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Comment by sickofparadox | Hacker News Reader

In absolute numbers, college is still 100% a good deal, provided you have some kind of scholarship or go to an in-state institution. The problem is that some of these places (and I hate to be that guy), especially small elite liberal arts colleges, seem to exist these days to basically drown young people in debt while they get into a job they could have had with the same English degree from the dependable community college + state school combo. We really need to look at the morality of allowing young adults access to an essentially unrestricted credit line.

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The universal credit line was created a few decades ago when Congress decided to make student loan debt very hard to discharge (you basically can only get out of it by dying, becoming so disabled you cannot hold a job, or leaving the country). This encouraged lenders to put money into what is effectively a risk free investment.

Suddenly, everyone had infinite money, and there was no pressure to keep university costs low (as most states don't have the political will to cap their public education costs in a meaningful way). Colleges started investing more into attractions for their students - fancy gyms, rec halls, new dorms, etc. Both combined to "require" that schools raise the price.

And on the other side, now that everyone could afford college, public schools started to heavily encourage everyone to go to college - degree holders make more on average after all. Which is how people go into college for degrees they have no practical use for (picking on philosophy, it is great and gives a very valuable set of critical thinking skills, but do you really need those skills if you're not going to be an author, professor, lawyer, etc?). It also led to lots of folks going into college as "undecided" majors, paying tens of thousands per semester without any plan.

> It also led to lots of folks going into college as "undecided" majors, paying tens of thousands per semester without any plan.

A lot of universities won't let you select a major until you are toward the end of your sophomore year. Many majors have pre-requisites that you have to satisfy, and acceptance isn't guaranteed (even if you are already accepted to the university).

That sounds like a terrible deal - why would someone pay thousands of dollars for the chance to maybe buy the service you wanted in the first place? It only makes sense if it's a prestigious university whose name guarantees you a job or PhD slot somewhere

What portion of universities are doing that?

I'm not sure, many of the flagship universities? I know UW now allows you to enter the CSE program from the start (you apply to UW CSE from highschool), but that wasn't the case when I was in school.

Is it fixable if they simply make the debt dischargeable and impose a tuition ceiling or is that one act sufficient to rein-in the prices without affecting access to what all students basically are: low income future worker citizens just starting out

Ivy League schools are so good at marketing that they have brainwashed the youth into thinking community colleges are worthless.

Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same not only in the US but around the world and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete

90% of students are not aiming to go to a top school, and of those that do, they know the benefit is networking with peers at the top schools, not the labs or fancy equipment.

Except, you know, the top tier research labs with the most talented minds working in them. That absolutely has value. Is it worth the money that you are paying for your diploma - I don't know.

The denigration of our best technical programs to say they don't have that much value above and beyond networking benefits really undermines some of the core values of our educational institutions.

Sorry, I was only referring to bachelor level education.

You still need quality labs to run experiments for engineering and science programs at a bachelor level education.

If not most, a significant number of grad students did undergrad research.

Having taken some community college courses and also having audited at an Ivy, the latter really do have superior professors. Whether that improvement is worth it is another question.

Oh, and the community college professors were entirely competent.

I’ll take a good linear algebra professor over an excellent linear algebra professor and crippling debts

Ivy League isn’t going to leave you with crippling debt. The majority of students don’t pay anywhere close to the sticker price, and the network you build is worth the cost of admission.

It’s the lesser known private schools where you can rack up massive debt in private loans that don’t have income based repayment plans. That’s when you get into trouble.

At Harvard, 28% of students receive no aid at all. So they pay full sticker price.

Average net price by income in 2021-2022 [1]:

  Income               Cost
  0-$30,000         -- $5900
  $30,001-$48,000   -- $3,002
  $48,001-$75,000   -- $4,180
  $75,001-$110,000  -- $17,037
  $110,001+         -- $52,634

If your household makes $110,000 per year in California, the take home pay I found calculated online was ~$75,000. So that means paying around 22% of take home pay to go to Harvard? Can the average household actually put 22% of their take home pay into tuition without taking on debt?

