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I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to

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

lvl100 5y ago
I am convinced college is more or less priced off of prestigious private high schools where the parents simply pay cash. For the wealthy it is acceptable to pay 60-70K per year for their kids. Clearly this represents the wealth gap in this country.
sylens 5y ago
Yes, it's quite clearly this. Millennials have been out there for nearly a decade yelling on social media about how ridiculous their student loans are. Kids on the precipice of college have started paying attention. Combine that with the restrictions for Covid, and you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes.
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields. I know coding bootcamps get a bad rep, often justified, but at the same time my buddy went to college for a degree in HR and I went for STEM. He ended up hating HR, did a 9 week boot camp, managed to get a job, and after a few years of experience is in roughly the same place as me and is thriving. It took him a little longer because of the time spent in HR, but ultimately he ended up with the same skill set I did between the 9 weeks of intensive study combined with on the job experience. Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever. It's a single anecdote, but between online resources and alternative training programs, it seems harder to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on college.
  - f6v 5y ago
    > Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields Out of interest, what are other fields besides IT?
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    >Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever. While I agree with your core sentiment, my opinion is that this is a symptom of a cultural/societal problem and not one of the schools. Modern Universities are certainly ripe with problems (largely driven by adopting business structures), including generally poor quality courses and curriculum within them, but I think you've identified a larger societal problem we have. Why is it that broad education which is generally, at the very least in my opinion, clearly valuable yet so lowly valued in society? It's my opinion that we have institutional structures that, given a lack of opportunities, value specialized and specific knowledge over general knowledge. Meanwhile, if you have the capability to escape these institutional shackles, general knowledge becomes far more valuable. On the labor side, labor markets are all about jobs and specialized roles with efficient production from that role. On the capital side, you need more general knowledge to see, connect, and sieze opportunities. It seems to me that most lack enough genuine realizable opportunity where general knowledge becomes valuable (say, seeking entrepreneurship) and in such a set of constraints, it makes complete sense why people specialize and chase demand of specialization because it's their most optimal strategy for financial success. I work in R&D in startup-esk environments and my general knowledge is fairly well valued, however even here leadership sometimes fail to see how some book or article I read years ago, course I took, project I worked on years ago, etc. was critical to making the connection that made this research thing possible. They value the general subset of knowledge I have that made their thing possible (oh boy you know A, B, and C and those saved us!!!), never mind the hydrology work I've done, it's irrelevant (D, or so they think, even though I may draw on concepts from such domains opaquely) or perhaps hours of video gaming (E, which lead to a game theoretic intuition about approaching an underlying problem). That knowledge was only appreciated after the fact because it made someone a pile of money or positioned a large contract. I remember hating taking geology in college because "I'd never use it," then I did a lot of applied science and R&D in the fossil fuels industry and suddenly a lot of "silly" things I did in geology gave me a foundation to jump from and to build upon. That silly geology course made me boatloads of money in retrospect. Throughout my career I always like to look back when I have a problem and say "ah ha, I sure am glad I studied or read about X years ago, that's one less thing I need to internalize now to do this thing." I'm always surprised how much old general knowledge I draw upon for new problems and how valuable they truly are.
- samarama 5y ago
  Are student loans really such an issue? 85% of graduates have less than $50,000 in student loans. Paid off over 20 years, that’s really not much. https://www.rclco.com/wp-content/uploads/advisory-student-debt-2016-04-08-image1.png https://www.rclco.com/wp-content/uploads/advisory-student-de... Additionally, those that have much higher loans are usually medical students who make $200,000/year at the entry level.
  - issa 5y ago
    If you are in the US and know people who are aged 30-50 and not software engineers, this is almost all that they talk about. Some people manage to pay them off, others (due to high interest) owe more than when they started. It is a huge problem.
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      Yep, I'm a software engineer and just about to pay them off (I slowed down because of the deferred loans, could have had it done in 2020). Meanwhile my wife only makes an appreciable dent in hers whenever she gets a gift from family members, and she's still paying $900 a month to not do much more than tread water. She did get it paid down a bit more thanks to the past two years of deferrals, but she still owes a lot more than I ever borrowed (two years of my school were paid for by a scholarship). It's been a steady drag on our income since we've been together. At least mine is just about to go away, mine was $400/month as well... that $1300/month is almost as much as our mortgage payment. I have multiple friends that have just given up on ever paying off their student loan debt in their lifetime and only pay enough to keep it where it is (or slowly increasing even). You wonder why people aren't buying homes and having children, there it is. I guess the solution to overpopulation is just saddle everyone with a bunch of debt, then.
    - samarama 5y ago
      Do you have sources for this, because the numbers don’t reflect this.
      - issa 5y ago
- paulpauper 5y ago
  you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes. Yeah, but you are assuming people only go to college for its educational value , ignoring that college grads tend to have much higher wages and lower unemployment compared to high school grads. If you look at FIRE subs for example, almost everyone who attains early retirement has a degree. The college wage premium is amplified by both higher wages and higher returns from investments by investing said wages in rapidly appreciating stocks and real estate (the post-2009 bull market in real estate and stocks, on an real basis, exceeds even the '80s and '90s).
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    > you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes. > Yeah, but you are assuming people only go to college for its educational value , ... But that's exactly the point, a huge expectation of going to college is the whole college experience: building independence, lifelong friendships, extracurriculars, etc. 50k for Zoom? Fuck that.
    - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
      Keep seeing “the experience“ over and over in this thread. Children literally taking out 5 and 6 figure loans for a glorified multi-year vacation with some half arsed “education” strapped to it.
  - ozzythecat 5y ago
    You’re implying causation - that a college degree is the cause of these outcomes. I’m not convinced that’s true, and in my mind, it might be one of the most damaging beliefs. It could be that people who are driven or passionate, on average, want to pursue higher education, or that they take on risks, exercise their brains in learning endeavors, and it’s their effort and drive that leads to success. It’s entirely possible that high earners have college degrees because they were told that to be successful, they had to go to college. It’s a belief they were raised with. I think it’s highly misguided that we give college so much credit. And we also demonstrate survivorship bias where those who went to college but didn’t get the pay off are blamed for having made some wrong decision. We treat higher education as a silver bullet and put it on a pedestal when it’s not.
- cpascal 5y ago
  I'm glad that there is much more awareness and consideration around cost. When I was in high school and applying to colleges around 2011, the advice given to us was to not take cost too seriously. Many authority figures (like high school counselors) told my peers and I to, "follow your heart" or "go where you think you'll fit in best". On top of that, student loans and interest rates where not explained to us very well. Very few of us understood that borrowing 160k-200k to go to an out-of-state/private school could very well mean you were signing up for a lifelong debt. Looking back, its insane we could make such a life altering/hindering decision with so little oversight from the "adults".
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  It’s mind boggling how bad student loans are looking back at it. It was just normal to spend $100k over 4 years. I finally paid mine and my wife’s off in 2020 and when I did the math, combined we paid $216k over 7 years post college. We were both lucky enough to have well paying jobs, but so so many people don’t. Some of these people even with decent jobs will be paying $500-$1000/m for nearly the rest of their lives.
epistasis 5y ago
I've heard tales of people with interest rates of 7%+ on student loans, and the official rates are not incredibly low either: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-rates https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-r... Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy is just usury with current interest rates.
- lumost 5y ago
  This Happened to me on loans taken out between ‘07 and ‘10. The liquidity crises meant that banks stopped lending to students, and everyone assumed that interest rates would rise. I got locked into 7.25-8% fixed on roughly 80k in debt which I paid off over the next 10 years. Unfortunately a bout of unemployment in 2010 prevented me from refinancing.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    Me too, I’m still stuck with 10k at (now 10.5%) taken out then
