Job market and college costs

[Anonymous]

Selective colleges still matter for alumni networks, peer effects, recruiting pipelines, signaling, and credibility in a post-AI world. Maybe getting a bad degree from somewhere like the University of Phoenix is no longer worth it, but a Harvard or Williams degree will continue to matter for longer than we will live. If some of you want to experiment with your own kids on not supporting a college degree, fine, it just creates more opportunities for those of us who still care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Selective colleges still matter for alumni networks, peer effects, recruiting pipelines, signaling, and credibility in a post-AI world. Maybe getting a bad degree from somewhere like the University of Phoenix is no longer worth it, but a Harvard or Williams degree will continue to matter for longer than we will live. If some of you want to experiment with your own kids on not supporting a college degree, fine, it just creates more opportunities for those of us who still care.

Selective, yes. That is hardly limited to Ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Selective colleges still matter for alumni networks, peer effects, recruiting pipelines, signaling, and credibility in a post-AI world. Maybe getting a bad degree from somewhere like the University of Phoenix is no longer worth it, but a Harvard or Williams degree will continue to matter for longer than we will live. If some of you want to experiment with your own kids on not supporting a college degree, fine, it just creates more opportunities for those of us who still care.

Sure, feel free to go to the most expensive schools. Not all the selective colleges are expensive.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very few people spend $200,000 on college. Only the rich and the faux rich do.

UVA in-state 4 years is about that price.

No. It isn’t. It’s $40,383 a year for instate. All costs included. See here. https://sfs.virginia.edu/financial-aid-new-applicants/financial-aid-basics/estimated-undergraduate-cost-attendance-2025-2026

so much more than $40383

[/b]
[b]That's just for Art and Science.

Engineering is $51K+ and Business also comes close.

Nursing and Data Science al


Yes, you are the disturbed person who has an axe to grind that UVA charges more for engineering - but without understanding that College of Arts and Sciences is the largest College at the University and that the few in engineering are more than glad (my DS, the aerospace engineer, as an example) to pay the small lab surcharge for an excellent in-state school engineering experience, as opposed to pay $99K a year for private like USC. I'm sorry you have a twist in your pants about the modest extra charge to UVA engineering students, but your harping in thread after thread is just bizarre, and maybe you should rethink it or spend less time on DCUM, because very few people here care that UVA has a small extra lab charge for engineering students. The fact that the vast majority of UVA students pay only $40K, inclusive of all fees, for a superior education at a T25/26 school in the nation should be celebrated. You need to rethink why you need to criticize the added-on engineering fees, because, frankly, your behavior is weird. We should all celebrate in-state options where they are available. Not criticize. I am grateful that Virginia options existed for all of my children. And, interestingly, I am a Californian, so I grew up with even greater expectations of what the state could provide in secondary education (including California community college offerings and admission to the UC schools, Cal State Schools, and UC schools). My sister and nieces all took advantage of those programs. One niece attended community college for 2 years, excelled, and was accepted to USC for small business. The commonwealth offers the same via community college to the 30-odd excellent four-year colleges in the Commonwealth, but unfortunately, parents in VA don't take advantage of community college as we have/had in California.. They don't even know that their high school kids can take summer college programs to work on, demonstrating to the admissions committee that, if accepted, they could do Ivy-level work. My DS did that between junior and senior years in chemistry to prove he could perform at a college level, which he did. That's the kind of performance that admissions committees want to see.

It's not an ax to grind, it's just facts. Parts of UVA cost $200k for 4 years. Same at VT. That's an in-state public. Sure it's half the cost of an Ivy but likely you'd get some form of merit aid at an Ivy because their pot to give is larger. Anyway, the cost of a 4-yr degree is quite high. And, no one is really sure about the return on investment. There are tons of '24 and '25 VT grads in CS who are still searching for steady jobs. Some have given up. The rate of layoffs in tech is off the charts. So many kids are going into BME thinking it's a safe harbor but I wouldn't be sure of that either.

VT posts data on it as do most true top schools. VT does not do nearly as well for CS and engineering as top schools, and even UVA does better.. Rather pay the 90k a year for top outcomes.

If you made the claim, you post the data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going to top colleges was worth it back in the day for the access to the knowledge it provided. Now a kid can go to a state university for formal education and use the internet, social networking and AI to access infinite amount of knowledge on any topic. Committing to spend $400k on undergraduate would be the most idiotic thing to do in 2026.

I agree with this.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Selective colleges still matter for alumni networks, peer effects, recruiting pipelines, signaling, and credibility in a post-AI world. Maybe getting a bad degree from somewhere like the University of Phoenix is no longer worth it, but a Harvard or Williams degree will continue to matter for longer than we will live. If some of you want to experiment with your own kids on not supporting a college degree, fine, it just creates more opportunities for those of us who still care.