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=harvard&s=all&id=166...

I said the majority not all, and I didn’t say no debt.

And $52k is the average paid by all students with a family income of above $110k. Not the price paid by every student once you hit $110k.

This average is skewed by people making much more than that.

For specific numbers, if your parents make $150k, they are expected to contribute 10% of their income.

You can look up the numbers here https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...

For a family with an income of $150k and one student in college, they are expected to pay $15k per year.

If they were instead making $110k, they are expected to pay $5k per year.

If they make $85k or less, they are expected to pay nothing.

Harvard also looks at assets but excludes primary residence and retirement savings.

So yes the vast majority of people can afford to attend harvard with almost no debt. Even in the rare situation where you take on large amounts of debt, the connections made there and the brand recognition of the degree are almost definitely worth it from a financial perspective.

If you're taking home $110K, you're not paying $52K. That average is being driven by the fat tail of parents with million-dollar incomes.

Compare this data from Yale: https://admissions.yale.edu/affordability-details

97% of $100-150K incomes got financial aid, with median net cost under $15K.

> At Harvard, 28% of students receive no aid at all. So they pay full sticker price.

And legacies pay well above sticker price, when you count family donations. Which is why legacies are a thing.

The other reason legacies are a thing is because when you send your first gen Ivy kid to an Ivy, the dream is that they're going to move in those social circles for the rest of their lives. Doesn't work without legacies.

> Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same

That is just really really not true. Variance in quality of professors is huge. Also they clearly don't all follow the same textbooks or course syllabus.

basically is not exactly exactly

> Variance in quality of professors is huge.

But are relatively independent of rank of institution (some would say inversely correlated).

I went to a mediocre state school (definitely not in top 100), and a top 3 grad school. By and large, the mediocre school's professors cared more about teaching and put more effort into it.

This is well known in education, that level of instruction is inversely correlated with time spent on pedagogy, and positively correlated with time spent on content. In other words, kindergarten teachers think a lot about how to teach, while professors think about what to teach. The quality of instruction would probably be worse at a research university than at a college focused mainly on undergraduate education.

It's totally true about law schools

For the hard sciences things lab lab equipment can matter even for undergrad. The ironic thing here is that in the US large public universities often have far better labs and equipment that the Ivies. A few are decent at science but many others very much not so. I’d take a Chemistry undergrad from a UC Berkeley, UCLA, or Penn State over one from Brown or Dartmouth all day long. You’d literally be paying a ton more for an objectively less good degree.

My understanding is that the Ivies are traditionally known for their business and law schools.

For that matter, you go to Ivies for the connections, not the education per se.

> they have brainwashed the youth into thinking

they brainwashed parents of the youth, they hold the purse strings

Actually it's the Federal Government who is ultimately backing these student loans, and it is the Federal Government that made student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. The best way to deal with it would put colleges on the hook for it. If a student declares bankruptcy their student debt is gone, and the college using their massive endowments can eat it.

> student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, or where the debt is excessively large the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined or excessive debt repayment.

> and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete

Not everyone gets a CS or math degree.

For things like ME/EE/Civil Eng, equipment absolutely matters. And they aren't cheap.

Super-spoiler: This is absolutely, completely incorrect.

1) Teaching quality doesn't correlate much with quality (if anything, the inverse), so an Ivy is likely to have similar or worse teaching than a community college.

2) There is a HUGE difference in a community college bachelor degree and a proper university. Look at the curriculum. Much of what's covered in community college, Ivy students will have done in high school, and a community college will have (quite literally) NO advanced courses, equivalent to what university juniors and seniors might take.

If you want identical, you can compare elite schools to large state universities (University of Texas, University of California, ASU, etc.). At that point, classes are more-or-less identical to elite schools. Major remaining difference is brand stamp and network (which, coming from an elite school, I can say matter a lot).