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy The interest rates are high because so few loans can be discharged by bankruptcy. You can refinance your mortgage with anyone. Far few companies will refinance your student loans. Meanwhile, it makes prefect sense that bankruptcy cannot discharge student loans. Otherwise, every single student would have crappy credit from 21-28 and no student loans ever.
  - megaman821 5y ago
    They should be dischargable after 8-10 years. If you are willing to declare 8 years after graduating, you should be able to get your debt restructured or forgiven.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
MattGaiser 5y ago
Aren't state colleges must cheaper than that?
- epistasis 5y ago
  Without room and board, University of California fees are around $20k. And none of the college towns have adequate housing, so any sort of housing is absolutely through the roof.
  - cgearhart 5y ago
    “The University of California is the world’s leading public research university.” [1] So $20k/yr seems like a steal. Meanwhile, if you’re price sensitive then you can go to one of the 26 Cal State campuses for ~$8k/yr (Cal Poly SLO is an outlier at $10k). [2] If you’re really looking to keep costs down, head to community college for two years to finish a Cal State transferable AA, then have guaranteed admission to a Cal State school and only two years there to finish your BS/BA. [3] It should cost <$20k in total to do community college and cal state if you did it in 4 years. Housing and supplies are still expensive, and _yes_ it’s still very expensive to go to college, but there are affordable options out there for college. [1] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-system https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-system [2] https://www.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Documents/21-22-coa.pdf https://www.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Documents... [3] https://www.calstate.edu/apply/transfer/pages/ccc-associate-degree-for-transfer.aspx https://www.calstate.edu/apply/transfer/pages/ccc-associate-...
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      In my experience, "Research universities" are a joke for undergrad students. All it means for most of them is that their classes will be taught by graduate students because the "professors" are too busy doing research to be bothered with such trivial work. You need to be pretty lucky in your final years or actually going for masters or PHD to really be exposed to the research side of things. It's a steal alright, but I cant say I agree with who is coming out ahead.
monkeynotes 5y ago
In addition there is COVID which means a lot of online learning and none of the college social experience. I know of a coop on my team is considering pausing finishing his degree because he hates online learning and does not feel like he's getting the education he paid for.
- taylodl 5y ago
  What's the alternative? Wait for this to "blow over"? We've been waiting for two years now. Maybe omicron will be it. Or maybe not. We simply don't know. One thing we do know from past experience is those opting-out of college or putting their degree on "pause" rarely return to complete their degree. You simply reach a point where you're focusing on your career, maybe start a family, and so forth and the next thing you know there's simply no time (or money) for college.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The better alternative is to immediately return all students and staff to full in-person education with no mandates or restrictions. Yes that will incur some small but acceptable level of additional risk.
    - VampireWillow 5y ago
      Your comment is the epitome of "some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".
      - nradov 5y ago
        Real life is full of risks. I despise this modern culture of safetyism and fragility. We should teach our youth to be stoic and resilient in the face of danger.
        SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        I think the youth are plenty stoic and resilient. They have to be in response to increasing inequality, a shrinking middle class, climate change, and increased authoritarianism. They have never known a time without war and terrorism. School shootings are no longer newsworthy and they grew up drilling for a lone shooter.
bagacrap 5y ago
The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly impact those from economically disadvantaged households. Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less than $50k/yr so try going to Cal and/or your best local public school and supplement with self teaching (e.g. via public/free lectures from MIT)? The self directed learning/motivation is the hard part for many people of that age, but few have said living frugally should or would be easy.
- lumost 5y ago
  Would it really penalize disadvantaged households? I’d imagine that many such students lack a co-signer for these predatory loans, or would be further disadvantaged by a 200k degree that doesn’t meaningfully change their economic outcomes in 2022. To make college work you need to pick a dwindling number of high leverage disciplines such as CS, even picking something technical like Chemistry won’t yield a return on a 200k degree.
  - yxwvut 5y ago
    I think the only tenable solutions are 1) a ceiling on the loan amount tethered to public college costs to increase price elasticity and prevent runaway costs, along with a quota on loans to address the 'future ability to repay' issue with many majors/low caliber schools 2) free public college (or equivalent private college voucher) Giving out loans with no cap on how much schools can charge and with no ability-to-repay check is a recipe for catastrophe. I think option 2 is the best equitable outcome but is probably politically unsavory given the heterogeneity in public school costs/quality across states (which typically aligns with political divides).
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Option 2 is the only tenable solution. Option 1 is just more of the same we have now. Either society puts their money where their mouth is and actually pays for people to be educated, or they can choose to keep taxes lower and let people fend for themselves. Either of these options is fine, but the bullshit blank check taxpayer funded loans non dischargeable in bankruptcy is only good for politicians and taxpayers today at the expense of taxpayers and members of society tomorrow.
the_only_law 5y ago
I’ve been looking at going back to school for some years, and it’s finally looking like I’ll be able to begin the process this year. I can do the first two years of undergrad, through a community colleges while still working, and grad school can be figure out later if I decide on it, but I’m still concerned about how much I need to save for those last two years of undergrad. Tuition is one thing, while generally expensive, I’m in a state that’s not too bad if you can get in-state tuition. It’s still probably expensive, but nothing unmanageable (doesn’t seem much worse than financing a new car). The main concern is living expenses. The financial aid system is a bureaucratic joke as far as I’m aware, and “estimated family contribution” seems like a delusion in the case of most people. I half-joked with some friends about living in a car for the last couple years, and one thought I was crazy, responding with an anecdote about how “you don’t have to do that, I worked 3 jobs to pay for my education” which to me almost seems more miserable at this point.
deleted 5y ago
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devwastaken 5y ago
Yes, this is the issue right on the head. At a $0 income, federal and state grants + student loans will not cover tuition and housing costs at the most affordable of in state universities. We can't just look at tuition, but housing costs. The cost of housing sometimes rivals tuition. A fun fact is they make freshmen have to buy $2200 meal plans for their first year. They also prevent freshmen from better housing where they can cook for themselves and save money through food stamps. Ontop of this part of those grants are work study, you have to work to receive that money. This is again even if you're dirt poor with nothing. You will have to take a second job if you need to buy personal items like deodorant. The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans. Students have to pay on private loans, so, again, more and more work. I know students working 30 hours a week just to meet living costs and pay what they owe to the University so they are not barred from signing up for classes. These students are not learning what they should be, even though they are very bright hard workers it's wasted because we let universities charge these ridiculous amounts. It's not as if the unis are using it responsibly, either. They're not funding extracurriculars or programs students can learn more by being involved in. I recall one of our programs having to be funded by professors themselves to go anywhere. There are many different administrative workers that simply don't need to exist. The system has become lazy and inefficient. I recall in HS teachers spent hours grading. In uni - it's largely automatic. Yet we continue to have multiple teachers per subject and give professors just 1 or 2 classes. If we defund universities they will shape up quickly. Defund, regulate, start firing people.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  >The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans. Private loans only make up about 8% of total student loan debt https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/student-loan-debt https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/stude... https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics
  - devwastaken 5y ago
    The bill infront of me isnt lying. The amount of student loans is not enough to cover the costs, therefore requiring private loans or someone else to pay it. So either all these parents are paying it, or they're taking out private loans. Or, more likely, the stats are collected poorly as they typically are. Same as how unis are allowed to lie about job placement rates.
rch 5y ago
It would also help to encourage and support people choosing to attend regional colleges for many fields of study, particularly given that educational content from state universities can easily be made available at the local level.
