<p>So, I wasn’t totally honest with my response to your question. 'cause I do have an answer to “is a LAC worth $200k.” First of all, if you have an infinite (or very large) pot of money whereby you can purchase other things and not be stressed by $200k, why sure! The education is great, and that;s what it costs.</p>
<p>But, and this only counts if you have the right student: would you get the best education bang for the buck by spending $200k for a LAC, versus $80k on a state honors college AND agree to spend $120k on other educational ventures for the same student? Not even close. The LAC isn’t worth it. For the extra $120k, the student could study painting for an additional two years in Italy and make three round-the-world trips; work for five years - for FREE - in public health in Africa, pay for a year-and-a-half of medical school or two years of law school, or undertake hundreds of other educational ventures for a $120k, and STILL get a fine education at the state honors college.</p>
<p>So, to change my answer, if you had $200k to spend on your student;s education, and were committed to spending it, and didn;t have any extra after that, the LAC definitely is NOT worth $200k.</p>
<p>pizzagirl i’d feel comfortable taking mini’s #101 and just saying “any school”. i totally agree with that statement…our path allowed our son to work at a lab in another state this summer, take extra courses, he will probably go to the galapagos islands next may, possibly antartica the following year and will have money for grad school. He’s going to concerts without worrying about cost, and is fully supporting the stock price of starbucks with his daily fix. :)</p>
<p>For me name recognition means what you could do with it after college, may it be graduate school or a job. In this economy, where you went school does help with getting that first job. It could be how proactive a school’s career center is and how strong alumni network is. I see a lot of kids from our state school who are still looking for a job, and most of D1’s friends from college are launched now. </p>
<p>In my view, Williams and other top LAC are just as credible as many top Unis.</p>
<p>We don’t have unlimited money (why-not-money), for us to spend 200k+ on our kids’ education is an investment. I don’t think D1 could have gotten her job if she had gone to a lower tier school because those firms just didn’t recruit there. In D1’s case, her degree will have other returns later on. For us, it was money well spend.</p>
<p>We would be eligible for some aid at private LAC’s or Uni’s but we don’t feel that we can comfortably meet our EFC nor do we want to even try. So we are looking only at state schools with a COA in the $20,000 range (after merit aid). The upside is that this means we wil be able to:</p>
<p>Send S on a study abroad.
Send S to a field school.
Put money aside for future downpayment help for car and house.
Help with grad school expenses since we will be debt free.</p>
<p>This does limit the school choices but our son is the type of person that will bloom where he is planted. YMMV.</p>
<p>"But mini, I don’t see how your above paragraph changes if you substitute “top uni” for “top LAC.” </p>
<p>No difference. The studies indicate there is NO income advantage from attending top uni (HYPSM) that exists outside of conditions (family money, connections, etc.) that existed in any case, except for very low income students.</p>
<p>Where I live, HYP have NO networking advantages, (unlike BYU), because the students never come back, and having gone to one on a job application will get you an extra 30 seconds (I have actually sat on the hiring committees where that is the case), and then it will be “so what can you do for me in the future”.</p>
<p>It may help with graduate school admissions, BUT if one spent the extra $120k (or a good chunk of it) on other educational opportunities, in addition to the state honors college, one might come out well ahead of the HYP grade. Who would you take for medical school - the HYP/AWS grad, middle of the pack, or the state honors grad, top of the pack, who spent three years doing public health work in Rwanda? For me, that’s a no-brainer. (and that’s putting aside the higher likelihood of “weed-out” at the top unis/lacs.)</p>
<p>I would visit and apply if your DD likes them. For my Williams D, she badly wanted a LAC but we had an acceptable financial back-up. It ended up that aid to Williams was enough to allow her to enroll. Before the financial aid award, I honestly thought her attending such a school was a stretch. Cast a wide net.</p>
<p>U of Phoenix has multiple campuses around the country and an extensive on-line program. It is a for profit school owned by The Apollo Group. It has an open enrollment (ie 100% “acceptance” rate) and about 225,000 combined undergrad and grad students. Mini is pulling your leg.</p>
<p>That said, Tulane had 43,834 applications for an incoming class of about 1500 in 2010, the highest of any private school in the country. The application numbers dropped last year when an additional essay was added to the application, but the number was still high.</p>
<p>Why am I pulling anyone’s leg? University of Phoenix has a TON of satisfied customers. Their degrees are recognized, and have played a significant role in many students increasing their career opportunities (more difference, perhaps, than for the gifted student choosing between HYP/AWS and the state honors college.) And at some point, with more applications and the law of diminishing returns, colleges that end up with more applications (except for Harvard) actually become LESS selective, that is, less likely to enroll the students they really want, because of multiple competing applications.</p>
<p>Totally disagree, mini. They are a bunch of sleazeballs who have been under investigation for questionable business practices for several years. They solicit “students”, accept them, get them to take out giant student loans which are paid to the school (I believe they particularly preyed on the military vets with school benefits, IIRC) and the dropout rate is extremely high, leving these students with loans they cant pay off. Scum.
