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Comment by markphip | Hacker News Reader

I am sure there is truth to the article, but as someone forced to pay the full price for 2 kids, the idea that tuition is not going up is laughable. I'll pay $80,000 this year for my daughter and about $40K for my son who chose the in-state university.

College prices are insane. My daughter is in her final year, and even in those years, including a Covid gap year, the cost went up $10,000 for those of us stuck paying full price.

I am in no way wealthy, but thankfully went through 2 small exits in my career where I could bank enough away to cover this. There will be nothing left though. I also put money in a 529 for each kid their whole life. For my son's account I actually lost a small amount of money over the life of the investment and for my daughters it only went up slightly. If that had been all I had I could have paid for 1 year of school each.

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There is so much variance in cost between colleges! 80k and even 40k seem like really high yearly costs.

I went to a community college for 2 years in California and then transferred to a mid-tier state university for the last two years.

I graduated in 2017 and the total cost for my education was about 30k. It was expensive, but spread out over 4 years I was able to pay for most of it by working part time.

As a father what were the tradeoffs you considered when planning to put your kids through college? Did you consider the route through community college? Was the dorm experience important? It seems like the decision to not put your kids through community college is usually more for social reasons rather than academic, since community colleges, at least in California, are MORE rigorous than regular universities, since they are preparing to send kids to the full range of colleges. Parents and kids seem to think that it’s important to live on campus in a dorm because they will make more friends. But idk, I am very curious to hear the thought process from a parent’s point of view.

Given that 80k is around the median salary for a professor it seems that you could just hire a live-in tutor at that point ...

I had my kids in 2001 and 2003. I just started putting money away into 529 funds and that was kind of all my thought process. If I spent time then thinking how expensive it would be when the money would be needed, that would have been paralyzing. As I mentioned, along the way I got lucky and was involved in two modest exits that let me put enough into savings that I had enough combined with the 529 to basically say I would pay for their undergraduate. Obviously, I could have just kept that money for myself but it was what I wanted to do. I have had various retirement savings all along so that I feel like I am OK provided I do not live to be 90 or something.

My last exit happened end of 2019, just in time for me to get it all invested in time for the pandemic to start. I am pretty sure I turned all that investment into cash at the bottom of the stock market and did not really get it back into investments in time to make it all up. Around end of March 2020 I was definitely expecting the stock market to keep falling and panicked. I probably would still have money for myself after paying for college if I had just not touched it and caught the rebound.

The in-state university is private? UIUC is a high-ranked state flagship (both my kids went, my daughter's still there) and in-state tuition is less than $20k.

Flagship public schools in some states can approach $40k in costs if you don’t qualify for aid:

https://admission.ucla.edu/tuition-aid/tuition-fees

The article above is referring to UCLA.

"California on Thursday became the first state to guarantee free health care for all low-income immigrants living in the country illegally..."

https://apnews.com/article/health-california-immigration-gav...

Billions of dollars are being spent on health care for illegal residents instead of spending the money for California residents at California Universities.

There is plenty of money in California. The problem is that the leadership doesn't prioritize affordable university education, preferring instead to fund people living in the country illegally. California residents are taking out student loans to subsidize people living in the country illegally. It is tremendously unfair.

That's a bit misleading though, even if I can see why they do it.

The in-state UCLA tuition there is ~15K, which while high, isn't terrible.

My child's elementary school bill is higher than that!

The larger line item they list is food & housing. That's expensive, but you're paying those whether going to school or not so it is not really a cost of going to the university. Also, there is a lot of leeway to vary those costs if you need to be very frugal.

University of Virginia all-in for in-state: $36,314

University of Michigan all-in for upperclassmen in-state: $37,612

All-in includes living expenses, meals, room and board, activity fees, books, etc.

But how much do students actually pay?

If the parents (like OP) have had a couple of small exits, the students (or their parents) pay the full amount.

Sure, but having a couple exits makes them extreme outliers. The entire point of the article is that quoting public tuition prices is an illusion obscuring the true cost. What is the average or median student paying?

Edit: At least according to one source, the average student pays 19,000 per year, including fees and housing. And they receive 22,000 in financial aid. Ie, the average student gets a larger discount than what they actually end up paying. https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/virginia/university-o...

Similarly, Michigan is 18,000 per year with 22,000 in "aid".

Also, both schools are top 100 schools in the US. So even at elite schools, the average student is paying a fraction of the "price".

Financial aid = loans.

They get the opportunity to take out more loans, the poorer their parents are. I got a small pell grant a few years, but most of my college was all loans from the student aid office.

Uh no, scholarships are counted under FA. I was given a 75% scholarship under FA. Smarter peers than me were granted full rides under FA scholarship since their family income was so low.

> Financial aid = loans.

Financial aid also includes grants, both school-issued and outside (public and private), and it includes both merit-based aid and need-based aid.

You're right that there are some loans included in that number, but it looks like it is not even half of it:

"27% of students received Federal Student Loans averaging $4,835 and 10% of undergrads took out private student loans averaging $11,058."

Without need or merit breaks, the in-state tuition at UIUC really is the tuition.

Those breaks are massive. The average UIUC student pays 13,500 per year and receives 15,000 in "aid". That is less than half the sticker price.

https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/illinois/university-o...

Edit, you're right, this includes loans, but grants make up the majority of that figure. It's not entirely clear to me how each number is weighted:

"Grant and scholarship aid does not need to be paid back. 36% of students received Federal Student Loans averaging $4,863 and 9% of undergrads took out private student loans averaging $6,819."