hammock 5y ago
College was once to be reserved for the rich elite. But central bank and government policies starting in the 70's gutted US manufacturing and took away most of the non-information worker jobs - so there was little else for the middle class to go for a career except first to college. Hence today. However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career. What should the role of college be today?
- matt_mb 5y ago
  >However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career. In what way?
  - noasaservice 5y ago
    Like the way corporations do, I guess? PPP was a boon - 'Here is a loan that converts to freebie money for millions of companies'. Where'd the money go? Buying Lambo's and the like. Or, when can I get a tax abatement for 10 years? COmpanies can because of this mythical 'they create jobs' tripe. Just look up corporate welfare. And if I was permitted to, I would.
  - hammock 5y ago
    Welfare payments supplemented wages by about 8% in 1960. That figure has risen to about 36% today, a 3.5x increase. Chart: http://www.mygovcost.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/government-welfare-TrimTabs-2011-01-thumb-550x238-44146.png http://www.mygovcost.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/governme... Source: http://www.mygovcost.org/2011/03/14/the-u-s-as-welfare-state-government-entitlements-now-35-of-wages/ http://www.mygovcost.org/2011/03/14/the-u-s-as-welfare-state... (the first random example I found on Google)
    - _moof 5y ago
      This chart includes Social Security and Medicare. I don't think it makes sense to include retirees in a data set when making an argument about "welfare."
_fat_santa 5y ago
Thought it's not as glamorous as a 4 year college experience, I highly suggest going to a Community College for the first two years and then transferring to a state school. I did this and through I resented it at the time, I existed college with around $30k in student debt versus my friends that all has something in range of ($40k to $80k). IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid down to like $12k and I like knowing I can reach into savings at any time and wipe out this debt if need be.
- wombat-man 5y ago
  yeah, plus you have to knock out some random 100 level courses anyway. If you end up burning a semester of cc on some topics you end up hating it's a less expensive mistake.
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid down to like $12k and I like knowing I can reach into savings at any time and wipe out this debt if need be. Absolutely - $30K in debt is completely reasonable imo; if after 4 years in college you have not improved your job prospects enough to cover that payment, then you probably didn't work very hard, or didn't pick a marketable major. Most of these 'college debt is out of control' stories being pushed in the press, are usually focusing on outliers - i.e. people that borrowed $250K for multiple useless majors and now work at Starbucks because they chose badly. Public policy shouldn't be based on edge cases like this; not do we want to reward people for making bad decisions. Last I read, the median college debt that people owe is less than $20K, and should be more than manageable for most people. If we want to fix the college debt problem, focus on getting the college costs down - anything that tries to make it easier to pay for, without controlling the cost side of the equation, will almost certainly cause the cost to go up even faster then before.
  - valeness 5y ago
    Assuming 20k in debt is more than manageable for most people really says more about you than it does others who can't pay that back. The OP said he could just "reach into savings" and whip out 12k. That is an INCREDIBLY privileged position to be in and I would urge you both to re-evaluate your perspective. People taking care of their sick mother, or paying for expensive medication for chronic illnesses, or living in a poor job market area, or have poor credit due to narcissistic parents taking out loans in their name, battling mental illness, or are paying child support, etc; are not "edge cases". They make up a considerable number of people who are struggling with the compounded failures of the system layered over of them. It was Margaret Mead who said something to the effect that "The earliest sign of true civilization, was that of a healed femur." This was said because a femur is not something that can be healed without assistance from someone else to bandage you, care for you, and fetch food for you. What is the point of civilized society and public policy if not to ensure that "edge cases" are treated as equitably as the general public? Why do you not have the same mentality when somebody breaks a leg? Why should society care for the outcomes of poor decision making: for example, such as playing contact sports, that results in a broken leg? Also please quit spewing the nonsense of "didn't choose a marketable major". I see this a lot with STEM grads, shitting on the arts, and then turning around and watching DUNE on HBOMax. Everybody enjoys the work of "non-marketable" majors, but nobody wants to pay for it.
hourislate 5y ago
>Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. I understand that commuting to schools is not available to everyone but State schools are affordable. Entertaining the idea to go away for school either leads to higher costs or more debt. A 4 year degree from UT Dallas landed my oldest a 110k + first job in DFW. His entire degree cost approx 45-50k and that included gas, books, etc.
sarchertech 5y ago
>horrendously predatory loans backed by the government What's predatory about public loans. They all qualify for income based repayment, which means you'll never pay more than 10% of your disposable income (any income over 1.5x the federal poverty level). If you make below that amount, you'll never be required to pay back anything. And they are cancelled after 20 years. Theoretically you'd owe tax on cancelled debt, but only up to the point of solvency. And a borrower who hasn't made enough income to pay back a student loan after 20 years probably isn't solvent, so won't pay anything. This also assumes that as more and more people reach this point, there isn't demand for congress to change the tax code. Public loans make up about 92% of all student loan debt as well, so the vast majority of loans are going to qualify.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  You also get credit for going into public service as well.
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>What's predatory about public loans. To some folks, having to pay off their loan, is considered predatory.
  - Shared404 5y ago
    The predatory part is the pushing kids who don't understand finances into taking massive loans with high interest rates. I've passed on a traditional uni for this because I want to avoid debt, and still get "why don't you go to uni?"'d every so often by family and acquaintance's. And if the argument is "well, if you don't make enough to pay it, just don't!", as GP appears to be, I don't like spending other people's tax dollars dishonestly - especially not on textbook companies [0] and an expanding administrative staff. [0] Which bribe and cut-throat their way into forcing $100+ payments per student per class per semester. Pirating or buying second hand doesn't even work half the time now - you need the "online access", aka DRM.
    - learc83 5y ago
jrsj 5y ago
I honestly think keeping people in debt so they have to work more & for longer is considered a feature of the system by a majority of the people running it
xhkkffbf 5y ago
Absolutely true. And many of the degrees don't lead anywhere. The smart kids are the ones that aren't in college. When I hire now, I always look for kids who are willing to teach themselves and learn from all of the good sources on the Internet. Places like Coursera, Udemy or even YouTube. They're reasonably priced.
standardUser 5y ago
Public schools average about $10k per year for in-state students. That's a far cry from the $25k-$50k per year people tend to quote when arguing against the cost of college. How important that difference is depends on which state a student lives in. In California there are literally dozens of options including several prestigious ones, whereas many states only have a couple of middling schools to choose from, and out-of-state public tuition averages around $25k/year.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  You're thinking of 20 years ago. Most state schools are easily $20k for in state students once you add in the room and board. Then they try to get $50k from the out-of-staters. Top flight state schools like Michigan, Cal Berkeley and Cornell start at $75k+ for out-of-staters. Of course financial aid does enter the picture for many students.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    No, I am not thinking of twenty years ago, I accurately stated the cost of tuition today, which generally does not include renting a place to live, on-campus or otherwise, or a meal plan.
    - Goronmon 5y ago
      Having a place to live and food to eat seems to me to be pretty important part of your education.
      - kapp_in_life 5y ago
        But is explicitly not tuition. If you weren't in school you would still need to eat and live somewhere.
        Goronmon 5y ago
        But its still a cost you have to pay for somehow, and since you are, hopefully, going to classes, studying, and doing homework, you are largely preventing from having a job lucrative enough to pay for those things completely.
paulpauper 5y ago
College cost less than a brand new car, yet does not lose a third of its value when you drive it off the lot, but rather gains value due to the wage premium and better job prospects overall. There is no crisis of car affordability yet people talk about college being unaffordable even though student loans are cheaper and have much better terms than car loans. Same for credit card debt. Also the price actually paid on tuition , especially after accounting for generous aid and other programs, is much less than the sticker price.
snambi 5y ago
