Reply to Top Colleges Are Cheaper Than You Think (Unless You’re Rich)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The issue for me isn't whether one can pay for an elite private college out of a 200 or 300k income, but whether the college is actually worth the investment.

The second issue is why the college tuitions have so rapidly escalated far beyond inflation rates for the same time period. There is something seriously wrong with the financial model of higher education in today's world that that I resent spending a fortune into a system that is effectively broken.

I went to Ivy schools, undergrad and grad. I had an elite education. It was a great experience. But I'm not sure if it was that much better of an experience than, say, in-state at UVA or a good flagship, or at a private LAC or "lesser" college with a big merit package. Because I'm 20 years out I can look around my fellow graduates and see where they are in life, and compare it to my other friends and coworkers. Believe me when I say plenty of Ivy grads go on to have humble lives. And plenty of state school grads go on to have very successful lives.

Yes, college isn't all about the money. In theory. But we're now in a world when it actually is increasingly about the money, the shockingly high tuition for both undergrad and graduate schools. When you spend that 70+ a year for your kid, it's a gamble that it will pay off over going to UVA or College Park. Statistically speaking, odds are that your child will end up in a similar position in life regardless of whether he/she went to Penn or UVA. This is shown over and over again by multiple studies. The kids who do benefit from a fancy Ivy are mainly two distinct groups: the underrepresented minorities/poor students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and a small coterie of students who get recruited by premier banking/consulting firms. But if you're not one of the two, it really is not a long term advantage to go to a fancy private college over a solid cheaper alternative.

So why not take the cheaper route, take the 30-40k differential (per year) and pump that into a long term savings account for the kid to help out with a down on his/her first property, or even to start to build up a retirement fund. That will be far, far, far more valuable in the long run than a degree from Penn over UVA.

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So the problem to me, with this, as an issue for our country, not for individual students is this: We used to have a diverse set of higher education schools that provided a wide variety of different kinds of higher education.  I think this was one of the great strengths of the US higher education system.  Now, we are all being forced to large, homogenous schools.  The schools are good schools, but bland.  It is the big box theory of education.  Yes, you can get all you really need at Walmart, but is this really best for our nation?  To standardize?

In the old days, the quirky, diverse (and even horrors! religion-affiliated) schools were cheaper.  For some reason, their expensive has grown much faster than inflation.  I don't think this is good.  Sure, the elite can still get this diverse education.  But the average upper middle class kid just can not.[/quote]

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