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That experience sounds remarkably familiar. I know here in Mass at least UMass Amherst has a remarkably good computer science program for how cheap it can be (if you qualify for the right tuition credit programs by scoring well on standardized tests in high school). Though it's a poor indicator of an undergrad program, their CS grad program was ranked #25 in the country.

While I understand your point, I take some issue with:

> the middle and higher income brackets (middle and upper middle suburban class) is the bracket that is hurt the most by college costs

Your points are all well made, but I'd argue that being lower class you're entirely dependent on financial aid and tuition subsidies if you get them at all. In the middle and upper middle class your fear (from anecdotal first hand experience) isn't if you'll go to college (which is a huge indicator today of whether or not you'll be better than your parents -- education), but where you'll go to college. I know a lot of peers who went to state or safety schools because of cost. I don't know a lot of peers whose family is in that same tax bracket that just didn't go to college. I do know many friends who couldn't feasibly go to college at all, and it's stripped their career growth and job opportunities. Not trying to argue, just facilitate discussion by voicing a dissenting opinion.

I did CS undergrad at UMass Amherst and I can tell you A LOT of students (and probably the OP) confuse a competitive program with a qualitatively better program. UMass Amherst rejects a lot of applicants, but that doesn't make it good.

Recently UMass started to take Computer Science seriously, gave it its own school and is accepting a lot more students. I went to an alumn event last year and the enrollment numbers of the last 10 years shows hockey stick growth.

We'll see if these moves improve or dilute the brand.

In hindsight going to UMass for CS was a good decision, but back then my world was small and didn't know all of my options.

That's definitely a good point. If you're in a low bracket and aren't able to get a full ride or good scholarship (doesn't mean you're bad or didn't work hard enough, but only a small % of people can get those), you're definitely going to be wondering if you can go to college at all. And if you barely afford to, there's all kinds of external costs associated with college (books, for example). Sometimes scholarships only cover tuition.

At least back home in Texas though, you can go to cheap community college and transfer to UT Austin or another UT campus. Two years is definitely better than four.

I have a lot of friends I graduated public HS here in Mass who went to Salem State and transferred to UMass Amherst. Best part was (to my understanding) they got full rides for their last 2 years of college because they met an arbitrary GPA requirement (might have been straight-As).

It hurts on all levels of the income spectrum, from lower to upper middle class. It's real bad in Tennessee where our flagship public school is 389.9 miles away from what was our biggest city in Memphis.

I am shifting in the opinion that we need to start funneling more money in to our public urban commuter schools. Wayne State, University of Memphis, Towson University, University of Cincinnati, etc... Honestly, The amount of public money that goes to private universities in this country is disgusting. Also the effects of Economic Agglomeration are well known.

Hi fellow UT CS grad.

I had to google for an article I remember reading a while ago but apparently over half of UT grads come from families that make over $100k+. It's not as bad as I thought but UT Austin has a much higher representation of (upper) middle class kids than lower class kids.

https://www.texasobserver.org/are-texas-public-universities-... http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/10/14/ut-unspoken-low-i...

I didn't go to UT Austin! I wanted to but at the time I wasn't a US resident (just legal under my mom's visa), so no financial aid at all—I got a merit scholarship somewhere else.

What you said makes sense. If your family makes over $100k in Texas, you can definitely pay for most if not all your kid's college after FAFSA/any scholarships.

This is one of those areas where California just plain outshines every other state by a huge margin -- the CC, CSU, and UC systems are generally accessible (although UCs have gotten much more expensive, especially recently -- but they're also among the top schools in the world in specific fields).

For instance, I got in to Cal Poly, which ranks very high on many lists for Engineering, and it cost me (a California citizen) $1400 a quarter.

I also attended the local CC, and prices there were even cheaper, something like $18 a credit. The books were more expensive than the class. It was a pretty common thing among my (upper middle class) high school classmates for people to attend a CC for 2 years, then transfer to a prestigious UC. They'd have to pay that UC-level fee for two years, but the first 2 years of college were affordable enough for people to put themselves through school.

I had a similar situation less a local top-10 local university. I could go locally and walk out debt-free (actually ended up about $10k positive) or go to a better university (Illinois or Georgia Tech) and walk out with ~100k in debt. A bunch of very sharp people of modest means stayed local. Those that didn't had parents taking second mortgages to help pay.

Suffice to say, I went local and things worked out in the end. I calculated that now, with a top job, I would have broken even in about two years. The only open question is if it will impact my future career prospects.

Do you think going to a better college would have made much of a difference in job opportunities? It seems like some of the larger tech companies do a lot of recruiting at state colleges.

[Anecdote] Here in Boston Microsoft built an entire office just to offer a great internship program (Foundry, now Microsoft Garage) to Harvard and MIT students. I think on average recruiters view top tier schools as places where your ROI for headhunting is higher, because more prospects are more likely to make it through the recruiting process -- but that's just a hunch.

That's true I guess. I did transfer from a really small college to a big state school with a decent cs program. It's not a top college, but we do get a ton of money for research. And I did notice a huge difference in opportunities.