Knowledge and education should be free of cost and barriers. Any society that thinks otherwise, will not be able to sustain and expand knowledge in the long run.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. Barely anyone pays full tuition. Look up the statistics for any of the big colleges that share numbers. It’s usually less than 10% of students paying full tuition. Significant numbers of students pay under $10K and many pay basically nothing at all. It’s still too expensive, but the myth that everybody is paying $50K/year at these colleges needs to die. It ends up convincing a lot of people who shouldn’t be paying that much that everyone else is doing it and therefore they should too.
- ljhsiung 5y ago
  Can I see your source? Here's mine [1] -- at UIUC, full tuition is 35-50k depending on residency. 30% get free tuition (given their family's net worth <50k/gross income < 67k) and 40% got some form of a loan averaging 20k. Assuming very generous loans (unlikely), 30% of people paid full price, or about 10,000 students (undergrad class size is 30-35k). That's not trivial, but definitely off your 10% claim. (Here [2] it is more succinctly, and not in a large picturesque landing page advertisement fashion) Now some anecdata-- I paid 35k. Every college friend I knew also paid full, except one, who had crazy interest rates on her loan. I recognize my friend group may be a bubble, so I preface this with "anecdata" and gave you some sources on my own. [1] https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/financial-aid https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/financial-aid [2] https://osfa.illinois.edu/other-financial-aid-options/ https://osfa.illinois.edu/other-financial-aid-options/
Dig1t 5y ago
Doesn't it vary pretty wildly depending on the school? I also was very concerned about cost when going college, so I went with the cheapest route possible and also worked a job during college. I went to community college for 2 years while living at my parent's house, which was very cheap, it cost about $1000 per year for that. Then I transferred to a cheaper in-state school, in my case it was one in the California State University system (CSU) which is way cheaper though not quite as well known as the UC system (UC Berkeley is part of that system), which cost me about 10k per year for the final 2 years. In all I was able to get through college with no debt and a degree in Computer Science for a total cost of 22k. I think there is a mindset that students should always attend the best possible school that they are admitted to, but this seems pretty dumb to me as they are usually expensive for big brand names and in the end you receive the same degree and learn the same things. What I did also happened in California, I think some states have even cheaper paths through college if you go with the community college + in-state university route.
- ahoho 5y ago
  If you go to a big name school the aid packages are usually much more generous, so total cost may even be below $22k (depending on your circumstances). Also, I’d push back on the idea that outcomes are comparable across schools. A degree from most Ivies has a measurable impact on future earnings, even controlling for parental income and academic aptitude.
commandlinefan 5y ago
> Their universal concern is the cost. I have a senior in high school right now and although I think you're right - he's concerned about a potential quarter-million dollar tuition bill before this whole thing is over - he's also concerned about the whole selectivity of it all. From the outside looking in, you never know what's important and what's not. He has this feeling (and I'm not sure I can dispute it) that the only degrees that matter are degrees from hyper-selective ivy league schools and if the only school he can get into is Texas Tech, he might as well just give up and go into a trade. I remind him that I went to a no-name school and I'm doing fine but he says "things are different than when you were young", and I'm not 100% sure he's wrong.
- ryathal 5y ago
  If you want to be a college grad hired by Google, college name matters. If you want to move across the country, college name matters. If you want to stay in the region/state, not choose a garbage tier college is all that matters. It's not Ivy league or bust, but choosing top 100 university for chosen field is a good bet.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  The average debt for recent college grads is around $30-40k, quarter-million figures are outliers . Doctors may accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, but they easily make up for it in income.
  - JohnTHaller 5y ago
    About 7% (3.2 million) of federal student loan borrowers have over $100,000 in debt. Many of these are likely law (avg $145,500), pharmacy ($179,514), veterinary ($183,302), medical ($201,490), and dental ($292,169).
    - paulpauper 5y ago
      right, and those jobs also tend to pay the most
mywittyname 5y ago
> If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket. Enrollment was at record numbers immediately preceding the pandemic, and this was a trend that held for several years prior as well. Lots of colleges had been expanding their campuses like crazy in the Before Times. I don't think the pandemic will result in a long-term shift away from this trend. By-and-large, college education remains is a worthwhile expenditure, despite the costs. You even agree, hence why you have three kids in college! I can appreciate not going to college right now. Classes have been randomly cancelled, there have been lockdowns/classes going remote, professors aren't grading/lecturing at the levels they should be, students are doing the work, etc, etc. But once society reaches some level of normalcy again, I believe enrollment numbers will explode back to record levels. Plus, cost-conscious students have more options than ever. A lot of community colleges are starting to offer 4 year degrees.
jeffalbertson 5y ago
in addition to cost, there is also a feeling I didn't get ANY value from the curriculum. Some majors are great but many give you 0 skills for the real world. I majored in communications cause I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. By the time I figured out I loved software, I had graduated. The best lessons I learned in college were off campus and developing my social skills (which is important).
shockeychap 5y ago
I remember reading a while back something like, "It used to be that you could mostly pay for college with a summer job. Today, the only summer job that could pay for college is being Elon Musk."
soheil 5y ago
The administrative fees are outrageous. Administration staff effectively getting paid from student loans just to set more guidelines and procedures in place for students to follow and for themselves to gain more power is perverse incentives. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-feeding-college-bureaucratic-bloat-11559507310 https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-feeding-college-bureaucrat...
bastardoperator 5y ago
My nephew did community college (free) for two years and transferred in state to the UC system which is about 14K a year. He qualified for some grants/scholarships which covered more than half the cost for each semester. He was able to pay off his school loans in his first year out of college. School costs are insane, but there are easy ways to save considerable amounts of money.
WoodenChair 5y ago
> Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. It's worth noting that the vast majority of students don't pay the sticker price because financial aid is provided early and often (beyond just loans). Very few students are actually paying $50k.* [0] The average net price at a public college last year is $19,230 and the average net price at a private college is $33,720. Note that this doesn't just include tuition, but also room and board. So if you're going to public college you're probably paying $20k to eat, sleep, and learn. Plus you generally get some kind of health insurance too. These averages can be significantly lower still for in-state public colleges and community colleges. No doubt the massive inflation in college prices is driven by the government loans, and the federal government's policy around them should be modified at best. But we should speak in reality instead of the hyperbolic articles that often just look at tuition which is what most people are familiar with. Colleges below the top tier compete on their "discount rate" which is what percentage of the sticker price does the average student actually pay because almost no students pay the sticker price. * "The average grant aid awarded per student was $8,100 at public colleges and $23,080 at private schools." 0: https://www.collegedata.com/resources/pay-your-way/whats-the-price-tag-for-a-college-education https://www.collegedata.com/resources/pay-your-way/whats-the...
jjulius 5y ago
Cost is the primary reason I dropped out of college, with not knowing what I wanted to do with my life being the secondary reason. It was about 15 years ago, I was 19. At the time, I was attending community college because I had no idea what I wanted to major in, or what I wanted to do with my life as far as careers go, but I had so much societal pressure telling me that I had to go to college in order to be successful. I'd tried steering myself towards a few subjects that were hobbies/passions of mine, but every time I dipped my toes into doing something with them professionally, I quickly became concerned about money/profit/work/bosses bastardizing my love for them and opted to keep them as hobbies/passions. 15 years later, I am still enamored by some of those same hobbies and am happy I kept them as such. While the "goal" was to transfer to a university from the community college, I consistently found myself thinking, "I'm seeing a ton of my friends, and people who graduated HS a few years before me, taking out these massive loans. Why am I going to go into debt if I don't even know what I want to do?". It just made no sense to me, so I stopped. I've been incredibly lucky that I found a career path in an area that I'm good at, and have risen to a level in my career that I'm happy with, but I absolutely did have to work really hard to get here. All that is to say, not only do I think we put far too much pressure on people to know what they want to do when they're still too young to truly have that figured out, but I also completely agree with you that cost is the primary concern here. If I didn't have to go into so much debt in order to have continued my college education, I have a feeling I would've opted to keep at it and figure out what I wanted to do along the way.
asdff 5y ago
In state tuition at public schools has still been reasonable all this time