Who said anything about "not supporting a college degree"? Weird non sequitur.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very few people spend $200,000 on college. Only the rich and the faux rich do.

I hadn't gotten this memo

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Lately, most of our new hires and interns have been from state schools — some even graduated in three years.

State schools can be great. The current job market is not.

State School is what smart kids from families who are not rich do who don't want to go into debt. A degree is a degree. Not being saddled with $100K+ in debt is huge...it allows you to move to a different place than you grew up as you can actually afford an apartment.

Ivy/similar schools often have lower net COA than in-state publics for anyone between 100kHHI and 240kHHI these days.

🙄 Hence the title about "doughnut families" . . .

[Anonymous]

Those expensive schools need to prove their worth. Many middle- and upper-middle-class families don’t qualify for financial aid — yet they also happen to have the most competitive kids applying to selective schools. It makes no sense for them to keep funding institutions that give them nothing in return.

[Anonymous]

In the meantime, ambitious and capable upper-middle-class and middle-class kids will do just fine wherever they go. Those so-called “values,” like alumni networks, peer effects, recruiting pipelines. You get those from any selective schools, including state flagship

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Very few people spend $200,000 on college. Only the rich and the faux rich do.

UVA in-state 4 years is about that price.

No. It isn’t. It’s $40,383 a year for instate. All costs included. See here. https://sfs.virginia.edu/financial-aid-new-applicants/financial-aid-basics/estimated-undergraduate-cost-attendance-2025-2026

It is NOT for material and engineering. The cost is 51K for the first year, and 52K per year after that. That's over 200K for an in-state education at UVA.

No one here cares about engineering. Only 719 entering students of 4,000 are entering UVA engineering. The rest are in college of Arts and Sciences and which exactly $40,383. What is your problem on this issue? You harangue about it on every thread! Are you bitter that your kid didn’t get in to UVA? Are you bitter your engineer kids had to pay a few thousand more at UVA for that particular major? Our kid was in UVA aerospace engineering and we were thrilled to pay whatever surcharge tacked on for engineering because it was STILL $40K less a year than Ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those expensive schools need to prove their worth. Many middle- and upper-middle-class families don’t qualify for financial aid — yet they also happen to have the most competitive kids applying to selective schools. It makes no sense for them to keep funding institutions that give them nothing in return.

Top schools give need based aid of some amount all the way up to 300k household income and occasionally higher. That is well beyond upper middle class it’s top 2%! If you cannot afford full pay for one kid above that then you have serious saving and budgeting issues. There is NO middle class donut hole, only an upper class one, a first world problem no one should complain about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very few people spend $200,000 on college. Only the rich and the faux rich do.

UVA in-state 4 years is about that price.

No. It isn’t. It’s $40,383 a year for instate. All costs included. See here. https://sfs.virginia.edu/financial-aid-new-applicants/financial-aid-basics/estimated-undergraduate-cost-attendance-2025-2026

It is NOT for material and engineering. The cost is 51K for the first year, and 52K per year after that. That's over 200K for an in-state education at UVA.

No one here cares about engineering. Only 719 entering students of 4,000 are entering UVA engineering. The rest are in college of Arts and Sciences and which exactly $40,383. What is your problem on this issue? You harangue about it on every thread! Are you bitter that your kid didn’t get in to UVA? Are you bitter your engineer kids had to pay a few thousand more at UVA for that particular major? Our kid was in UVA aerospace engineering and we were thrilled to pay whatever surcharge tacked on for engineering because it was STILL $40K less a year than Ivies.

Not the PP, but let's be honest - YOU keep posting about your UVA aerospace major kid. Most people would not choose UVA for that major.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it still matters. There will be jobs AI won’t do and AI won’t want to work with troglodytes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those expensive schools need to prove their worth. Many middle- and upper-middle-class families don’t qualify for financial aid — yet they also happen to have the most competitive kids applying to selective schools. It makes no sense for them to keep funding institutions that give them nothing in return.

Top schools give need based aid of some amount all the way up to 300k household income and occasionally higher. That is well beyond upper middle class it’s top 2%! If you cannot afford full pay for one kid above that then you have serious saving and budgeting issues. There is NO middle class donut hole, only an upper class one, a first world problem no one should complain about.

They really don’t provide much if any aid to donut hole families. And if you live in a high COL area, a salary of 250k or so doesn’t go far. You also assume the parent was earning 250k+ for years and could save. The fact is that 90k a year for schools is RIDICULOUS and the schools need to fix this.