But I don't see going here as being drastically worse than a better school. I've gotten interviews at a bunch of places, and every summer I have classmates that intern at highly competitive companies like Google/MS/Amazon/Palantir. I don't know some of what I'm missing because I'm not at Harvard or MIT but I don't know how my school would be a negative at most places.

> But I don't see going here as being drastically worse than a better school.

Honestly I'd be surprised if there are radical differences in how prepared you are for industry coming out of undergrad from Harvard, MIT, or an average state school because tech is much more of a meritocracy than a lot of other career paths, and because their undergrad programs are notably underwhelming (while their graduate programs are phenomenal).

I think recruiters see top-tier college graduates as one of two things. Either they come from a good school so they must know their stuff so they must be able to pass (making the recruiter's ROI more secure) or they come from a good school so they know how to play the acceptance game, and their pedigree alone will legitimize our program by association (our internship program hosted 3 MIT students, 5 Stanford students, etc etc). I don't agree with either of these metrics, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were common thoughts among recruiters.

> I don't know some of what I'm missing because I'm not at Harvard or MIT but I don't know how my school would be a negative at most places.

I think if you were in a field other than tech or were relying on your academics alone you'd notice how easy it is to get that first phone interview. As is, I don't think it ultimately makes much of a difference. Also, your alma mater creates your post-graduate immediate network. Getting in touch with a "fellow" Stanford graduate is probably more valuable than your average state school graduate depending on the industry. However, I believe that if you were to do research at these top-tier places you'd notice a huge boost from being at a university that gets huge endowments and talented professors. That's the one other exception (to me).

Note: I don't mean that Stanford students are smarter or more capable than state school students, only that the association of getting into a high pedigree high cost school probably means your peers are well connected and/or wealthy. Maybe that's not a fair assumption.

Yes. A top tier college will get you out in front of more employers. I did my undergrad at a lower tier state commuter school, and I got my master's at a top 10 school in CS. It's night and day difference in how recruiters will treat you.

I would tentatively add a caveat to that.

> A top tier college will get you out in front of more employers...

...when you don't have anything more impressive than your college choice on your resume.

Harvard students will always beat out comparable state school students to get that Microsoft phone interview. But they won't always beat out the student who ran a full-scale web app after sophomore year to help students plan courses if they don't have comparable experience. Another thing I love about tech is as many strings as you can pull to get that initial phone interview, you're on your own from there. In my experience I've done general website applications and called up friends of friends and once you're staring at a whiteboard it makes no difference who you know or where you came from.

The two part related problem to this is a recruiting one. If you use a resume as a litmus test for "smart programmers" as opposed to those faking it, you're undoubtably going to get a bunch of people who went to the best possible schools. This also means you wind up with a lot of candidates who had the means to go to really good schools. Maybe there's someone just as smart at your local state school who couldn't afford CMU who would bring a completely different mindset and style of thinking, but you'll never find them.

>If you use a resume as a litmus test for "smart programmers" as opposed to those faking it, you're undoubtably going to get a bunch of people who went to the best possible schools.

Yes, and that's exactly what happens at the most desirable companies.

>Maybe there's someone just as smart at your local state school who couldn't afford CMU who would bring a completely different mindset and style of thinking, but you'll never find them.

If you're really a stand-out, IQ-wise, you can go to the top tier schools even if you have no money. The people who get screwed are the people who are pretty smart but not exceptionally so.

I'd wager there are more people who have snuck into top-tier universities than there are people who are there without paying/accruing massive debt. This is also ignoring the fact that Ivies and other top-tier universities are overwhelming homogenous.

More to the point, the thing everyone in a top-10 school has in common is that they're really good at looking good on paper. It says near nothing about what they'll contribute on a team, how they'll function with other people, or base programming skill. My only point is that if a company seeks diversity, they should seek it in all avenues.

>I'd wager there are more people who have snuck into top-tier universities than there are people who are there without paying/accruing massive debt.

Probably. The people who go without paying are pretty desirable from the university's point of view.

>This is also ignoring the fact that Ivies and other top-tier universities are overwhelming homogenous.

I'm not a worshiper of diversity for its own sake. The benefits seem pretty theoretical, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest homogeneous populations function better.

>More to the point, the thing everyone in a top-10 school has in common is that they're really good at looking good on paper.

Being able to do things well on paper is pretty important in 21st century US. It's also important to hire people who can figure out what your customers (internal and external) want and put it on paper in a way that will make the sale.

>It says near nothing about what they'll contribute on a team, how they'll function with other people, or base programming skill.

That's all true. The problem is we don't really have any way to get a good picture that kind of stuff outside of hiring everyone and culling the ones we don't want. Pretty much every applicant to an ivy league school lists a nonprofit on their application these days, and 99% of them are bullshit.

>My only point is that if a company seeks diversity, they should seek it in all avenues.

I suppose, if that's your goal. Were I running a company I'd be mostly focused on profitability.

I think maybe we just have an idealogical difference of opinion here, and that's fine.

