Half of high school seniors won't apply to colleges costing more than $40k
forbes.com
forbes.com
This somehow seems inevitable in hindsight. It is quite bizarre, as a German student in university, how the education sector in the U.S. is working acceptable-ish[^1] and yet everytime I read something about it is seems to in some stage of self-imploding for colleges/ universities.
It would be interesting to see how this societal issue can be addressed in the longer term. Imoe neither technology alone nor any simple approach will work but it definitely is a great challenge for the future/ present.
The nightmare stories you hear are about the small, vocal minority that go to expensive private schools and/or major in something that doesn't pay well (like theatre) and/or get Masters degrees that put them in debt.
> As of 2023, approximately 44 million Americans carry student loan debt, with the total student loan debt in the United States reaching $1.76 trillion according to the Federal Reserve. This figure includes both federal and private student loans. It's notable that the number of people with federal student loans is around 43.4 million, and there are about 3.5 million private student loan borrowers, leading to a total of around 46.9 million American adults with a student loan. The average student loan debt in the United States as of 2023 is approximately $37,645 per borrower. This figure represents the average amount owed by those carrying federal student loan debt
https://www.studentloanplanner.com/student-loan-debt-statist...
The mean is notorious for being affected by outliers, that is, the few borrowers like doctors who owe tremendous sums. (As GP says, "the nightmare stories you hear are about the small, vocal minority")
If 90% of borrowers only owed $10k each, and the other 10% owed 210k each, the average would be $30k per borrower.
In fact, if 90% of borrowers only owed 1k each, and 10% owed 300k each, the average would still be over $30k.
Edit: According to the census, the median student loan debt is slightly under $20k, which certainly seems like an amount that people can pay off.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/student-debt-...
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2022-economic-we...
To me, that seems consistent with "very little debt" as discussed above. It's less than the cost of an economy car, for an education that increases average lifetime earnings by over a million dollars.
Even so, calling a 5 figure debt load "very little" is flat out ridiculous.
Very little indeed.
It so funny that you guys are so quick to point out the difference between media and mean when it serves your world view but completely ignore all the other statistical factors. Like comparing q lifetime average earnings of all college graduates aganist the median debt load of those who still have debt. Rich people don't leave college with as much debt and don't hold it as long. Not all degrees pay equally so people with lower paying degrees will be disproportionately represented in that data set.
I know many college graduates for whom even making minimum payments on a 25k debt would significantly impact their quality of life.
You don't have to feel guilty for your privilege, but don't let it blind you to reality.
This is true. A degree that doesn't increase earnings by at least $1/hour (enough to cover the payments on a $25k student loan), is a financial mistake.
If someone spends four years doing what they love and not working, without a care for what will happen afterwards, they should expect it to significantly impact their quality of life afterwards. Being able to do that at all is quite a privilege.
I come from a working class family in which most people didn't go to college, so I don't forget what a privilege it was to be able to go to college nor how valuable a well chosen education is.
1$ per hour seems on the far low end to cover that much debt. Also, the 25k number isn't the amount that was owed at graduation, but rather still owed some number of years into the repayment term so the actuall monthly payment is likely even higher.
Additionally, many of the lower paying jobs are still ones that we need as a society. While everyone picking lucrative degrees is good for them, it would be bad for us as a society.
Even so, I'm not disputing that the vast majority do pay for themselves in time. I'm saying that financial burdens imposed by student loan are significant. I would also posit that this repayment can hamper the ability for people to make other investments that improve their productivity and long term earning potential. Instead of the financial safety net enjoyed by the more well off, it does the opposite and increases risks.
Some back-of-the-envelope math:
- K-12 enrollment in 2021 was 49.4MM [1]
- Assuming even distribution across 13 grades, that's 3.8MM / academic year.
- 1MM ~= 25%, though if one factors in that drop-outs increase as years advance, this is conservative.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372#PK12-enroll...
[edit] formatting
I don't think that's common. I especially don't think it was common ~45 years ago.
I graduated 35 years ago and back then was able to pay my MIT tuition by consulting over the summer + January. CS of course during the AI boom. Doubt that’s possible today.
