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<p>Wow, those were pretty indepth, scientific tours… what exactly did you do on these tours that gave you this insight? The professors I know, most of whom have taught at a variety of universities (as grad students, often in several tenure track jobs at different schools, as visiting professors on sabbatical), do not share your viewpoint.</p>
<p>Erin’s Dad, that’s interesting to know about Seth. I think he is vastly overrated. He often makes specious arguments and has written some really stupid stuff about the nonprofit sector.</p>
<p>Seth Godin’s argument comes down to a claim that most colleges don’t deliver a return on investment sufficient to justify either the costs or the marketing hype. Maybe he’s right.</p>
<p>Most of the top N schools popular on this forum are indeed selling essentially the same liberal arts product. That product was developed 100 and more years ago for a very small class of people who did not have to worry much about the ROI. The shared understanding was that liberal education had intrinsic value. Over the years the idea became popular that if the average person emulated the educational lifestyles of the rich and famous, then maybe some of the benefit would follow. Decades of growing demand for “knowledge workers” in diverse well-paying careers encouraged the perception of financial ROI from an education in the liberal arts and sciences. People looked at the communication and reasoning skills involved in performing white collar jobs; they drew a connecting line back to courses in English Literature or Elementary Logic. Even as the intrinsic value of that education was being watered down by extending it to tens of thousands of students who were in it, pretty much, only for the money (and who graduate with skills that employers now can buy in India for a fraction of the salary cost.)</p>
<p>The cost of a liberal arts & science education has been wildly inflated by growing populations of buyers who really can’t afford it, and who gradually discover they will never reap the expected rewards. For many it has become a $200K lottery ticket. The big pay-off goes to a small number of winners in a few lucrative fields. The rest get years of toil in boring cubicle jobs they stay in to pay house, car, and college debts. Unless their lives fly apart in divorces, bankruptcies, and substance abuse. In retrospect, a life of hard work without book-learning on a productive little family farm or shop (which is what most of us had a couple of generations ago) begins to look rather charming.</p>
<p>One of the problems with this kind of article is that it puts schools like Harvard as the proxy for higher education in general. But Harvard isn’t typical of most schools of higher education.</p>
<p>The average tuition for a public 4 year school is around $7,000.</p>
<p>And, I think we need to look at the following statement more closely: “Things like gap years, research internships and entrepreneurial or social ventures after high school are opening doors for students who are eager to discover the new.”</p>
<p>OK, fine. I don’t have a problem with this. But then, let’s see what these gap years, research internships and social ventures after high school actually cost the individual. Are they great deals? Or is there a significant cost involved? I have no idea, but before you complain about the cost of higher education and advocate in favor of a gap year or research internship, then find out actually if people are saving money on that gap year or research internship versus what they might actually be paying for their school. Sometimes, what is actually happening may surprise you.</p>
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<p>In my state, to get full-pay costs down to that level, one would have to commute from home to a directional state university located in a “fringe town” about 2 hours (in good traffic) from major urban centers. If the typical College Confidential poster were content with that, s/he would not bother coming to this board. The total COA at many state flagships exceeds $20K for in-state residential students.</p>
<p>tk, I think sklvr was talking about tuition, not cost of attendance. Of course, looking at tuition for any college is more or less meaningless, since room and board is usually about 1/4 or 1/2 of that amount (or more), and you have books and all sorts of assorted generic “fees”.</p>
<p>Yes, I realize that tuition is different than COA. But paying for a place to live and paying for food are something you are going to have to do regardless of whether or not you go to college. So I didn’t include room and board.</p>
<p>But I should have included other expenses such as books.</p>
<p>I’m going to a good public school next year and I’m going to have to come up with about $7000, half in work study and half in loans. </p>
<p>I’m going to work more after I finish my work study, so the loans I’ll pay off rather quickly, hopefully to build good credit.</p>
<p>I always imagined myself going to MIT or Caltech, but I found myself very happy about where I ended up.</p>
<p>I couldn’t believe that a public university was ranked top-5 in so many different fields of engineering, especially Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (My interest).</p>
<p>I would have to say that I would not be happy at anywhere else (except Caltech or MIT), I wouldn’t be able to stand the lack of rigor and resources of going to one of the dozen other in-state public universities, and I definitely wouldn’t want a LAC.</p>
<p>I think it is difficult to put a price on education, and I definitely wouldn’t go to a place that I didn’t like, or that wasn’t strong enough academically to save money.</p>
<p>^ If you are attending a top public university such as Berkeley for that price, as a residential student, it is only because other people are subsidizing your costs. You’re lucky. For more students to continue getting those benefits, there must be a critical mass of full-pay students and taxpayers willing and able to cover the cost, which far exceeds $7K. Residential full sticker at Berkeley exceeds $25K for in state students; it exceeds $44K for OOS. Even those numbers probably do not reflect true costs. </p>
<p>Realistically, the cheapest education my own kid could get from a 4-year public institution in my state would be about $9K/year, and then only if he lived at home and commuted 90 minutes each way to a directional state school. That does not include commuting costs. Full COA at the same school is about $21K. </p>
<p>One need not assume Harvard-like cost levels to perceive a problem here.</p>
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<p>Room and board at many colleges is often more expensive than it would be if the students were permitted to live in apartments, and the costs are often fixed and non-negotiable. </p>
<p>(I have no proof of this, but I think that this is at least part of the reason why many schools require students to live on campus for the first year.)</p>