[Apollo</a> Group SEC Investigation](<a href=“Bearishnews.com”>Bearishnews.com)</p>
<p>I know a dozen nurses, nurse practitioners, and social workers with degrees from UPhoenix who have gone on to fine careers, and found new opportunities as a result of their degrees. Now it is true they couldn’t have gotten into the South Puget Sound Community College nursing program.</p>
<p>But then neither could about 90% of Harvard graduates.</p>
<p>One could argue, given what we now know about the income trajectory of prestige school students being mostly the result of family connections/income, and little to do with the education offered, the prestige schools have made an artform of deceiving parents into going into hock.</p>
<p>And I know a school principal who had to fire every teacher with an online degree because htey were woefully indaequately trained. There is no "selectivity. They accept anyone whose money is green or who can sign their name to a loan application.</p>
<p>Some people who have degrees from traditional institutions soemtimes take online courses for continuing education or to get an advanced degree. They might be the handful of students who do well, because then have a core educational background from elsewehere.</p>
<p>If you have a dislike of large corporations who abuse the common man (as I believe you’ve suggested in the past) add The Appollo group to your list. They are slimy.</p>
<p>Good for the handful of people who have gotten a diploma form this schummy organization and gone on to succeed intehir fields. They are in the significant, SIGNIFICANT minority.</p>
<p>But they’ll spend their lives healing and helping others, not getting rich packaging worthless mortgages into derivatives and peddling them to other Ivy League grads. Who would want to waste their lives like that?</p>
<p>I have talked with people who have taught MBA courses for University of Phoenix. They (and I) are impressed with the quality of the support they receive from the central organization, and the structure of their courses. All of them started doing it for the money, of course, but all of them stayed because they felt they were really teaching students who were engaged in learning.</p>
<p>But I find the hype surrounding many of the prestige institutions, run like private corporations, complete with the perks, outright lies about “need-blind admissions”, subsidies for millionaires’ kids being far larger than the so-called “financial aid budgets” (which isn’t really financial aid at all, just a tuition discount), robbing local municipalities of tax dollars, and robbing the federal government of Pell grants (raising tuition on low-income students every time Pell Grant amounts go up), equally slimey.</p>
<p>I think there is a huge difference between what may be avaialble for an advanced degree to students who had solid undergrad training from elsewhere. Big difference.</p>
<p>Re: name recognition only…U of Phoenix wins. They have billboards in almost every state. The advertise extensively…both online and in print media. I don’t know a soul who hasn’t “heard” of them.</p>
<p>There slimy and then theres slimy. Agree that the masive mailings from the traditional Us and the push to get their application numbers up is smarmy, but their graduation and retention rates are higher than 4 and 28%. And some of the online professional degrees are not accredited and therefor a person getting a degree cant get licensed in their state. Or an accredited Masters program may be less likely to accept an undergarad from an online program, sop the person with the undergrad social work degree may have a tough time getting into an accredited MSW prrgram in order to be licensed.</p>