Hacker News Reader

65% increase seems big but this also means only 13% more adult americans are degree holders which seems remarkably paltry to me after almost 40 years of "thou shall go to college" being preached to highschoolers.

View on HN

Only about half of Americans who go to college finish their degree. The saddest part of the college debt crisis are the kids with debt and no degree to pay it off.

College got very expensive. If it hadn’t I’m sure we’d see higher numbers.

I think that depends on if you go out of state or in state. My alma mater has frozen in state tuition for at least 10 years now, maybe longer. Plenty of flagship in state schools are only around 12k-15k a year. In a world where you can now crack 15 an hour unskilled now while living with the parents over the summer you can probably cover a lot of that almost like it was in ye olden times.

Seems like things have been relatively flat for the last decade, but costs are roughly double what they were 30 years ago.

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/20/nx-s1-5600854/college-costs-h...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com