However, community colleges serve a different purpose, and do not try to accomplish the same thing. They give a leg up into basic professional work. If you work at McD's or the local supermarket, and want a living income as a nurse, IT technician, AV work, or similar, community colleges will do a very good job for not a lot of money and with experience about being practical for people with the kinds of real-world constraints that come with e.g. minimum wage labor.

You will NOT be on a path to a job as a doctor, engineer, or similar. However, a community college education can allow you the basic standard of living to provide that kind of socioeconomic mobility to your kids.

Coursework at community colleges often transfers to the basic classes at a state university at a fraction of the cost. A 12-hour undergrad semester at the state school near me is ~$8,200 in tuition alone not including a few hundred dollars in fees and a few hundred dollars in books. 12 hours at the community college nearby is $744 including books, tuition, and fees. The majority of the first three semesters in an engineering degree from the state school will be mostly transferrable classes available at the community college, the fourth semester will be pretty mixed between major related classes that can't be transferred and transferrable classes.

Starting classes at community college and transferring to the state university later is a good strategy but is often ignored.

It's a fine strategy, but the critical words there are "transferring to the state university later."

Critically, a community college will NOT cover beyond the first 2-4 semesters of a university BS degree.

This is also not a sustainable strategy. At an engineering school, 100% of freshman will take calculus, and a 300:1 lecturer to student ratio is super-profitable (even factoring in recitation instructors and TAs). The cost is in the more specialized courses, which have at least as much planning, drafting of homework assignments, etc., and where those go obsolete much more quickly.

If everyone did this, price structures would need to adapt. Universities generally use large freshman classes as moneymakers to support smaller, more expensive, more specialized junior, senior, and graduate courses.

As a footnote, things like AP exams and online courses can do similar, also at low cost.

>Critically, a community college will NOT cover beyond the first 2-4 semesters of a university BS degree.

Maybe commonly, but that's NOT true universally (given your capital letters to indicate that). The community college near me offers several BS degrees

Most, but not all, do. However, not all BS degrees were created equal.

Seriously. Look at the requirements of /any/ community college BS degree, and compare to the same degree at /any/ elite university.

Please. Post a link to the community college near you. We can then compare to:

https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/computer-science-engin...

https://catalog.mit.edu/degree-charts/

https://catalog.mit.edu/subjects/6/

The better community colleges have honors programs that routinely graduate and then transfer their graduates into the best schools. Makes for quite the tuition optimization.

You can get out your first two years in community college...maybe, it really depends on what you are studying. But surely first year math, physics, chemistry, etc...should be possible. It won't be enriched, and if you are looking for extra credit (or a relationship helping your intro class professor do some research) you are likely not going to find that there. Facilities at a CC are also more geared to commuters, while your big campus will have a real campus experience.

I'll make this very concrete. I mentioned MIT. The largest community college in Massachusetts, Bunker Hill, has the following math courses:

    •  MAT-093 Foundations of Mathematics
    •  MAT-097 Foundations of Algebra
    •  MAT-098 Pre-Statistics
    •  MAT-099 Intermediate Algebra
    •  MAT-100 Topics in Career Math
    •  MAT-133 Introduction to Metric System
    •  MAT-171 Finite Mathematics
    •  MAT-172 Contemporary Math I
    •  MAT-174 Quantitative Reasoning
    •  MAT-181 Statistics I
    •  MAT-193 Topics in Algebra/Trigonometry
    •  MAT-194 College Algebra for STEM
    •  MAT-197 Precalculus
    •  MAT-231 Calculus for Management Science
    •  MAT-281 Calculus I
    •  MAT-282 Calculus II
    •  MAT-283 Calculus III
    •  MAT-285 Ordinary Differential Equations
    •  MAT-291 Linear Algebra

Of these:

1) I knew all of this except ODEs coming out of high school

2) Most elite university freshman would know all of these except upper level calculus, ODEs, Linear Algebra, and perhaps statistics coming out of high school. A community college can bridge these.