Hold on: 60% of students get aid, and that "aid", scarequotes yours, includes things like Pell grants. Pell grants aren't an accounting scheme! That's real money.

In my case, this is UNH. As we have very little taxes in NH things like this are higher than in other states. I am counting the room and board obviously in this total and may have rounded up from somewhere in the high 30's.

mid 30s for my child heading to UNH as well, despite major "scholarship" award.

Is tuition even the majority of the cost anymore? Not that it's cheap, but fees are atrocious, and they go after every bit of revenue that they can without regard for the strain it puts on the students and their families.

But then, they're not even really in the business of secondary education, so I guess that figures.

It depends. Private universities it certainly is but at state schools it is more like half. Here is this years prices at my daughters school:

Tuition $61,260 Room & Board $21,310 Student Activities Fee $308 Health Insurance. $3,148 Total per year $86,026

Sure, but UIUC total sticker price is $32K-ish. And approximately 36% of students pay that full cost if only 64% receive any financial aid based on:

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/q=illinois&s=all&pg=2&i...

Something I have found interesting (as the first of my two kids rolls over into the college age group next year) is that most "brand name", well-known private schools clearly expect our family to pay the full $80K+ total sticker price.

While I share the same feelings of not being particularly wealthy as OP, it is clear that some colleges disagree with my personal wealth assessment . . .

It seems counterintuitive that one of the largest bull cycles in modern history would result in flat or negative returns. Is this due to the 529's limited investment vehicles...? At that point, wouldn't you be better off putting the funds into a taxable account instead?

529s are not really worth it unless you have need for additional tax shelter (owning broad-market mutual funds is already relatively "tax advantaged" if you buy and hold) OR you can get tax write-offs for contributing (which is true in some states).

As with all investments, when you get in and when you get out can affect total return, even though you can't time it perfectly.

The problem with 529s is you can't really "choose to let it ride" when college starts, whereas with retirement you DO have that option (by using other funding sources).

Unfortunately the way the college racket is setup, it's often much better to simply be a paper pauper when the FAFSA comes around (hint: they ignore the house and the car(s)).

You can now roll 35k from your 529 into a Roth IRA for your kid. That is a great jump start on their retirement.

A lot of 529s have relatively high fees and low returns. I stopped funding 529s for this reason.

My 529 was invested in CENAX

If their historic allocation was similar to their current one, it's no surprise; its a very bond heavy vehicle and bonds over the last decade have had basically non-existent interest rates.

Most 529 plans are target date funds timed to when you start college. So it lost a lot of money when the pandemic hit and then moved into its very conservative phase as the market recovered. It also took a big hit in 2008 though I was only a few years into investing at that point.

So it's a reactive fund that buys the peaks and sells the dips, even worse.

This makes me feel at least slightly better. I attended a top-100-but-definitely-not-top-10-or-even-top-20 private university in the early 2000s and I'm quite sure my family paid very close to full sticker. I don't recall qualifying for any merit scholarship. I had and have merits, but excellent grades in high school were not among them :)

Just so you know, most research nowadays says there's basically no difference in outcomes between which school your kids go to and future income/other life outcomes, after you correct for SAT score. You can send them to state or city school and save the money.

That research is highly dubious, but let's take it at face value. You can send them at a state or city school. But they have a word to say about that choice too. For them, it's not research, it's life. They can't run a controlled experiment with their life. If they go to the city school, and their career tanks, will they ever forgive you? Will they buy your counterfactual that their career would have tanked anyway, even with an elite school diploma framed on their wall?

Certainly considered things like that. Not sure if you are a parent, but just wait until you go on school tours with your kid and see them fall in love with a specific school.

My daughter is not likely to pursue a high paying career either. I wonder if she would have been better off finding a job and just having me give her the $300,000 I will have spent on her education. As it is, she is planning on going to graduate school, which she will have to pay for so she is weighing these things now.

> better off finding a job and just having me give her the $300,000

this is "all or nothing" thinking.. other posts show that other school systems have different cost structures. If she has the character and health for it, you could send her to an overseas school also.. think out of the box!

She is graduating this year so too late. But that is her thought process for graduate school

> Certainly considered things like that. Not sure if you are a parent, but just wait until you go on school tours with your kid and see them fall in love with a specific school.

I know this is a standard way of thinking, so I’m not criticizing you personally, but…what’s love got to do with it? College is a business proposition where whoever is paying has strong metrics to base what they are willing to pay for on: average starting salary on graduation, placement rate, etc. The rest is a luxury; certainly the attendee is entitled to a preference, but if that preference is more expensive, they should pay for it (and be made aware of exactly what that looks like).

I’m a parent and we are emphatically not saving for a half-million-dollar college tab for our child. We are instead making sure we are in states with quality state options that our child can attend on local universal merit programs; anything further, they are responsible for.

This is the kind of assertion you make when you have no skin in the game and no lived experience. It’s like the common wisdom that a great public school is as good as private, thankfully we got to try that experiment with our kid with a few years in both and it’s not even close.

It's not anecdotal, it's factual.

For comparison, the local tuition for the CS program at the U of Waterloo is about CAD $6k for a semester (for three courses), or about US $4.5k. It also includes things like health insurance.

There is a section about this, basically collages are able to price discriminate much more effectively in a way that disproportionately hurts non-wealthy people.

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