It's my belief that if you take 10 similar people and give them a problem to solve, they'll all solve it the same way. Whereas if you take 10 different people and give them a problem to solve, they'll each individually be challenged to think differently and question their assumptions. If I ran a company I'd prefer the latter, because intuition tells me it will lead to the best answers (people questioning their opinions means thinking through whether they're as well founded as they hope, and teases out the problems with those opinions).

I think this innovation goes hand in hand with profitability. I'm not saying I wouldn't pick the creative driven innovative Harvard grad every time -- I'm saying I'd pick the creative driven innovative community college grad every time over the Harvard grad with the same background as everyone else in the company.

> Being able to do things well on paper is pretty important in 21st century US.

Except when it comes time to actually do work, it's not. The overlap in relevant skills between convincing people you're a good engineer and being a good engineer is very small. One is mostly about leveraging your background and social engineering, the other is about how you solve problems. While one could argue that being good on paper is good indicator of drive, I'd counter that a candidate with drive but without skills is less preferable than a candidate with skills.

> Too rich for substantial need-based financial aid, too poor to pay without big loans.

That's the problem with being middle-class. Anybody who really cares will abandon you for those who need it more. -- Mr. Bergstrom

unfortunately, many folks cannot start saving while their kids are young. It was the case for my parents. I qualified for free lunches for most of my childhood, and I have 2 younger siblings. I tried the cheapest college - in town, even, and they didn't provide loans to cover the costs. We were told my parents were expected to pay 10% of their before tax income to college due to the last year's tax returns.

The kid that graduated 2nd in the class had trouble getting a scholarship. He was afraid he wouldn't go to college because his family didn't have funds and despite his best efforts, he hadn't saved up enough money himself. He worked part-time through high school. I think he was barely above the cut-off for the need-based scholarships, and found the merit-based few and far between. He did find out in May our senior year that he finally found a full scholarship - at the same low-cost, in-town option I was going to.

The athletes, though, they had scholarships pretty early.

It hurts for everyone, and even the local choice isn't a good one. Even if folks that make it through can do well enough. I didn't stay in college (so few regrets on my end, I like my life), but the friend did rather well.

I went to a SUNY school. It wasn't a top X CS school, but in the 90s it was cheap enough that my parents could pay for tuition and I was able to take care of the rest.

Whatever I lost by not being a candidate to work at Google, etc I gained in flexibility. I was able to buy a home at 23, wasn't burdened by loan payments and have done pretty well.

My cousins went to Ivy League schools and did the medicine and investment banking route. They did everything "right", but are buried in debt and sound pretty miserable. To each his own.

American kids are not doing the cost-benefit analysis and they alone are to be blamed for it.

For example.

For many prospective college students, the trades might be a much more lucrative option. Using the example of plumbing, the average plumber earns $53,820 per year with the employer paying the apprentice a wage and training. (This money is for expert plumber. When adjusted to experience etc. it is around $20k per year without any student loan debt.)

Now consider a college degree

Petroleum engineering has an average starting salary of $93,500 while animal science has an average starting salary of $32,700. This breaks down for a monthly salary for the petroleum engineer of $7,761.67 versus a person working in animal science with a monthly salary of $2,725.

While Petroleum engineer can very well pay the debt without much issues I fail to see how the Animal Science girl will be able to pay her debt.

I'm not sure putting all the blame on these kids is fair. If we as a country have decided that those under 21 do not possess the appropriate reasoning skills or responsibility to have a beer, how do we accept that they have enough of the above to make such a large financial decision? If I had applied for a $50,000 loan to start my own business at 18 from most banks I'm betting I would have been rejected. Yet we're okay lending the same to invest in education as long as the student is yoked to this debt for life.

You're absolutely right. The drinking age is too high. 18 is perfectly reasonable.

But we as a country think that it is perfectly okay to send 19 year olds in Iraq or Syria and die fighting for someone else's mistakes.

If you're raised in a suburban middle/upper middle environment you're told to go to college from day one by parents, teachers, friends, etc (especially parents). In some families there's actually little choice, but even if the student had the choice, it's a hard one to make in such a culture especially at age 17/18. That said, community college -> college is a safe and affordable option.

The opposite happens too—I know a lot of working class kids who didn't bother with even applying to college because it was unheard of in their communities. They went straight to work in trades and such.

PS: Petroleum Engineering is seasonal and not that good of a career choice as it depends too much on oil prices. I lived in Houston, an oil city. Many of my peers who did Petroleum Eng are out of work or with way lower salaries than advertised. Also, if you go to a state school you can graduate with little or no debt!

Social pressure is common but when I look at Asian communities they seem to have very good understanding of which colleges work and which don't. I dont see why average american kid can not get the same information.

Depending on what school you go to in Texas it isn't that easy to get top 8%. Some schools like Clements which is 50% Asian its quite hard to get into top 8% even if you have pretty good grades.

Yep, realized that after a bit. My school was pretty relaxed and had ~600 students per grade so not too bad. Another one in the same district had large Asian and Hindu populations (maybe because it was close to NASA) and I remember hearing how competitive it got. Same with Houston schools like Bellaire.

It still surprises me that the worlds largest economy still has ridiculous fees for college. I wonder what impact this has over a 100 year period.