Reply to Are We Crazy for Questioning a $250k US Degree and looking abroad?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It makes sense if one of the reasons for doing it is to broaden the kid’s experience by living abroad or some other similar reason (e.g., learning a foreign language).

It makes very little sense if it’s purely to save money. Yes, these foreign schools have a sticker price that’s a fraction of the sticker price of an American private school. But dig deeper & you will find the foreign schools have expensive transportation costs, crappy living conditions (most foreign universities think undergrads should live in hovels), pressure-filled degree programs (everything’s based on a few major exams), & isolated social lives (often not a lot of locals are eager to be buddies with Americans). (None of these drawbacks really apply to Canadian universities, which aren’t all that different from schools in the US.)

If the goal is just to save money, I’d recommend your in-state publics or a solid American public university in another state that has a low sticker price & gives good merit aid to bring the net price down significantly (Arizona, Kansas, Florida State, Nebraska etc).

—American who attended universities in US, Canada, & Scotland [/quote]

kids want to go abroad for a variety of reasons. None of it is related to being cheaper.  My husband doesnt care. I’m the one who brought up cost being an additional factor (for my little brain) to consider.

Other than my husband, my only other reference point here is son of a colleague who went to Bocconi for undergrad. Yes, they saved a TON of money for a pretty decent degree. He did not have expensive transportation costs or crappy living conditions. His dorm was actually amazing and his social life was great. So not sure where you went to school, but my point is that it is tough to generalize (American is amazing, everything else is terrible). My kids do not want to stay in-state. Our in-state options are not great (we dont live in DC). [/quote]

OP, you are going to find a lot of naysayers here. yes there are pro’s and cons to everything. If your kids are independent, then this could be a great option. if they need a lot of handholding, US schools are the leaders on handholding.

I’m a hiring manager at a Fortune 20. I have come across resumes from people all over the world for a variety of positions. We typically only hire at top 30-40 US schools. And yet, we have hired a lot of kids with foreign degrees. As for the schools, what your counselor said is probably a good way to look at it. We know all the top 20 or so UK unis. We have hired people from several of them (not Oxbridge/LSE/Imperial). Every large company is American knows these schools. So there is no drop-for there. Again, we focus on US top-40 and have hired from UK top 20.

We have also hired people with degrees from Italian, Dutch and German schools. We see these top 15-20 UK schools and another dozen or so EU schools at the same level as t30 US schools.[/quote]

Thank you for taking the time. This is very helpful.[/quote]

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