3) However, a typical MIT student will have finished all of these by the end of their freshman year. These won't even bridge into sophomore year.

4) Even a typical high school student will have finished a handful of these in high school

For comparison, MIT:

https://catalog.mit.edu/subjects/18/

You'll see many levels up, first with intro courses like abstract algebra, real analysis, topology, etc., then upper level courses like algebraic topology, and then a variety of grad-level topics which build on those.

Neither is better nor worse. There is a need for both. Community colleges form a pathway from unskilled labor to professional work, and that's very, very important.

My local community college has no gaps in facilities as relevant to the education they provide. They're cheaper facilities than MIT, but they do fine. Unlike MIT, they don't have a yacht, landscaping, a getaway mention in Dedham, or buildings designed by Frank Gehry and IM Pei. Without those facilities, MIT couldn't bring in families of the social class aspires to compete for, but for most students community colleges aim to serve, there are much better ways to spend tuition dollars.

Personally, I think the right point to aim for is the UMass system. Education is better than MIT, in terms of teaching quality, and the course selection is adequate:

https://www.umass.edu/mathematics-statistics/course-offering...

Cost is a fraction.

You can't judge course content by their titles. BUT if your kid can get into MIT, they really should go to MIT, not UMass, not Boston Community College, ... Also, MIT isn't Harvard, it is very utilitarian, and ya, some buildings are designed by famous architects, but it isn't a luxurious campus by any means. Like Caltech, it is a complete meritocracy.

CCs serve a role for many people, but if you are (smart, work hard, lucky) you can skip them.

> Personally, I think the right point to aim for is the UMass system. Education is better than MIT, in terms of teaching quality, and the course selection is adequate

I don't know many people who would claim that with a straight face. But it is your right to have that opinion.

> I don't know many people who would claim that with a straight face. But it is your right to have that opinion.

I think you're taking the opinion out-of-context. The question was: "What are good places to get cheap college credit with a quality education?" The question was not: "Where should I send my kid to college?"

The context of the discussion was about finding ways to not pay $60k for freshman year, but to come in with credit.

The answer I'd give to that question is UMass. The tuition is $15k. The educational quality is very high. If MIT allowed it, the best-case option would be to _defer_ MIT admissions, do two years there, and then switch back to MIT. Sadly, MIT wants those dollars, and if you defer, you can't collect credits while deferred:

https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/deferred-enrollment/

And no, MIT is not a meritocracy. Look at the new learning initiatives it launched, and look at the qualifications of anyone involved in senior positions. Or the heads of many labs, for that matter. It's 100% about connections at the top.

Admissions is _somewhat_ more meritocratic than Harvard, where >40% of the white students are admitted are ALDC admissions (athletics, donor, legacy, and children of faculty), but the days when MIT was a meritocracy faded in the days of yesteryear. I miss that MIT, but it's dead.

I have to disagree. I did both community college and a top ranked tech school for undergrad. I also know someone who attended some CS classes at this school but went on to get a CS degree from a mid ranked school (he was a chem engineering major first).

The difference between the CS classes at the community college and the high ranked university were night and day. If you try at a CC you'll get an A and you really have to fuck up to fail. Those classes were basically lectures, reading and tests. The curriculum at the top ranked school was far far more robust and As were hard earned. The labs, office hours and other learning I did with other people was vital.

The difference between the mid and top ranked program was mostly students. My friend said the curriculum was similar but the curves were different so the expectations were lower.

Fair or not, connections also matter. Interning for Intel was a big deal for future prospects and being at a top university put me in a better position for that. Ivy league isn't dominant in tech but they are in plenty of other fields like law.

I do feel where there was a weird transition where small liberal arts schools used to just be for rich people - but then they became for all people (it just meant debt for the non-rich ones)

I come from a highly educated but not super wealthy family. Even 15 years ago, my family told me unless I got into an Ivy or similar school I should just go to my state university. I feel like that, as the starting point for conventional wisdom, would help more people.

