Top Colleges Are Too Costly Even for Parents Making $300k | Hacker News Reader

Top Colleges Are Too Costly Even for Parents Making $300k

bloomberg.com

We've been talking about this for two decades at this point. Nothing is happening because too many people are willing to go in debt to get their degree.

    Free loans & Easy admissions
        Loans carry no risk

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                v

  Ample money supply for universities
      & no pressure to cut costs

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                v

   Increase in budget and expenses 
   University FOMO for not being 
   competitive on shiny offerings
   (Admin, fancy facilities, etc.) 

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                v

      Perpetually raising costs 
     Students take bigger loans


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                v

         Student loan crisis

It's a perverse positive feedback system.

The easiest lever to pull is adjusting the student loan situation. Students need to be able to discharge their debt, which will put risk calculus back into the equation. STEM degrees, graduation rates, degree value, and student academic performance will be directly correlated with risk.

Under these changes, a student with so-so academics going to an expensive school for art history won't work anymore. STEM degrees at local community colleges will be affordable and abundant. That's what the country needs rather than a system that buys fancy academic buildings.

Our ancestors could make do with learning in decrepit old buildings. They didn't have staycation amenities. They turned that into incredible productive value and didn't go into debt. That's what we need again.

If we want to continue to provide access as a matter of policy, then we should make universities meet strict standards on budget and degree cost to offer non-dischargeable loans to students. Then universities can decide whether they want to meet those eligibility requirements or continue inflating their own costs. The market will fix itself.

People go into debt for the credential because employers require the credential. If employers provided training and did not require a degree, you’d see demand evaporate. Instead, they require a degree the role may not even need, which externalizes the cost onto the student and future candidate (who then goes into debt as a gamble to increase future lifetime earnings). A college degree was marketed as a ticket to a secure, middle class life, and that marketing has been seen through.

Why US Men Think College Isn’t Worth It Anymore- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43788914 - April 2025

Pew Reseach: Is College Worth It? - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-coll... - May 23rd, 2024

There is some progress here on companies removing the credential requirement, and the situation should improve as labor supply continues to decline into the future due to structural demographics (forcing employers to loosen hiring requirements).

Learn a trade, get a CDL (~$5k), etc.

Corporations can (and should) provide training for tradespeople, but you can't do the same for specialized degrees, like engineering. To train engineers it takes 4-5 years of academic + project work, which is what colleges and universities provide. There's nothing wrong with degrees, what we have in the US is a broken aid system with perverse incentives around the financing of such degrees. Don't conflate one thing with the other.

I don't disagree that there is a legit need for engineering degree holding workers, but, how many folks in the US are getting engineering degrees just to check a box to get a job that requires a degree? This is a distinct issue versus dysfunctional funding of necessary degree paths.

I may just be misunderstanding what you're saying but if you're just getting a degree to tick a box that says "Must have a degree" why would you pick engineering?

What are the jobs that "require" an engineering degree but don't actually require any engineering knowledge?

Sorry for any misunderstanding. To be clear, there are two problems:

1. Students going into debt to get a degree simply because a job req calls for it, but potentially doesn't use the degree. Think "business administration" amongst others. The "Bachelor's Checkbox" on an application if you will. The debt they incur is the cost to increase their white collar lottery odds.

2. Degrees in domains that are crucial for the work to be done, but the financing model is fucked. Engineering, MD, etc.

Both require solving for, but in this context, I am addressing the former.

>People go into debt for the credential because employers require the credential.

The beautiful thing is that making the debt dischargeable fixes all that.

Nobody will write a loan for your slapdash STEM program that doesn't actually correlate with earnings.

Same goes for a basket weaving degree from a prestigious university.

>Learn a trade, get a CDL (~$5k), etc.

Spoken like someone who's never been with spitting distance of either. They are not at all easy money compared to office stuff. The trades are all regulatory captured by the professional associations, licensing bodies, etc so you'll toil for 4-10yr making peanuts while you destroy your bodies and sometimes you can't even make the big bucks without going into business yourself and taking on huge risk. CDL jobs are all 60hr a week slogs, more if your company has someone overseas editing the E-logs which a good chunk of them do.