I think the financing of education in the US is absurd and broken, but there is some logic to spreading the financing of an asset over the lifetime of the asset.
I don't know how you got your number but your math seems deeply flawed...
And while state colleges have sticker prices well below those of privates, the pricey private schools are more likely to discount tuition. So students have to guess at where they’ll get the most aid/discount (most schools do a decent job getting these figures to prospects, but you have to apply to get them).
IMO, “shopping” for college shouldn’t be anything like buying a used car. The prices should be affordable and publicly shared.
The price of a used car is more transparent than US universities. I think the main comparison for the cost of going to college is more similar to the cost of going to the emergency room. You get individual bills coming in from every doctor and nurse that gave a sideways glance at your X-Ray. Likewise with a university they talk about the price of tuition, and oh wait you're too far from home and need a place to stay? And you're under 26 years old? Going to need to spend another $10k per semester for staying in a dorm. You'll need food passes and parking passes. You'll need books and everything.
From an educational standpoint, this is arguable, as most students are forced to take classes unrelated to their area of study simply to fill out a the credit requirements. But overall our schools are world class. It's the money side that's a wreck.
> The vast majority of students go to community colleges or public schools and end up with very little debt (if any). The nightmare stories you hear are about the small, vocal minority that go to expensive private schools and/or major in something that doesn't pay well (like theatre) and/or get Masters degrees that put them in debt.
This is just the exact opposite of the truth, with literally no room for interpretation. The vast majority of students graduate with debt, the number is about 64%. Average debt from non-profit schools is about $35k of debt, and about $60k of debt from for-profit colleges. This is two thirds of students, and the amount rivals car loans, which are NOT insignificant.
> > From an educational standpoint, this is arguable, as most students are forced to take classes unrelated to their area of study simply to fill out a the credit requirements.
The point of this is to help round out an education. I started and finished my college career as a science student, but in the middle I switched to humanities. I witnessed an extraordinary difference in the ability to clearly articulate ideas between those areas which really highlighted for me the value in requiring a curriculum beyond just a student’s chosen major.
I wonder if that's really true for state schools anymore.
The two state universities in Kansas (LCOL state) quote ~10-12K annually for in-state tuition alone (KSU: https://www.k-state.edu/sfa/cost/manhattan-campus-costs/unde..., KU: https://admissions.ku.edu/costs). I can't imagine many (if any) states charging significantly less than that.
When you add room and board, food, books, and all the extra hidden fees tacked onto tuition, you're closing in on ~20-25k.
Students aren't getting out of that without debt unless they have a sizable nest egg saved up beforehand and/or work a decent number of hours throughout their school life.
And, while it's certainly doable for an individual to make it through school without debt, there aren't enough decently-paid seasonal jobs around said schools for even a majority of students to follow suit.
It used to be significantly cheaper when I got my BS ~20 years ago, but a push by Republicans to make student loans non-dischargeable in 2005 (see https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/256) along with significant cuts to Kansas spending on education tripled tuition shortly after I graduated.
It would benefit society and employers as a whole.
Thiel and Will Hunting have said it better: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”
I remember a 1 credit hour horseback riding class having a rather steep extra fee attached to it.
https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2023/Tuition-Discount-...
Probably worth speaking about in the same vein as high tuition costs and the loans taken to cover them, is that parents (like mine) will have their kids take out student loans so they can supplement their own income. I’ve known a lot of people that managed to go to reasonably priced schools but ended up taking out $20,000 in debt for their parents. There are a few reasons why that range from unfortunate to opportunistic (in my case, my parents are not good people). The fact that university costs so much that tens of thousands of dollars in debt is acceptable to be freely loaned to be arbitraged is a huge problem.
I have a feeling (but no evidence) that this applies upward pressure on the amount that can be loaned and that this increased lending reinforces upward tuition costs.
Overall a great school and worth the money at the time.
I used to think this is true. Moving to SFBA has disabused me of any notion that expensive college is about the education. Seeing the network that Stanford kids have access to is wild.
