's definitely not useful for someone who doesn't have talent. So I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is.

StanislavPetrov 7y ago

>So we finance it, or our kids do, 45 million of us owing a collective $1.6 trillion in student debt that not even Bernie Sanders could make disappear. Considering $1.6 trillion dollars is about what we spend annually to maintain our global military empire (when you include all the legacy costs including paying for veterans healthcare), it really wouldn't be very difficult to make it disappear at all. Of course, its a matter of priorities.

gtm1260 7y ago

I'm not sure about this. I've taken out some loans to finance my education, but overall I would say both experience and financial ROI have been totally worth it. If I went to any other program, I doubt that it would have been that way (given, the thing I went to school for is weirdly specialized).

throwaway100773 7y ago
Your school may be an exception. There are exceptions for most people, but the acceptance rates are low. For example, a well adjusted middle class child would be a foolish in most circumstances not to take out debt to attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford (and a select few other universities where you can maximize the chances of vastly increasing the status of your social network with four years of camaraderie). However, after you dip below a certain level of status, the benefits are much less clear. A middle class child may never have the opportunity to get exposure to one or two notches up save for education. But this only exists in a select few places.

song 7y ago

What I never understand about articles like this written from the perspective of Americans is that they don't seem to consider that there are other countries than the US? Why limit yourself to the US when education is much cheaper in other countries. And, it's not like a Art degree from a European country is going to be worse than from a US school, it'll probably open more doors not to mention that learning the language will be useful... People all over the world think internationally when selecting universities yet people in the US somehow limit themselves only to their own country.

albertshin 7y ago
Schools are a place for education but also a signalling tool for recruiting. I imagine it's difficult to get recruited back in your home country with a degree from a foreign institution unless it's a pretty named school. The simple and harsh reality being that they may have no idea or the bandwidth to figure out how to interpret the grades you received or the education you had. (Of course, CS or hard sciences are likely an exception to this with portfolios or research results being pretty universal...) And then there's the issue of visa issues should you attempt to work abroad post graduation in that country.
- song 7y ago
  I would tend to say that an experience abroad in fields like Arts is also extremely valuable and there are internationally recognized schools abroad. For example, the beaux arts in France or The Berlin University of the Arts. So, while I agree with you that schools are a signaling tool for recruiting, this is not necessarily the case for non top schools in the US and given that a art education is extremely cheap in Europe, the money saved can also open doors later. Visa issues are not that much of a problem as one might think as long as the student gets a master degree (most countries give a one year visa immediately after the obtention of a master that can then easily be renewed if the visa holder is employed). In general, master degrees make getting visa much easier. I'd also argue that returning to the US after a couple years of employments will give the graduate more opportunities because at that point they will have an edge by having had an international experience.