Top Colleges Are Cheaper Than You Think (Unless You’re Rich)
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Anonymous
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There are a couple of Can We Please Live In the Real World?economic arguments. I went to Wake Forest back in the early 90s. when tuition was $12,000 a year. It will be at least five times that when my kids could go. Here in the real world, cost of living has not increase five fold during that time span, especially when you consider the recession.
Speaking of which, count us among the millions of Americans squeezed by the recession. We had a job loss and took a huge hit on housing value. Now, our salaries looks great on paper. But when we were getting kids out of childcare and were had been working long enough that we were not barely squeaking by when the recession hit. What we are making now is not a reflection of what we were making in 2010. So no— saving over 18 years was not realistic. But, I also have policy issues. One of them is that this is helping to drive down the birthdate among the UMC. And our economy depends on the doctors and lawyers and software engineers who actually pay a lot in taxes. And provide services our economy needs. Birth rates are at a historical low, in part because the next generation of parents does not feel financially able to pay off their student loans and pay for childcare and college. And not having these new workers in the economy makes our social security and Medicare insolvent. Also, the American Dream is that if you work hard enough and are smart enough, you can become anything. But some of the institutions that do not offer merit aid serve as gatekeepers in a number of professions. So if you have kids with donut hole parents, or parents who are just unwilling to pay for their education, they are locked out of some schools, and therefore many career opportunities. There is a huge divide between the rich and everyone else. Kids should be able to believe that if they are talented enough and work hard enough, Yale could happen for them too. |
Anonymous
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The rapid inflation in college tuition (and private school tuition too) is an outright scandal. When I graduated from an Ivy 20 years ago the total cost for one year (including room and board and all expenses) was about the same as a brand new BMW 3 series. Around $30k. I know this because my father bought one the year I graduated as a celebration of getting his last kid through college. Flash forward 20 years that same Ivy is charging 70K a year and an equivalent BMW 3 is around 42-43k.
I do not know how these colleges justify their escalating tuition costs that have vastly exceeded the rate of inflation. The schools are not "better" than they were 20 years ago. So what gives? And it's increasingly clear that it's not worth the money, at least to me. |
Anonymous
Pretty simple, supply and demand. And the availability of easy loan money. For some reason the consumer hasn't balked -- yet. Record number of applicants to all the higher ranked schools this year. |
Anonymous
| Sorry PP but I disagree a little. Cost at the elites is NOT about supply and demand. Tour these immaculately landscaped campuses and you will see climbing walls, meditation rooms, recreation centers worthy of an Olympic village, cushy study and hang out spaces with TVs around every dorm corner, sweeping 2-story stone fireplaces randomly inserted in yet another “gathering area”, juice bars, artisan bakeries, 24-hour meal and library hours, turf after turf after turf field for both team and club sports and God knows what else.,,all gleaming and remodeled at the drop of a hat. And oh yeah - the classrooms are now very too. |
Anonymous
| (Should have said classrooms are nice - but really they are very basic-and come to think of it this sort of extravagance and spending is at pretty much at all schools , not just st elites). It seems sort of sad to expose your kids to all this and then send them out into the world with a middling job and a ton of debt. How this prepares them for the real world, and does not completely warp their sense of reality is beyond me. |
Anonymous
You're just proving my point.. They're catering to demand. This is what the students want. As I said, record numbers of apps this year. |
Anonymous
| What it be so bad if your kid used ROTC to go to a top school and served his/her country? All this whining from people making more than 90% of their countrymen smacks of DMV entitlement writ large. |
Anonymous
its not entitled to complain about getting ripped off. Nobody, not even the rich, like to be ripped off. But I have to admit I don't understand why there is not a private school that tries to have state-school like tuition? Why don't any of the privates try to compete on cost? |
Anonymous
Because they don’t have to? These schools have their pick of tens of thousands of students. And they know that people will pay for them (or that the government will give $$ in the form of loans). Why would they have any incentive to lower their price? They’ve only gotten MORE applications as their price goes up... |
Anonymous
Right, but looking at it the other way, if the states withdrew their subsidies for state schools then they would have to start charging private school-like tuition. |
Anonymous
Not if you are "affluent." |
Anonymous
"Why" do "you" put "affluent" in "quotes"? |
Anonymous
it wasn't me who did that but I understand the point completely. We are FAR from rich but the chintzy way the school calculated need means we get no aid: They expect us to pay the bill out of ... what? Can't get from here to there nwithout loans ... but they are a "no loan" school. Rubbish. |
Anonymous
Can you give us some stats to illustrate? And was the result different than the NPC showed before you applied? |
Anonymous
| We're a two earner house, each making about 100K in the DC area. Modest suburban house, two cars purchased used. Thrifty but not penny pinching lifestyle. From a paying for college perspective, it almost seems like one of us should quit our job and be a stay at home parent. Am I missing something? |