lvl100 5y ago

I am convinced college is more or less priced off of prestigious private high schools where the parents simply pay cash. For the wealthy it is acceptable to pay 60-70K per year for their kids. Clearly this represents the wealth gap in this country.

sylens 5y ago

Yes, it's quite clearly this. Millennials have been out there for nearly a decade yelling on social media about how ridiculous their student loans are. Kids on the precipice of college have started paying attention. Combine that with the restrictions for Covid, and you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes.

bart_spoon 5y ago
Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields. I know coding bootcamps get a bad rep, often justified, but at the same time my buddy went to college for a degree in HR and I went for STEM. He ended up hating HR, did a 9 week boot camp, managed to get a job, and after a few years of experience is in roughly the same place as me and is thriving. It took him a little longer because of the time spent in HR, but ultimately he ended up with the same skill set I did between the 9 weeks of intensive study combined with on the job experience. Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever. It's a single anecdote, but between online resources and alternative training programs, it seems harder to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on college.
- f6v 5y ago
  > Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields Out of interest, what are other fields besides IT?
- Frost1x 5y ago
  >Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever. While I agree with your core sentiment, my opinion is that this is a symptom of a cultural/societal problem and not one of the schools. Modern Universities are certainly ripe with problems (largely driven by adopting business structures), including generally poor quality courses and curriculum within them, but I think you've identified a larger societal problem we have. Why is it that broad education which is generally, at the very least in my opinion, clearly valuable yet so lowly valued in society? It's my opinion that we have institutional structures that, given a lack of opportunities, value specialized and specific knowledge over general knowledge. Meanwhile, if you have the capability to escape these institutional shackles, general knowledge becomes far more valuable. On the labor side, labor markets are all about jobs and specialized roles with efficient production from that role. On the capital side, you need more general knowledge to see, connect, and sieze opportunities. It seems to me that most lack enough genuine realizable opportunity where general knowledge becomes valuable (say, seeking entrepreneurship) and in such a set of constraints, it makes complete sense why people specialize and chase demand of specialization because it's their most optimal strategy for financial success. I work in R&D in startup-esk environments and my general knowledge is fairly well valued, however even here leadership sometimes fail to see how some book or article I read years ago, course I took, project I worked on years ago, etc. was critical to making the connection that made this research thing possible. They value the general subset of knowledge I have that made their thing possible (oh boy you know A, B, and C and those saved us!!!), never mind the hydrology work I've done, it's irrelevant (D, or so they think, even though I may draw on concepts from such domains opaquely) or perhaps hours of video gaming (E, which lead to a game theoretic intuition about approaching an underlying problem). That knowledge was only appreciated after the fact because it made someone a pile of money or positioned a large contract. I remember hating taking geology in college because "I'd never use it," then I did a lot of applied science and R&D in the fossil fuels industry and suddenly a lot of "silly" things I did in geology gave me a foundation to jump from and to build upon. That silly geology course made me boatloads of money in retrospect. Throughout my career I always like to look back when I have a problem and say "ah ha, I sure am glad I studied or read about X years ago, that's one less thing I need to internalize now to do this thing." I'm always surprised how much old general knowledge I draw upon for new problems and how valuable they truly are.
samarama 5y ago
Are student loans really such an issue? 85% of graduates have less than $50,000 in student loans. Paid off over 20 years, that’s really not much. https://www.rclco.com/wp-content/uploads/advisory-student-debt-2016-04-08-image1.png https://www.rclco.com/wp-content/uploads/advisory-student-de... Additionally, those that have much higher loans are usually medical students who make $200,000/year at the entry level.
- issa 5y ago
  If you are in the US and know people who are aged 30-50 and not software engineers, this is almost all that they talk about. Some people manage to pay them off, others (due to high interest) owe more than when they started. It is a huge problem.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    Yep, I'm a software engineer and just about to pay them off (I slowed down because of the deferred loans, could have had it done in 2020). Meanwhile my wife only makes an appreciable dent in hers whenever she gets a gift from family members, and she's still paying $900 a month to not do much more than tread water. She did get it paid down a bit more thanks to the past two years of deferrals, but she still owes a lot more than I ever borrowed (two years of my school were paid for by a scholarship). It's been a steady drag on our income since we've been together. At least mine is just about to go away, mine was $400/month as well... that $1300/month is almost as much as our mortgage payment. I have multiple friends that have just given up on ever paying off their student loan debt in their lifetime and only pay enough to keep it where it is (or slowly increasing even). You wonder why people aren't buying homes and having children, there it is. I guess the solution to overpopulation is just saddle everyone with a bunch of debt, then.
  - samarama 5y ago
    Do you have sources for this, because the numbers don’t reflect this.
    - issa 5y ago
paulpauper 5y ago
you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes. Yeah, but you are assuming people only go to college for its educational value , ignoring that college grads tend to have much higher wages and lower unemployment compared to high school grads. If you look at FIRE subs for example, almost everyone who attains early retirement has a degree. The college wage premium is amplified by both higher wages and higher returns from investments by investing said wages in rapidly appreciating stocks and real estate (the post-2009 bull market in real estate and stocks, on an real basis, exceeds even the '80s and '90s).
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  > you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes. > Yeah, but you are assuming people only go to college for its educational value , ... But that's exactly the point, a huge expectation of going to college is the whole college experience: building independence, lifelong friendships, extracurriculars, etc. 50k for Zoom? Fuck that.
  - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    Keep seeing “the experience“ over and over in this thread. Children literally taking out 5 and 6 figure loans for a glorified multi-year vacation with some half arsed “education” strapped to it.
- ozzythecat 5y ago
  You’re implying causation - that a college degree is the cause of these outcomes. I’m not convinced that’s true, and in my mind, it might be one of the most damaging beliefs. It could be that people who are driven or passionate, on average, want to pursue higher education, or that they take on risks, exercise their brains in learning endeavors, and it’s their effort and drive that leads to success. It’s entirely possible that high earners have college degrees because they were told that to be successful, they had to go to college. It’s a belief they were raised with. I think it’s highly misguided that we give college so much credit. And we also demonstrate survivorship bias where those who went to college but didn’t get the pay off are blamed for having made some wrong decision. We treat higher education as a silver bullet and put it on a pedestal when it’s not.
cpascal 5y ago
I'm glad that there is much more awareness and consideration around cost. When I was in high school and applying to colleges around 2011, the advice given to us was to not take cost too seriously. Many authority figures (like high school counselors) told my peers and I to, "follow your heart" or "go where you think you'll fit in best". On top of that, student loans and interest rates where not explained to us very well. Very few of us understood that borrowing 160k-200k to go to an out-of-state/private school could very well mean you were signing up for a lifelong debt. Looking back, its insane we could make such a life altering/hindering decision with so little oversight from the "adults".
ryanSrich 5y ago
It’s mind boggling how bad student loans are looking back at it. It was just normal to spend $100k over 4 years. I finally paid mine and my wife’s off in 2020 and when I did the math, combined we paid $216k over 7 years post college. We were both lucky enough to have well paying jobs, but so so many people don’t. Some of these people even with decent jobs will be paying $500-$1000/m for nearly the rest of their lives.

epistasis 5y ago

I've heard tales of people with interest rates of 7%+ on student loans, and the official rates are not incredibly low either: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-rates https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-r... Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy is just usury with current interest rates.

lumost 5y ago
This Happened to me on loans taken out between ‘07 and ‘10. The liquidity crises meant that banks stopped lending to students, and everyone assumed that interest rates would rise. I got locked into 7.25-8% fixed on roughly 80k in debt which I paid off over the next 10 years. Unfortunately a bout of unemployment in 2010 prevented me from refinancing.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Me too, I’m still stuck with 10k at (now 10.5%) taken out then
HWR_14 5y ago
> Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy The interest rates are high because so few loans can be discharged by bankruptcy. You can refinance your mortgage with anyone. Far few companies will refinance your student loans. Meanwhile, it makes prefect sense that bankruptcy cannot discharge student loans. Otherwise, every single student would have crappy credit from 21-28 and no student loans ever.
- megaman821 5y ago
  They should be dischargable after 8-10 years. If you are willing to declare 8 years after graduating, you should be able to get your debt restructured or forgiven.
  - HWR_14 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago

Aren't state colleges must cheaper than that?

epistasis 5y ago
Without room and board, University of California fees are around $20k. And none of the college towns have adequate housing, so any sort of housing is absolutely through the roof.
- cgearhart 5y ago
  “The University of California is the world’s leading public research university.” [1] So $20k/yr seems like a steal. Meanwhile, if you’re price sensitive then you can go to one of the 26 Cal State campuses for ~$8k/yr (Cal Poly SLO is an outlier at $10k). [2] If you’re really looking to keep costs down, head to community college for two years to finish a Cal State transferable AA, then have guaranteed admission to a Cal State school and only two years there to finish your BS/BA. [3] It should cost <$20k in total to do community college and cal state if you did it in 4 years. Housing and supplies are still expensive, and _yes_ it’s still very expensive to go to college, but there are affordable options out there for college. [1] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-system https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-system [2] https://www.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Documents/21-22-coa.pdf https://www.calstate.edu/attend/paying-for-college/Documents... [3] https://www.calstate.edu/apply/transfer/pages/ccc-associate-degree-for-transfer.aspx https://www.calstate.edu/apply/transfer/pages/ccc-associate-...
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    In my experience, "Research universities" are a joke for undergrad students. All it means for most of them is that their classes will be taught by graduate students because the "professors" are too busy doing research to be bothered with such trivial work. You need to be pretty lucky in your final years or actually going for masters or PHD to really be exposed to the research side of things. It's a steal alright, but I cant say I agree with who is coming out ahead.

monkeynotes 5y ago

In addition there is COVID which means a lot of online learning and none of the college social experience. I know of a coop on my team is considering pausing finishing his degree because he hates online learning and does not feel like he's getting the education he paid for.

taylodl 5y ago
What's the alternative? Wait for this to "blow over"? We've been waiting for two years now. Maybe omicron will be it. Or maybe not. We simply don't know. One thing we do know from past experience is those opting-out of college or putting their degree on "pause" rarely return to complete their degree. You simply reach a point where you're focusing on your career, maybe start a family, and so forth and the next thing you know there's simply no time (or money) for college.
- nradov 5y ago
  The better alternative is to immediately return all students and staff to full in-person education with no mandates or restrictions. Yes that will incur some small but acceptable level of additional risk.
  - VampireWillow 5y ago
    Your comment is the epitome of "some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".
    - nradov 5y ago
      Real life is full of risks. I despise this modern culture of safetyism and fragility. We should teach our youth to be stoic and resilient in the face of danger.
      - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        I think the youth are plenty stoic and resilient. They have to be in response to increasing inequality, a shrinking middle class, climate change, and increased authoritarianism. They have never known a time without war and terrorism. School shootings are no longer newsworthy and they grew up drilling for a lone shooter.

bagacrap 5y ago

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly impact those from economically disadvantaged households. Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less than $50k/yr so try going to Cal and/or your best local public school and supplement with self teaching (e.g. via public/free lectures from MIT)? The self directed learning/motivation is the hard part for many people of that age, but few have said living frugally should or would be easy.

lumost 5y ago
Would it really penalize disadvantaged households? I’d imagine that many such students lack a co-signer for these predatory loans, or would be further disadvantaged by a 200k degree that doesn’t meaningfully change their economic outcomes in 2022. To make college work you need to pick a dwindling number of high leverage disciplines such as CS, even picking something technical like Chemistry won’t yield a return on a 200k degree.
- yxwvut 5y ago
  I think the only tenable solutions are 1) a ceiling on the loan amount tethered to public college costs to increase price elasticity and prevent runaway costs, along with a quota on loans to address the 'future ability to repay' issue with many majors/low caliber schools 2) free public college (or equivalent private college voucher) Giving out loans with no cap on how much schools can charge and with no ability-to-repay check is a recipe for catastrophe. I think option 2 is the best equitable outcome but is probably politically unsavory given the heterogeneity in public school costs/quality across states (which typically aligns with political divides).
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Option 2 is the only tenable solution. Option 1 is just more of the same we have now. Either society puts their money where their mouth is and actually pays for people to be educated, or they can choose to keep taxes lower and let people fend for themselves. Either of these options is fine, but the bullshit blank check taxpayer funded loans non dischargeable in bankruptcy is only good for politicians and taxpayers today at the expense of taxpayers and members of society tomorrow.

the_only_law 5y ago

I’ve been looking at going back to school for some years, and it’s finally looking like I’ll be able to begin the process this year. I can do the first two years of undergrad, through a community colleges while still working, and grad school can be figure out later if I decide on it, but I’m still concerned about how much I need to save for those last two years of undergrad. Tuition is one thing, while generally expensive, I’m in a state that’s not too bad if you can get in-state tuition. It’s still probably expensive, but nothing unmanageable (doesn’t seem much worse than financing a new car). The main concern is living expenses. The financial aid system is a bureaucratic joke as far as I’m aware, and “estimated family contribution” seems like a delusion in the case of most people. I half-joked with some friends about living in a car for the last couple years, and one thought I was crazy, responding with an anecdote about how “you don’t have to do that, I worked 3 jobs to pay for my education” which to me almost seems more miserable at this point.

deleted 5y ago

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devwastaken 5y ago

Yes, this is the issue right on the head. At a $0 income, federal and state grants + student loans will not cover tuition and housing costs at the most affordable of in state universities. We can't just look at tuition, but housing costs. The cost of housing sometimes rivals tuition. A fun fact is they make freshmen have to buy $2200 meal plans for their first year. They also prevent freshmen from better housing where they can cook for themselves and save money through food stamps. Ontop of this part of those grants are work study, you have to work to receive that money. This is again even if you're dirt poor with nothing. You will have to take a second job if you need to buy personal items like deodorant. The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans. Students have to pay on private loans, so, again, more and more work. I know students working 30 hours a week just to meet living costs and pay what they owe to the University so they are not barred from signing up for classes. These students are not learning what they should be, even though they are very bright hard workers it's wasted because we let universities charge these ridiculous amounts. It's not as if the unis are using it responsibly, either. They're not funding extracurriculars or programs students can learn more by being involved in. I recall one of our programs having to be funded by professors themselves to go anywhere. There are many different administrative workers that simply don't need to exist. The system has become lazy and inefficient. I recall in HS teachers spent hours grading. In uni - it's largely automatic. Yet we continue to have multiple teachers per subject and give professors just 1 or 2 classes. If we defund universities they will shape up quickly. Defund, regulate, start firing people.

sarchertech 5y ago
>The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans. Private loans only make up about 8% of total student loan debt https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/student-loan-debt https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/stude... https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics
- devwastaken 5y ago
  The bill infront of me isnt lying. The amount of student loans is not enough to cover the costs, therefore requiring private loans or someone else to pay it. So either all these parents are paying it, or they're taking out private loans. Or, more likely, the stats are collected poorly as they typically are. Same as how unis are allowed to lie about job placement rates.

rch 5y ago

It would also help to encourage and support people choosing to attend regional colleges for many fields of study, particularly given that educational content from state universities can easily be made available at the local level.

hammock 5y ago

College was once to be reserved for the rich elite. But central bank and government policies starting in the 70's gutted US manufacturing and took away most of the non-information worker jobs - so there was little else for the middle class to go for a career except first to college. Hence today. However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career. What should the role of college be today?

matt_mb 5y ago
>However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career. In what way?
- noasaservice 5y ago
  Like the way corporations do, I guess? PPP was a boon - 'Here is a loan that converts to freebie money for millions of companies'. Where'd the money go? Buying Lambo's and the like. Or, when can I get a tax abatement for 10 years? COmpanies can because of this mythical 'they create jobs' tripe. Just look up corporate welfare. And if I was permitted to, I would.
- hammock 5y ago
  Welfare payments supplemented wages by about 8% in 1960. That figure has risen to about 36% today, a 3.5x increase. Chart: http://www.mygovcost.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/government-welfare-TrimTabs-2011-01-thumb-550x238-44146.png http://www.mygovcost.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/governme... Source: http://www.mygovcost.org/2011/03/14/the-u-s-as-welfare-state-government-entitlements-now-35-of-wages/ http://www.mygovcost.org/2011/03/14/the-u-s-as-welfare-state... (the first random example I found on Google)
  - _moof 5y ago
    This chart includes Social Security and Medicare. I don't think it makes sense to include retirees in a data set when making an argument about "welfare."