If you can hack it an office job that requires "real math" is almost universally better.

I have a CDL and have driven a Class 8 semi for a short stint (it’s a valuable life skill from an optionality perspective imho). I did let the hazmat endorsement expire though. A family member was a long haul truck driver, I am familiar with the industry and what the experience is. As long as trucks are used to transport, it’s an economic option requiring minimal investment.

People don't stay at companies long enough for it to be worth it to train them deeply.

That’s contractually solvable. Training payback periods are not uncommon.

I doubt it. Legally you might, but in effect, you can't force someone to come to work and if you do they can sabotage or refuse to work.

You could attach a financial penalty in case they refuse, but you can't collect money from people without a job.

Correct. A financial payback is how it works.

Cool that you posted a Pew Research article, they tend to get rarely shown and are often well substantiated. This one, maybe a bit less (5,200 adults vs the usual 10,000 survey respondents, yet still pretty substantiated.

Within the article, the education part definitely differs by gender. For males, the college degree has been oscillating upward, downward, and flat over the last 50 years. 75-85 semi-down, 85 big jump, mostly flat till mid-90's, rose till maybe 2002, yet then down till 2015. Finally up in the last decade.

Also, in comparison, without a degree has been uniformly horrible for the most part, with down or flat for 40 years (except maybe the bump in mid-90's). (Provides a big push to get a degree, probably get a lot of "don't do what we did, go to school")

Women on the other hand, after the drop in 73-74, have had almost nothing other than upward or flat for 50 years from getting an education. $40,400 to $65,000. Without a degree has mostly been flat. The story for them is "get a degree, it enables earning (and probably independence). Creates very different views and kind of a strange gender dynamic in the discussion.

On that, it seems like a possibility that the last decade trend (and a lot of the manosphere stuff that's shown up recently) may have been when the High School or Some College crowd male pay started approaching the High School or Some College female pay. Personal opinion, yet it seems likely to set off lots of societal issues about family breadwinner, provider, head-of-family, ect...

On the original topic of the post, "If employers provided training and did not require a degree", this likely works for many jobs, and I agree there is probably a lot of false "check-the-box" requirement nonsense in the job market. However, there are quite a few jobs where the starting tasks presume that you have a significant amount of prior familiarization with concepts. You actually use semi-complex math (derivatives, integrals), you need to demonstrate significant skill in liberal arts (production concept art), you need to be familiar with a relatively complicated system with lots of fine details (legal, laws), ect...

There's also an issue in there somewhere, that if the jobs are so simple that all they require is walking in the door and getting training, then those jobs are: relatively low actual skill required, likely limited creative personal input needed, and probable for replacement if there's a way to replace it with tech. That said, the trainee/novice, apprentice, journeyman, master thing has worked since probably the middle-ages in a lot of fields, so there's possibilities.

Also, my standard reply to lot of these issues that's underneath much of the American education "Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... The issue being that you go through all this education, and then work in an environment where your diligence is mostly exploited, and you simply get extra work for being skilled, while people who just faked it get promoted.

I got a stem degree via community college, but had to goto a state college and get a bachelor in the same degree for employers to even consider hiring me or being able to move up in a company.

I have a associates in science in cyber security, most credits didn't transfer to a bachelor's of science in cybwrsecurity program despite both being public schools and not private colleges. Its set my education back years all because most jobs demand a bachelor's and certifications.

It is also hard to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy.

Isn't the problem that education is a public good and therefore shouldn't cost anything special, and a system to sort prospective students into correct tiers based on honest merits would be better, but because rich people, it's what we have?

Seems like you haven't even gone down the path most of the world operates on and just assume the system as it exists can't be modified.

> Isn't the problem that education is a public good and therefore shouldn't cost anything special

If your solution is to make all higher education free and turn this into yet another tax, then I have to ask where that money is going to come from.

