Scores of graduates from colleges which don’t have steak houses or concierge services in dorms have managed fine in the business world…including dining with international clients so they “don’t look like an @##” during business functions to use your own words.
I myself have had no issues dining with senior corporate execs or notables here in the US or abroad or in fine dining establishments.
Heck, I’ve even received repeated invites despite not growing up in an upper-middle-class household, growing up in a crime-ridden former working-class NYC neighborhood, and attending an LAC where formal dining etiquette tended to be looked upon with deep contempt by most of the upper/upper-middle class student body because it’s “too bourgeois/establishment”. .
As an aside, if a student/anyone needs 4 years, especially in undergrad to learn the rudiments of dining etiquette in business/fine dining settings, s/he has far more serious issues to worry about…
The original question was “Anyone else feel like it’s time to tell expensive colleges “ENOUGH!””
What I am reading in this thread is that a lot of us have told the expensive schools exactly that (although I personally would use a stronger wording than “enough”), and have chosen academically very good options that are more reasonably priced.
@cobrat…I don’t disagree that the “necessity” of a steakhouse is dubious, but when you look at the overall mission statement of HPU it is simply another experiential learning experiment that also is a selling point/perk. Kudos to them for killing two birds with one stone. They are also a “Steinway” campus (but no music majors) maybe they shouldn’t be using Steinways? Afterall Kawai plays just as well, especially for those average kids, right? There are hundreds of other college/universities that taut their specialty dining options, why does everyone single out HPU like it is an anomaly?
Clamoring for a discount is interesting to me. There are some people who would prefer to buy a car with a $25,000 sticker price if they get it for $23,000 over the same car with a sticker price of $22,000 at sticker price because with the former, they got a “deal.”
Our S knows that our budget is a max of $10k/year. I made a list of schools we could afford, and they’re all academic & financial safeties combined. We said he could research any school he wanted to in addition to our list, and he could apply there, but we held financial veto power if the aid came in and we couldn’t swing it.
We toured four schools from the affordable list. He liked two, and said the third would be fine if the price between all three was the same, but it wasn’t. He said the third school wasn’t worth the roughly $8,000/year difference.
So I guess we said “Enough,” too, and our S decided there wasn’t enough ROI on his effort to investigate schools, especially expensive schools, where there was a slim to none chance of being affordable even if he got in.
Yes, there’s a part of me that wishes he could go to Pomona, Rice, Carleton or Tulane if he wanted to, but frankly we feel incredibly blessed that he’ll be at a good school that he’s perfectly happy with because he picked it himself.
There’s another thread on CC about how many colleges are overenrolled this year. There doesn’t appear to be any shortage of demand for schools.charging > 70K per year. In my opinion, I don’t see demand slowing down for schools until the prices get much higher ( > 125K per year or 500K for 4 years)
Most of the private schools near the top have seen no drop off in demand. NYU, BU, & USC all received record number of applicants this year. Many other schools are over-enrolled as documented by another thread on CC. Consequently, there are still plenty of parents willing to pay full sticker price at private colleges near the top. This is not inconsistent with colleges outside the top tiers having to discount to attract students.
^ Agreed but what are they paying for? In many cases not the quality of education. As for the institutions themselves quality of intake or revenue generation.
Because we don't want to tax the rich to pay for free college education for all as they do in many countries
Most people don't understand basic economics. Harvards operating expenses for 2015 were 4.463 billion. Divided by approximately 20k students that is 250k per student per year. Students contribute approximately 20 per cent of the total costs. Salaries and wages and employee benefits account for about 125k per student per year alone.
It’s actually closer to $225,000 per student but isn’t on point. I’m asking about the middle tier schools. LMU for example indicates tuition FULLY covers all operating expenses. That’s before considering investments, donations, etc. This non-profit is making money ($1.25 billion in vs. $360 million out.) That’s cheating by me a little since it also includes property valuation increases, but I couldn’t tease those out. Either way, they are at least doing 1/2 again the tuition in additional income.
@rwmannesq, your LMU figures don’t take into account financial aid. IOW, LMU could cover all their costs with tuition but only if they didn’t offer any scholarships. Take their current level of scholarships into account and it leaves them with around an 80 million dollar deficit to make up through investments, donations, grants, and auxiliary enterprise revenue. In their last financial statement they report an increase in assets of 17 mill, which on a base of 924 mill. (a 1.8% increase in net assets) barely keeps up with inflation.
@collegefan101: Doesn’t have to be.
At even the most expensive publics, in-state tuition barely tops $20K/year, if that. Typical in-state tuition is closer to $10K/year or lower.
At a competitive HS, many teachers question why I picked CSU Sacramento. --No, you can go to better schools and that financial aid exists – don’t go there! And my parents did limit where I could go w/out loans and I complied: Sac State does have a good power engineering program and it only would cost $7k a year for three years. Only. And some students are getting more financial aid than it costs living at home and pocketing the rest. And another loophole while I’m at it–I’m getting grad school for $700 a semester because I made $0 in 2015 and am an “independent” now.
And the classes are impacted but that’s not a problem if you decide to take your 15 AP tests to a low tier school and get advanced standing. And the low tier didn’t stop me from landing an engineering job 4 months after graduation. Something my teachers have talked about after the fact / knowing by Facebook friendship.
I’m not against my children underplaying their ability and picking the low tier because an accredited degree and strong abilities / experience / traits will land you a job anyways. But perhaps I’m going to be able to afford the UC when the time comes and be nice to them as my parents were nice enough to pay for my college (that unknowingly could’ve paid off by myself already because it’s that cheap).
Edit: @ above Generation Z making last year’s tuition + fees many times over
@PurpleTitan what state are you in? TAMU, in my home state is $27k (tuition, room&board). SFA, not a state flagship is still $20k. UVA instate is $30k/Christopher Newport is $23k. Ohio State in state is $23k/Ohio U is the same. UCLA in state is $28k/UC - Santa Cruz is the same. Yes I am including room and board because the majority of the population does not live within daily commute distance to a state university. (Maybe to a community college).
And yes @collegefan101 those are all more than I made at my first “real” job as a paralegal.
And actually, a big chunk of the US population (probably the majority) actually does live close enough to commute to a public considering that the vast majority of the country’s population lives in an urban/suburban area these days and I’m having trouble thinking of any decent-sized metro area that doesn’t have at least one public (usually with the city’s name in it’s name like UIC, UH, UAB, UNCC, UTSA, UMSL, UCincy, etc.)
Finally, you shouldn’t compare the current generation’s tuition with your first job’s salary (unless you adjust by inflation).
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