_fat_santa 5y ago

Thought it's not as glamorous as a 4 year college experience, I highly suggest going to a Community College for the first two years and then transferring to a state school. I did this and through I resented it at the time, I existed college with around $30k in student debt versus my friends that all has something in range of ($40k to $80k). IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid down to like $12k and I like knowing I can reach into savings at any time and wipe out this debt if need be.

wombat-man 5y ago
yeah, plus you have to knock out some random 100 level courses anyway. If you end up burning a semester of cc on some topics you end up hating it's a less expensive mistake.
ejb999 5y ago
>>IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid down to like $12k and I like knowing I can reach into savings at any time and wipe out this debt if need be. Absolutely - $30K in debt is completely reasonable imo; if after 4 years in college you have not improved your job prospects enough to cover that payment, then you probably didn't work very hard, or didn't pick a marketable major. Most of these 'college debt is out of control' stories being pushed in the press, are usually focusing on outliers - i.e. people that borrowed $250K for multiple useless majors and now work at Starbucks because they chose badly. Public policy shouldn't be based on edge cases like this; not do we want to reward people for making bad decisions. Last I read, the median college debt that people owe is less than $20K, and should be more than manageable for most people. If we want to fix the college debt problem, focus on getting the college costs down - anything that tries to make it easier to pay for, without controlling the cost side of the equation, will almost certainly cause the cost to go up even faster then before.
- valeness 5y ago
  Assuming 20k in debt is more than manageable for most people really says more about you than it does others who can't pay that back. The OP said he could just "reach into savings" and whip out 12k. That is an INCREDIBLY privileged position to be in and I would urge you both to re-evaluate your perspective. People taking care of their sick mother, or paying for expensive medication for chronic illnesses, or living in a poor job market area, or have poor credit due to narcissistic parents taking out loans in their name, battling mental illness, or are paying child support, etc; are not "edge cases". They make up a considerable number of people who are struggling with the compounded failures of the system layered over of them. It was Margaret Mead who said something to the effect that "The earliest sign of true civilization, was that of a healed femur." This was said because a femur is not something that can be healed without assistance from someone else to bandage you, care for you, and fetch food for you. What is the point of civilized society and public policy if not to ensure that "edge cases" are treated as equitably as the general public? Why do you not have the same mentality when somebody breaks a leg? Why should society care for the outcomes of poor decision making: for example, such as playing contact sports, that results in a broken leg? Also please quit spewing the nonsense of "didn't choose a marketable major". I see this a lot with STEM grads, shitting on the arts, and then turning around and watching DUNE on HBOMax. Everybody enjoys the work of "non-marketable" majors, but nobody wants to pay for it.

hourislate 5y ago

>Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. I understand that commuting to schools is not available to everyone but State schools are affordable. Entertaining the idea to go away for school either leads to higher costs or more debt. A 4 year degree from UT Dallas landed my oldest a 110k + first job in DFW. His entire degree cost approx 45-50k and that included gas, books, etc.

sarchertech 5y ago

>horrendously predatory loans backed by the government What's predatory about public loans. They all qualify for income based repayment, which means you'll never pay more than 10% of your disposable income (any income over 1.5x the federal poverty level). If you make below that amount, you'll never be required to pay back anything. And they are cancelled after 20 years. Theoretically you'd owe tax on cancelled debt, but only up to the point of solvency. And a borrower who hasn't made enough income to pay back a student loan after 20 years probably isn't solvent, so won't pay anything. This also assumes that as more and more people reach this point, there isn't demand for congress to change the tax code. Public loans make up about 92% of all student loan debt as well, so the vast majority of loans are going to qualify.

HWR_14 5y ago
You also get credit for going into public service as well.
ejb999 5y ago
>>What's predatory about public loans. To some folks, having to pay off their loan, is considered predatory.
- Shared404 5y ago
  The predatory part is the pushing kids who don't understand finances into taking massive loans with high interest rates. I've passed on a traditional uni for this because I want to avoid debt, and still get "why don't you go to uni?"'d every so often by family and acquaintance's. And if the argument is "well, if you don't make enough to pay it, just don't!", as GP appears to be, I don't like spending other people's tax dollars dishonestly - especially not on textbook companies [0] and an expanding administrative staff. [0] Which bribe and cut-throat their way into forcing $100+ payments per student per class per semester. Pirating or buying second hand doesn't even work half the time now - you need the "online access", aka DRM.
  - learc83 5y ago

jrsj 5y ago

I honestly think keeping people in debt so they have to work more & for longer is considered a feature of the system by a majority of the people running it

xhkkffbf 5y ago

Absolutely true. And many of the degrees don't lead anywhere. The smart kids are the ones that aren't in college. When I hire now, I always look for kids who are willing to teach themselves and learn from all of the good sources on the Internet. Places like Coursera, Udemy or even YouTube. They're reasonably priced.

standardUser 5y ago

Public schools average about $10k per year for in-state students. That's a far cry from the $25k-$50k per year people tend to quote when arguing against the cost of college. How important that difference is depends on which state a student lives in. In California there are literally dozens of options including several prestigious ones, whereas many states only have a couple of middling schools to choose from, and out-of-state public tuition averages around $25k/year.

xhkkffbf 5y ago
You're thinking of 20 years ago. Most state schools are easily $20k for in state students once you add in the room and board. Then they try to get $50k from the out-of-staters. Top flight state schools like Michigan, Cal Berkeley and Cornell start at $75k+ for out-of-staters. Of course financial aid does enter the picture for many students.
- standardUser 5y ago
  No, I am not thinking of twenty years ago, I accurately stated the cost of tuition today, which generally does not include renting a place to live, on-campus or otherwise, or a meal plan.
  - Goronmon 5y ago
    Having a place to live and food to eat seems to me to be pretty important part of your education.
    - kapp_in_life 5y ago
      But is explicitly not tuition. If you weren't in school you would still need to eat and live somewhere.
      - Goronmon 5y ago
        But its still a cost you have to pay for somehow, and since you are, hopefully, going to classes, studying, and doing homework, you are largely preventing from having a job lucrative enough to pay for those things completely.

paulpauper 5y ago

College cost less than a brand new car, yet does not lose a third of its value when you drive it off the lot, but rather gains value due to the wage premium and better job prospects overall. There is no crisis of car affordability yet people talk about college being unaffordable even though student loans are cheaper and have much better terms than car loans. Same for credit card debt. Also the price actually paid on tuition , especially after accounting for generous aid and other programs, is much less than the sticker price.

snambi 5y ago

Knowledge and education should be free of cost and barriers. Any society that thinks otherwise, will not be able to sustain and expand knowledge in the long run.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. Barely anyone pays full tuition. Look up the statistics for any of the big colleges that share numbers. It’s usually less than 10% of students paying full tuition. Significant numbers of students pay under $10K and many pay basically nothing at all. It’s still too expensive, but the myth that everybody is paying $50K/year at these colleges needs to die. It ends up convincing a lot of people who shouldn’t be paying that much that everyone else is doing it and therefore they should too.