There's already tremendous inefficiency and malinvestment in higher education. Is it really worth diverting productive capital and private money into a system that is bloated?

The frequently suggested fix is to remove the crutches and allow the system to fail, ie. make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Risk has been foreign to the equation since the student loan system was established. With the reintroduction of risk, the system will balance itself. People will stop taking expensive degree programs with low ROI because there won't be any loans available. No lender will write loans for bad degree programs.

Additionally, when the universities are forced to stop competing on what amenities they offer, they can lower their tuitions to a point where some form of public subsidy could be possible and sustainable. But in no way should we be spending tax dollars on present-day college tuition costs. Those costs need to drop substantially.

The US would add another 0.5 - 0.7 trillion dollars to the deficit if we funded all universities at their present day costs. That would sink the entire ship. It'd be insane to add that to our budget.

The money is going to come from the same place the money already comes from.

I don't understand, and won't follow further someone who doesn't understand how public good works.

Sorry you wasted your time.

I’m all for the federal government to completely ban student loans. You can either go to college out of pocket or with merit-based scholarships. And also place a federal ban on HR departments requiring degrees for clerical work. Such a stupid requirement is a form of discriminatory class warfare.

Inequality would fall substantially and many universities will be forced to drop prices down to around 10-20k.

My guess is that it would result in more loans that aren’t called student loans. For example, via parents.

That wouldn't distort the college market like ubiquitous student loans backed by the government do, so I don't see why that would be a problem.

The claim is that “inequality would fall substantially” and I don’t see how it would when only the children of well-off families (or at least with good credit) can get college loans.

I have wondered about the effects of adding minimum wages/salaries for positions that require each degree level. For example, if the job requires a bachelor degree or masters degree then the job must pay at least $X/hr. Set that rate just high enough to discourage abuse.

Not sure how you’d enforce it when jobs would just silently require it but not advertise that fact. Or maybe not require it, but preference anyone who has one.

I like the Australian model of government subsidised loans that are indexed by CPI and repayments are garnished from earnings after meeting a certain income threshold. There's no federal scholarship program or any of that sort of thing (though there are meagre scholarships people can apply for at each university), and there's no such thing as a educational loan from banks and private lenders.

15 years ago when I was still in college in the US, the new president of the school came to give a speech to some incoming freshman. In that speech he talked a lot about how colleges were businesses and that the goal was to make them appealing to new students (new gyms, updated dorms, better stadiums, etc...). I knew in that moment that higher education had been overtaken by the MBAs. I guarantee that a school that focuses on education solely will not only be cheaper, but get the type of students that actually want to learn.

My daughter will be starting in the fall at a private STEM focused university. They pride themselves on being a difficult school which throws you right into the deep end. They have no fancy gyms, the dorms are basic cinder block buildings without any fancy conveniences including no AC. The dining hall is very basic with limited food stations. It is very much inline with the amenities or lack of at my college when I was a freshmen in 1987. It has 1 D1 sport with the rest being D3. It is located in a mostly rural area.

The other finalist school she didn’t choose is also private but has every amenity under the sun. The newer dorms which she would have been in because of her major have state of the art gyms inside them and parking garages under them which she would have been assigned a spot in. Multiple dining facilities whith a wide range of high quality food. The school has a full array of D1 sports programs and new atheletic facilities built within the last 5-15 years. It is located in a large metropolitan area. It doesn’t have near the same quality of academics as her choice.

The estimated cost of attendance for 25-26 is with $500 of each other. Both being around $89k before any aid. She doesn’t qualify for federal financial aid. Luckily both offered very substantial merit aid. She did also consider one of our state schools. Although not as nice as the private she didn’t choose it is much closer to that than the school she did choose. They, along with all our state schools, are known for giving almost no aid beyond federal financial aid. The cost to attend would have been more than the two private schools after their merit aid awards.

I guess my point is they get you whether they give you amenities or not and whether they are private or public.

Precisely, if the tuition increases had generally gone into improving students lives at least it would serve as a sort of crappy consolation price. But the reality is that a high tide floats all boats, big or small, crappy or great. They are all charging outrageous tuition and making a fortune at the expense of the future of these students.

