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Comment by apparent | Hacker News Reader

The downward "is it worth it" trend over the last 12 years is partly due to the continued upward climb of college tuition. Some schools are now at $100,000/yr for tuition, room, and board. In order for this to be "worth the cost" they would have to have a strongly positive expected value in terms of future earnings.

And a positive EV isn't sufficient. It would also need to have a very low chance of negative EV. Otherwise people would be crazy to sink $400,000 into a degree that might or might not leave their child with better job prospects in the future.

Of course, only the wealthy pay full price for college, but when you ask people if college is worth the cost, they may be anchored to those prices even if their own kids would end up paying less.

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There's a simple and effective escape hatch: study abroad. Europe, Australia, South America, Canada even. Some countries are more affordable than others but the most expensive (by far) option is staying in the US.

From the point of view of developing your brain, leaving your country is a free education in itself. There is also the effect of embedding yourself in a network of expats made up of the best and brightest from countries all over the world. That all comes on top of the education you receive. And if you are less in it for the intellectual stuff and are more into drinking and partying, college life in the US is pretty lame compared to some university towns across the world. Cheaper, wilder, better.

I can vouch for studying abroad. But can you get loans and scholarships for it as easily as studying at home? Even if the university is free you must pay for food and housing.

> Even if the university is free you must pay for food and housing.

A one-person apartment in the local halls of residence costs under €500/month here in DE. A room in a shared flat costs a lot less.

Studying abroad in Canada is not nearly as affordable. Tuition alone for international students here is exorbitant ($40,000/year and up). We don’t give any subsidies whatsoever for international students. Instead, we use their tuition fees to subsidize the tuition of our domestic students.

Yeah, Germany must be one of the few still attracting foreign students with no/low fees? I know a lot of courses have teaching in English, landing a job afterwards needs fluent German though.

I wonder how long it will last? UK Universities are now for rich foreigners only. It does mean great options for Chinese food near student halls though.

That can still be too much. Someone studying abroad usually isn’t allowed to work, so they’re making zero income. If they come from a poor family, they have almost if not zero reserves. So everything must be either provided by the college or covered by grants/loans.

Except some universities may allow foreign students to take on-campus jobs, which would probably pay enough. Or for a PhD, usually the university pays you.

> Someone studying abroad usually isn’t allowed to work

Citation needed, because I'm almost certain not being allowed to work as a foreign student is the exception to the rule. A surface level Google search for Western European countries (BE/NL/FR/DE, typical places to go study abroad) shows me all of them allow non-EU students to get a job. You'll typically see these student workers in bars, restaurants, grocery stores, ...

RE the parent comment stating 500 EUR rent is potentially too much for a foreign student to afford, I can imagine it might be. But it's also too much to afford for plenty of native students, and a large share of them get these student jobs to be able to afford their student housing and the likes.

I was thinking of foreign student work restrictions in the US (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/students-...), where you can’t work outside your subject and in some cases can’t work off-campus.

I looked at other countries and they have much less restrictions, so it seems you’re right and it’s more common than I thought.

Yes - for those coming from USA. Most colleges in EU are part of the US student loan program, through Netherlands appears to be dropping it

There is an actually easy an effective escape hatch right here in the US:

Community college to state school path.

You can get a full bachelors degree for ~$35k. All four years, $35k. Not per year. Full degree. $35k.

And that's before any scholarships or grants.

Kids and parents are just insane though, and want to flex about the college they are going to from day one. Its become a ritualistic practice with social shame attached to going to community school.

Even though the end result is exactly the same.

If I remember that right. It is not that easy to get into the state school in our state. UW engineering departments required GPA 4.0 last year. Kids who had GPA 3.9 or less had 0 chances getting into the UW engineering schools.

That is probably not true if you are transferring from a community college after two years. It's entering as a freshman direct from high school that has all the barriers.

Thank you! Interesting. I didn't know that. Do you have any information on why that is?

A degree from the "right" college surely helps for certain firms? Sure, it must be a small number of top ones as most can't afford to be that choosy about their candidates.

Whether that is a sensible strategy for the firm (a candidate bias towards those who can pay the top college fees) is another question.

In those cases the sensible strategy for students/parents is to get most of the degree in the local college and then move to a prestigious college at the very end of one's studies.

The university is the signal. Studying at Stanford or MIT gives you a better (professional) future in the US, while the average American doesn't know universities such as the L'École polytechnique, UNAM, or UBA exist. They will clearly hire from the top US ranked ones.

> There's a simple and effective escape hatch: study abroad. Europe, Australia, South America, Canada even. Some countries are more affordable than others but the most expensive (by far) option is staying in the US.

I mean, good luck finding a job in the US when your degree is not from the us (or maybe Canada). Most industries don't hire folks with overseas degrees.

Really? Which industries wouldn't hire you if you had a non-American degree?

And is this about the content of the degree(s), or just brand name recognition?

> Of course, only the wealthy pay full price for college, but when you ask people if college is worth the cost, they may be anchored to those prices even if their own kids would end up paying less.

They’re paying less, but they can also only afford to pay less.

I went to college with many people who were paying heavily reduced tuition rates and it was still a significant financial burden for them.

So even if the expected value of the degree is high in the long run, the downside risk is immediate financial ruin.

Correct.

It is also worth noting that the non-wealthy pay for higher education in two ways: first through tuition, and second through the taxes required to fund the very programs that provided their "discount."

If rich families had to take on the same financial burden as middle class and poor families, they would be paying millions in tuition.

Which, honestly, isn't that bad of an idea. Means-testing for everyone.

Some schools are $100k/year for room, board, and tuition, and yet those expensive schools are very much optional. It's a red herring to point them out.

There are still affordable schools. And staying in a dorm with expensive room and board remains optional at many institutions. Heck, some people still live with their parents.

The state school I went to is still just around $10k/year tuition, and I got a broad education that opened many doors for me. (I was in the humanities, but there are very good science programs there as well.)

Of course it's crazy to sink $400k into a degree for most people. And for many, many people, it is completely un-necessary! You can still get a relatively affordable 4 year degree.

It's crazy how an affordable degree still means $40k.

As far as the data goes, adjusted for inflation, tuition and fees have eased up in the last ~5 years [1]. But overall, college enrollment has been going down anyway [2], except for 2025, where it hints at a slight rebound.

So I'd say we have to consider the full set of drivers that can correlate: overall rising cost of living making it very expensive to be at a university full-time, general labor market sentiment which is mostly down since covid, interest rates and debt risk which are still high despite recent cuts, etc.

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/college-costs-working...

2. https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics

I do believe it really is this simple. I don't buy a $47 carton of eggs because it's just not worth it.

People do the math and think, "I don't want to spend $40,000 on this. I can get a decent job without spending that, and then I can buy a car, too."

Politically and economically, it's incredibly dangerous for universities to keep going down this path. When the common citizen finds low value in a particularly expensive-to-run government institution, they elect lawmakers who dispose of those institutions.

As a society, we need to highly value widely-obtainable post-secondary education, from the citizens to the President. Or we're doomed.

> only the wealthy pay full price for college

This is one of those things that may technically be correct, but only because colleges are giving out tiny $500/yr scholarships to practically everyone.

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