First two years in community college, transfer to state university is by far the best return on investment. In part because some kids after two years of college decide it's not for them.

I have a son in a state university now. Unfortunately, things are so competitive even in a state school; I don't believe the community college pipeline is viable. Yes, technically you can go to a CC and try to transfer to a state university. The odds of that happening, is however very difficult. At my son's large state university, it is almost impossible to transfer majors now. The reason being is that there are so many students and applicants wanting to go into the popular majors. The queue does not move. If you are in, you are in. If you are not, you need a miracle to get into a popular major like CS, engineering, biomedical etc.

If you can't make it into a state school of choice after high school, going to a CC, getting good grades in those classes, might give them a second chance to get in. For a state school, and this is hardly guaranteed. One trick is to see if they have quotas based on geography in the state. So you want to get into UW in Seattle, it might make sense moving to Spokane, attending Spokane Community College for a year, and then re-apply to UW as an Eastern Washingtonian! It might work, who knows.

Doesn't apply to really top schools. You aren't going to transfer into MIT, Stanford, Caltech from a CC, or probably any other university.

did that accidentally via the military. enlisted out of HS -- the post-9/11 US was a weird place -- and CLEP'd out of a few courses, and then did community college until I hit the 2 year mark.

transferred easily to a large state school, and then hit a high-end tech school for grad.

Finished with ~40% of the GI bill money left, and spent that on IT certs and part of the grad school cost. Meanwhile dudes I know from HS dropped 50k a year to go to private schools and are still paying off loans.

I don't think my undergrad courses were particularly bad or good. English 101 has some pretty straightforward curriculums, and US history hasn't changed that much.

You seem to be basing the value of education solely on employability, but that misses a huge amount of the value of a liberal arts education -- not just to the individual, but even more so to society at large.

That's a really nice sentiment and I used to believe it, but going to college has disabused me of this boomer/gen x lie.

i don't think it's a lie, per se.

but at 50k a year? absolutely not worth it.

and if it's so great for society, why isn't society willing to pay for it?

I mean wouldn’t the better question to ask if it is even good for society? American population is more educated than ever but we still have massive issues of wealth inequality and people still fall for disinformation all the time.

At what percentage do we need for population with degrees to finally tackle the hard problems of our society?

Well, that is a problem with government and banks, not the universities. I think liberal arts degree is a good thing if you are already set for life. Getting it on credit and expecting to repay that credit with job is of course, crazy.

Well, I'd say that while it might be a problem to be solved by governments and banks, it certainly ends up being egg on the Universities' faces. Anecdotally, almost all of my college friends and acquaintances held the university just as responsible for charging the prices it did, thus requiring them to go into further debt. (It was a technical school and most of my social group had jobs-focused degrees)

None of what you just wrote has anything to do with the students themselves; and that's the problem.

College was 90% a waste of time and effort for my ADHD self. The overwhelming majority of value-to-be-had is gated behind the bureaucracy and traditionalism of the system itself.

The only value I ever found at college was to casually be around people who are in the mindset of learning. That value was minimized by the tedious and time-consuming work that school is designed from the ground up to be.

Forgive my quip but college is the absolute worst way to improve your job prospects except for all the other ways.

I get that if politics is important to you, you won't like a place that includes your political opponents. So some people don't let their kids go, or they resent that their kids have to mix with political opponents.

Though as pointed our here already, most kids are not politically inclined and are trying to have fun.

>small elite liberal arts colleges

If they are elite, they should pay for themselves. They are not actually elite. Everyone wants to feel elite, so everyone pretends to have some prestige even if the school is mid/low.

Most of the issue is that unrestricted credit line.

Federal loans aren’t unrestricted. The problem is that private banks are willing to loan large amounts because you can’t bankrupt out of student loans (in most cases).

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