What university? (I have kids looking into this too)

When discussing results of a housing interest poll by prospective students at a cabinet meeting of a local university, members were dismayed that "high speed wifi" and "access to printing services" topped the list, and that none from their favored category of "luxury amenities" like discounts on cable television packages and smart appliances ranked at all.

The initial correspondence was also addressed to "the parents of $student".

Someone certainly felt confident in their clever little scheme to milk their endless supply of cash cows.

I think another factor at work here is analogous to our broken system of health care billing vs. insurance companies.

Scholarships and financial aid will basically expand as necessary to meet tuition demands for students. Therefore, the colleges can name their price, as it is basically funny-money, and any given student will be on a combination of scholarship, FAFSA, mom/dad funds, loans.

In fact it is sort of a joke. When I was in community college, Phi Theta Kappa made overtures to recruit me. One of their seminars featured a few students who had earned a lot of scholarships by virtue of their membership and service. And I do mean "a lot". I think one of the figures tossed out there was $23 million in scholarships. For a community college student. And to think I was baffled how to spend an extra $500 or so kicking around.

I got really disillusioned, even with community college, after my final years there. It seemed that the tuition was the right price, and all the instructors were highly credentialed, knowledgeable, and helpful. The classes themselves were great. But the whole package was draining, and exhausting. It was like a neverending exposition of clubs, events, deals, and engagement. Every table on the mall, every student leader next to me, was simply dying to gain my loyalty, membership, and engagement in whatever they had going on. And I personally could not keep a lid on that, so I just sort of got torn to pieces. I was in 5 clubs and doing honors and all kinds of extra stuff that just wore me out.

All I had wanted to do was just Take some Classes, Earn the Credits, and get out of there. But that is not a satisfactory goal for the colleges of today.

USC is $100,000 a year? How likely is that degree to net you $400,000 of value through your career?

Divided by 40 years it doesn't look like much...

$10k a year is a huge amount. The median US salary is $61k.

Also realistically, you're likely getting a loan, so you need to factor in interest.

Not sure why you're downvoted as this is true.

(and there's nothing wrong with you expressing this opinion)

Not everyone in the US makes 500k TC doing remote work.

400k for a degree is absolute bonkers!

To pay $400k off over even 20 years at 6%, which is below the average student loan rate is just over $2,000 a month and it is mostly not tax free. Our society is messing up with how expensive this has gotten. The bloat is facilities and administrators who earn two and three or more times the tenured professor salary. The guarantors have to be the schools themselves and those execs who take these bloated salaries. And that interest isn't deductable other than a pittance of $2,500 or less in a year.

Here is the IRS about this;

Student loan interest is interest you paid during the year on a qualified student loan. It includes both required and voluntarily prepaid interest payments. You may deduct the lesser of $2,500 or the amount of interest you actually paid during the year. The deduction is gradually reduced and eventually eliminated by phaseout when your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) amount reaches the annual limit for your filing status.

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc456

Agree, and the $61,000 part is much of what this article is missing. Its a lot like "weep for those making $300,000/year" when most families are making less than half of that on average (almost a third, $122k if both family members are pulling average). However, taxes tell us they're not even doing that great.

If your family is reporting a family income of $122k, you're already at approximately the upper 25% threshold. The $61,000 number hides a really L-shaped distribution skewed heavily toward the $2,500,000+ crowd. Previously calculated 2024 statistics from another post.

in the most recent tax filing season data available (2024), there were tax returns of:

                                        Top 1%       Top 5%      Top 10%       Top 25%       Top 50%   Bottom 50%  All Taxpayers
  Number of Returns                  1,535,899    7,679,495   15,358,991    38,397,477    76,794,954   76,794,954    153,589,908
  Average Income Taxes Paid           $653,730     $187,468     $108,251       $50,963       $27,891         $667        $14,279 
  Adjusted Gross Income (Millions)  $3,872,395   $6,182,180   $7,745,525   $10,613,602   $13,191,209   $1,531,038    $14,722,247

