I often hear about Americans having as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt… how do they get so much debt when their fees are only $9k a year? Where is the rest of their debt coming from?
Why leave out private universities I wonder?
Because it's not really a well thought out article. It looks more geared towards low value / low effort content that can be shared easily to make controversial (and therefore spread more) social media posts.
The non prestigious private universities whose lack of value is not yet known among its customers are the ones that cause problems for kids getting stuck with $60k+ per year annual costs.
When people talk about tons of student loan debt, they are invariably including graduate students getting professional degrees, like law and medicine. The average student loan debt after medical school is ~266k. But compared to the earning potential of a doctor (starting salaries between $200k and $500k), that isn't some unrecoverable debt load. The only people really screwed are the ones who decide they don't want to be a doctor a couple years in.
https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt#by-educa...
If the bar to get that money was as high as the one to get a mortgage from the bank, universities couldn't simply raise the fees because most students wouldn't be able to pay.
In New York City, public university tuition is $0.
You can earn ACE accredited college credits online very cheaply. I’ve know people who earned 60 credits (a 4-year bachelors in 120 credits) in a year for $150 in total. Saylor.org is $25 per 3-credit course. Sophia.org is $80 per month. Study.com is $200 month and offers thousands of courses. You don’t even need a high school diploma to get started.
My advice to smart kids around the world: Learn English, get your GED, take IELTS/TOEFL, earn 60-90 ACE credits online, and complete your bachelor’s degree in 1-2 years. The earlier the better.
a degree is fairly affordable in the US. you can do first 2 years at a community college for no more than $2k/year and then can do the last two at a state university for 9-20k/yr.
if you can get a degree that actually returns you money through an enhanced wage then you can pay that off no problem.
It's not like I'm some hypergenius or anything (far from it), I'm just somewhat of a self-learner and tend to do alright in whiteboard interviews.
New grads are pretty undifferentiated except for university prestige so that's a rough time to compete if you're from a less prestigious school or no school.
I'm not sure which community colleges you are going to. When my wife went to CUNY BMCC it was on the order of ~$2400/semester, so roughly $4800/year. Still not too unreasonable, but more than twice what you were saying.
Granted, this is NYC, not known for being super cheap, but I didn't think that CUNY was considered absurdly expensive either. Upon checking, the local community college where I grew up (the Orlando area) is about $1500/semester, so about $3000 a year, assuming you take summers off [2].
[1] https://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/students/bursar/tuition-and-fees/
[2] https://net1.valenciacollege.edu/future-students/financial-a...
https://www.dallascollege.edu/paying-for-college/cost-tuitio...
Even twice what I was saying is a pretty low amount compared to a private university at 60k/year.
I don't disagree with your thesis, regardless. If you do something with the CUNY system, you're still on the hook for <$10/year (at least for tuition, rent+food is a different story). A total investment of ~$50-60k total cost is definitely worth it from an economic perspective. With the exception of eccentrics like me, generally speaking the high-paying jobs are gatekept behind academia, meaning that the tuition would pay for itself within 2-3 years, easily.
You take out loans so you can pay for school, pay for room and board, and have enough money to buy toiletries and what not.
if we take a look a few pretty common public colleges that people from my class went to:
BGSU [1] - ~$28,500/year x 4 years = $115,000
Kent [2] - ~$30,000/year x 4 years = $120,000
In all fairness there’s financial aid, and scholarships, and plenty of ways to decrease costs (living off campus, or even living with your parents and commuting, if you live close enough and have/can afford a car). Or attending a 2 year college and transferring.
Now imagine if you went to a private college (rumored to be a “better” education). An example near me:
Case Western Reserve [3] - ~75,000/ year x 4 years = $300,000
Now on top of all that, remember that student loans are still loans, and as such have interest. So while you can defer payments on the loans while you’re still in school, interest still accrues on those loans for 4 years.
And that’s just for an undergraduate degree. Someone with a masters has an additional two years of schooling, and more for a doctorate.
[1] https://www.bgsu.edu/financial-aid/about-aid/cost-of-attenda...
[2] https://www.kent.edu/financialaid/tuition-and-other-costs
[3] https://case.edu/financialaid/undergraduates/cost-undergradu...
https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...
Edit: I also wonder what the living costs in other countries is. Do students in Germany pay for all their expenses too? Books, housing, food? Because your costs for a year are going to be another 15k or more, unless you can live and eat at home and walk to school.
With that money people are usually able to get an apartment or at least a room in a shared apartment and pay for food and books.
I've never understood this - don't universities in the US have libraries? Why does everyone need to buy their own books?
At my university they had one copy of every required or recommended text book per student in the library, so you could all check them out for the duration of your course. Why don't they do that in the US?
> negligible, maybe 5-7 books under 100€ each
That's... $700!!!
And yes, what's wrong with about 100$ per year? (my degree was 9 semesters)
18k a quarter for tuition alone.
Second, $9k is the average for an in-state public college. It is much higher for out of state public, or private institutions.