ljhsiung 5y ago
Can I see your source? Here's mine [1] -- at UIUC, full tuition is 35-50k depending on residency. 30% get free tuition (given their family's net worth <50k/gross income < 67k) and 40% got some form of a loan averaging 20k. Assuming very generous loans (unlikely), 30% of people paid full price, or about 10,000 students (undergrad class size is 30-35k). That's not trivial, but definitely off your 10% claim. (Here [2] it is more succinctly, and not in a large picturesque landing page advertisement fashion) Now some anecdata-- I paid 35k. Every college friend I knew also paid full, except one, who had crazy interest rates on her loan. I recognize my friend group may be a bubble, so I preface this with "anecdata" and gave you some sources on my own. [1] https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/financial-aid https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/financial-aid [2] https://osfa.illinois.edu/other-financial-aid-options/ https://osfa.illinois.edu/other-financial-aid-options/

Dig1t 5y ago

Doesn't it vary pretty wildly depending on the school? I also was very concerned about cost when going college, so I went with the cheapest route possible and also worked a job during college. I went to community college for 2 years while living at my parent's house, which was very cheap, it cost about $1000 per year for that. Then I transferred to a cheaper in-state school, in my case it was one in the California State University system (CSU) which is way cheaper though not quite as well known as the UC system (UC Berkeley is part of that system), which cost me about 10k per year for the final 2 years. In all I was able to get through college with no debt and a degree in Computer Science for a total cost of 22k. I think there is a mindset that students should always attend the best possible school that they are admitted to, but this seems pretty dumb to me as they are usually expensive for big brand names and in the end you receive the same degree and learn the same things. What I did also happened in California, I think some states have even cheaper paths through college if you go with the community college + in-state university route.

ahoho 5y ago
If you go to a big name school the aid packages are usually much more generous, so total cost may even be below $22k (depending on your circumstances). Also, I’d push back on the idea that outcomes are comparable across schools. A degree from most Ivies has a measurable impact on future earnings, even controlling for parental income and academic aptitude.

commandlinefan 5y ago

> Their universal concern is the cost. I have a senior in high school right now and although I think you're right - he's concerned about a potential quarter-million dollar tuition bill before this whole thing is over - he's also concerned about the whole selectivity of it all. From the outside looking in, you never know what's important and what's not. He has this feeling (and I'm not sure I can dispute it) that the only degrees that matter are degrees from hyper-selective ivy league schools and if the only school he can get into is Texas Tech, he might as well just give up and go into a trade. I remind him that I went to a no-name school and I'm doing fine but he says "things are different than when you were young", and I'm not 100% sure he's wrong.

ryathal 5y ago
If you want to be a college grad hired by Google, college name matters. If you want to move across the country, college name matters. If you want to stay in the region/state, not choose a garbage tier college is all that matters. It's not Ivy league or bust, but choosing top 100 university for chosen field is a good bet.
paulpauper 5y ago
The average debt for recent college grads is around $30-40k, quarter-million figures are outliers . Doctors may accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, but they easily make up for it in income.
- JohnTHaller 5y ago
  About 7% (3.2 million) of federal student loan borrowers have over $100,000 in debt. Many of these are likely law (avg $145,500), pharmacy ($179,514), veterinary ($183,302), medical ($201,490), and dental ($292,169).
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    right, and those jobs also tend to pay the most

mywittyname 5y ago

> If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket. Enrollment was at record numbers immediately preceding the pandemic, and this was a trend that held for several years prior as well. Lots of colleges had been expanding their campuses like crazy in the Before Times. I don't think the pandemic will result in a long-term shift away from this trend. By-and-large, college education remains is a worthwhile expenditure, despite the costs. You even agree, hence why you have three kids in college! I can appreciate not going to college right now. Classes have been randomly cancelled, there have been lockdowns/classes going remote, professors aren't grading/lecturing at the levels they should be, students are doing the work, etc, etc. But once society reaches some level of normalcy again, I believe enrollment numbers will explode back to record levels. Plus, cost-conscious students have more options than ever. A lot of community colleges are starting to offer 4 year degrees.

jeffalbertson 5y ago

in addition to cost, there is also a feeling I didn't get ANY value from the curriculum. Some majors are great but many give you 0 skills for the real world. I majored in communications cause I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. By the time I figured out I loved software, I had graduated. The best lessons I learned in college were off campus and developing my social skills (which is important).

shockeychap 5y ago

I remember reading a while back something like, "It used to be that you could mostly pay for college with a summer job. Today, the only summer job that could pay for college is being Elon Musk."

soheil 5y ago

The administrative fees are outrageous. Administration staff effectively getting paid from student loans just to set more guidelines and procedures in place for students to follow and for themselves to gain more power is perverse incentives. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-feeding-college-bureaucratic-bloat-11559507310 https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-feeding-college-bureaucrat...

bastardoperator 5y ago

My nephew did community college (free) for two years and transferred in state to the UC system which is about 14K a year. He qualified for some grants/scholarships which covered more than half the cost for each semester. He was able to pay off his school loans in his first year out of college. School costs are insane, but there are easy ways to save considerable amounts of money.

WoodenChair 5y ago

> Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. It's worth noting that the vast majority of students don't pay the sticker price because financial aid is provided early and often (beyond just loans). Very few students are actually paying $50k.* [0] The average net price at a public college last year is $19,230 and the average net price at a private college is $33,720. Note that this doesn't just include tuition, but also room and board. So if you're going to public college you're probably paying $20k to eat, sleep, and learn. Plus you generally get some kind of health insurance too. These averages can be significantly lower still for in-state public colleges and community colleges. No doubt the massive inflation in college prices is driven by the government loans, and the federal government's policy around them should be modified at best. But we should speak in reality instead of the hyperbolic articles that often just look at tuition which is what most people are familiar with. Colleges below the top tier compete on their "discount rate" which is what percentage of the sticker price does the average student actually pay because almost no students pay the sticker price. * "The average grant aid awarded per student was $8,100 at public colleges and $23,080 at private schools." 0: https://www.collegedata.com/resources/pay-your-way/whats-the-price-tag-for-a-college-education https://www.collegedata.com/resources/pay-your-way/whats-the...

jjulius 5y ago

Cost is the primary reason I dropped out of college, with not knowing what I wanted to do with my life being the secondary reason. It was about 15 years ago, I was 19. At the time, I was attending community college because I had no idea what I wanted to major in, or what I wanted to do with my life as far as careers go, but I had so much societal pressure telling me that I had to go to college in order to be successful. I'd tried steering myself towards a few subjects that were hobbies/passions of mine, but every time I dipped my toes into doing something with them professionally, I quickly became concerned about money/profit/work/bosses bastardizing my love for them and opted to keep them as hobbies/passions. 15 years later, I am still enamored by some of those same hobbies and am happy I kept them as such. While the "goal" was to transfer to a university from the community college, I consistently found myself thinking, "I'm seeing a ton of my friends, and people who graduated HS a few years before me, taking out these massive loans. Why am I going to go into debt if I don't even know what I want to do?". It just made no sense to me, so I stopped. I've been incredibly lucky that I found a career path in an area that I'm good at, and have risen to a level in my career that I'm happy with, but I absolutely did have to work really hard to get here. All that is to say, not only do I think we put far too much pressure on people to know what they want to do when they're still too young to truly have that figured out, but I also completely agree with you that cost is the primary concern here. If I didn't have to go into so much debt in order to have continued my college education, I have a feeling I would've opted to keep at it and figure out what I wanted to do along the way.

asdff 5y ago

In state tuition at public schools has still been reasonable all this time