If we then break those into the actual groups, and numbers per group, then we find their Average Per Capita Income

                                             1          2-5         6-10        11-25        26-50       51-100
  Number of Returns                  1,535,899    6,143,596    7,679,496   23,038,486   38,397,477   76,794,954
  Income Taxes Paid (Millions)      $1,004,063     $435,594     $222,966     $294,234     $185,068      $51,225 
  Adjusted Gross Income (Millions)  $3,872,395   $2,309,785   $1,563,345   $2,868,077   $2,577,607   $1,531,038 
  Average Tax Rate                       25.9%        18.9%        14.3%        10.3%         7.2%         3.3%
  Average Per Capita Income      $2,521,256.28  $375,966.29  $203,573.91  $124,490.69   $67,129.59   $19,936.70

Just like compounding interest, a VERY small percentage advantage each year snowballs to be a large advantage over a full career.

A college degree in the industry you work in also means your job security is MUCH higher than those without a degree.

What about just giving your kid $400,000 in index funds when they become an adult? What does that look like after 40 years?

It would be a ton with ~10% annualized returns on the SNP500 since 1985, especially if you reinvest dividends. Someone who lives very frugally can probably just live off the interest off that 400k alone and if they bank unitl a million, they can have a safe buffer and a comfortable lifestyle. If they reinvest all of it for fourty years since 1985 it’d be worth on the order of $10-25 million.

It’s actually quite stark how bad it’s gotten. I’d rather just give a kid that money to invest and have them live at home doing whatever work floats their fancy until they can live comfortably on interest alone.

In the long run %100. comparing the lowest quartile of high school grads to the lowest quartile of college grads, the college grad makes about $30k more. So without accounting for interest on the loans (if they were needed) it would take about ~13 years to pay for itself, 17 if you count the four years it took to get the degree. At the upper quartile it looks more like five or six years to pay for itself. Please correct my napkin math or my napkin source if this seems shaky: https://www.ppic.org/publication/is-college-worth-it/

compare to a cheaper college

A degree is worth almost $1MM in lifetime earnings (for men). So yes, compared to no degree. A more fine-grained analysis seems difficult, and one could imagine the conclusion is dominated by which specific schools and specific degrees you are comparing.

https://archive.ph/16fsy

300k is not rich, 300k in 2025 is like 90,000 in 1982. How is the aristocracy supposed to maintain their dominance if just anyone can go to a top college? You can’t risk a middle class family sending they’re kids to a school that may qualify them for a top job in law or politics.

And 90k in 1982 was what, the change between the couch cushions?

90k in 82 was country club eligible.

When I went to a top engineering school in 1982, we were told that when we graduated we could expect to make $35K/year as CS grads. Whoo hoo! Hello, upper middle class!

$90K/year in 1982 was fuckin’ rolling in it.

300K is over 5.5K/week. How the hell is that not rich? Delusional take.

$300k a year is rich in 99% of the world and 90%+ of the U.S.

However, jobs that pay $300k vastly over-index to a few coastal major metros, where $300k a year is at the lower end of ever being able to own even a condo within a reasonable commute.

Yeah but then your spouse works too, and even if they only bring in like 80K that’s enough to cover living expenses, with the other salary covering housing.

> How is the aristocracy supposed to maintain their dominance if just anyone can go to a top college? You can’t risk a middle class family sending they’re kids to a school that may qualify them for a top job in law or politics.

If they want to keep out the middle class how do you explain many of the top colleges now waiving tuition for students from upper middle class families, and waiving tuition and room and board for students from lower middle class families?

Surprised NIL wasn’t mentioned.

Given that non-athletics are funding the lambo’s some universities give to all their football players (and huge paychecks) … if people thought the past 10-years tuition inflation was bad, watch what the next 10-years will be like.

Isn't that generally an arms length thing- the boosters give the money, not the university?

NCAA is proposing direct student payment.

Universities are now longer in the business of education. Its effectively competing with NFL.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/44787232/ncaa...

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