Me: "Oh hey this company just raised <lots of money>". Friend: "Oh yeah I know Joe, he's great, his best friend was my room-mate in college. We've already been talking for a few months about hiring them as a vendor at our company. Happy to see they finally announced the raise I heard about last year"
Some people just don't learn as effectively in an online environment.
I would disagree. Learning things, for me at least, was something social. And talking lectures over or solving problems together with other people was crucial for me for understanding things. Furthermore, university was a good place to network. I think it's difficult to find something similar on the Internet.
Whether it's worth taking on tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, probably not. But that's not a problem where I come from.
My suggestion would be to get into a high caliber university, and drop out after one or two years if they can find full-time employment. The ability to get admitted into MIT, Ivy League, et. al. is about as good at signaling ability as it is to graduate. If I saw an applicant with 1 or 2 years of uni followed by full-time work, that'd be just as impressive as a graduate.
That said, Reporting from the economist suggest that university is a net negative for ~15% of people, and ~25% of young men: https://www.economist.com/international/2023/04/03/was-your-...
People don't like to talk about it because it comes off as elitist, but someone going to a university with an >80% admissions rate isn't really effective at signaling capability. If one of my kids only got into such universities and didn't garner much in terms of grants and financial aid, I'd want him or her to seriously consider alternatives like trades, community college, or a technical boot camp.
Some of the best educators I had were at community colleges with tuition ~1k per year.
It didn't have the marble buildings and heated pools of my UC, but class size was 20 instead of 200 and the primary vocation of the professor was education, not Nobel prize research
I remember my school was like ~2200/semester and last I checked it was now up to like ~5000/semester. So there's 40 grand right there if you finish in 4 years.
Two were philosophy teachers and one was a history teacher.
For public universities, not private ones.
In the US, private universities are also the most expensive...
I was held to be very good at French in high school and my head would have exploded at the Sorbonne.
I was lucky a top ten school in my degree was less than two hours away. A lot of Americans don’t want to travel that far. I suspect it’s something about how far you have to go to encounter properly different people here, lulls many of us into complacency. We are just too spread out.
Maybe in weird niches they get recognized, but not as a normal thing. They drown like the rest in the higher education racket.
Looking back on this, it's actually something that I'm now much more unsure about, especially in the light of a fairly large tech salary. When applying to universities, I had an impressive application: a perfect on my math SAT, captain of the football team, professional opera experience, volunteer work and great grades (all credit goes to my parents for pushing me to do all of this). I got into great colleges such as Stanford (#3 on Forbes' university rankings), but turned them all down due to the price. I ended up going to Loyola Marymount (#203) as they gave me a $40k grant for 2 years. When that ran out I transferred and ended up graduating from Hawaii Pacific University (unranked, but objectively quite poor).
Was this the right choice, and would I have made the same call if I could go back? I'm not sure. $160k is much less to me today than it was when I was 18, so the value of the college feels more worth it by comparison. That said, I ended up successful regardless of the university I attended, but this might just be survivorship bias, especially considering when I look around at my peers, almost all of them are graduates of ivy leagues.
From a more objective lens, I think colleges offer three things: education, maturity, and access.
Educationally, there was a stark difference between Loyola and Hawaii Pacific, so I do think there's merit in pursuing a good university, but would there have been the same delta between LMU and Stanford? For that I'm not sure, especially with the resources online today.
From a maturity standpoint, I think I could have gotten this anywhere, as long as it was out of my hometown. Being out on my own was a fairly important aspect of my growth, and interestingly this increased when I moved out to Hawaii and was even further separated. I lived out in Sydney for a bit, and this too stretched me. I'd have loved to have had the opportunity to study overseas for this fact - I think being challenged by a different culture and being out on my own would have amplified the maturization effects of this.
On the access side, higher end universities excel here. They offer both peer connections and a stamp of approval. I've seen these two things open plenty of doors for my peers.
Because of these aspects, I think if I could go back I'd likely pursue the following: Study overseas for the first two years, then transfer into a more prestigeous ivy league to graduate from. Ideally that captures the best balance of optimizing for the three things universities offer, while minimizing the cost.