<p>Steve-
NC has several state universities where the COA is any where from $10K -$12K depending on the type of dorm (single vs. double) and meal plan (unlimited vs. 10 meals). If you choose off-campus housing then the COA can be substantially less. Tuition is in the $4000 per year range so there is alot of flexiblilty of the room and board. </p>
<p>Many of the large campuses, and the flagships are in major metropolitan areas so there are many who commute bringing the costs down even further. The CC is $50 per unit with many courses transfering to the 16 campuses of the 4-year univeristies and yes, this does include UNC Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>UNC’s med school tuition for this year is $16,000 and ECU’s is approx $10-11K for the year.</p>
<p>So NC is trying to keep college costs affordable while keeping the COL lower than CA or the northeast.</p>
<p>Why I uprooted my 5 kiddos and I and moved 3000+ miles 8 years ago.</p>
<p>Has made all the difference in the world to us. Undergraduate savings were incredible but the med school/professional school tuition is truly a gift. Worth all those months and the journey of the move and the kids’ transfers while in high school.</p>
<p>I knew CA schools would be out of our reach financially even with aid and decided to do something about it.</p>
<p>Steve, I’m guessing you didn’t get hit in late 2008 and/or haven’t seen clients dwindle, or had a company move your sort of jobs to another state. Or country. Or an impossible commute away. Or salary freezes, followed by much smaller annual increases. And all the other things that happened in the past 20 years. I was in a tech field most of my career and there are no guarantees there, either. Initially, yes, merit took one far- then the business-heads made their own decisions. There is no straight line to project wealth growth, anymore.</p>
<p>College costs, for us, are a much higher % of present income than they were when I attended. It’s not that my family income was so high, it’s that college costs were a smaller %. Yours was roughly 37%. If you take into account that the top 20% of family income today, per the Census, starts at roughly 100k, coa for your college would have to be about $37,000. Some earn more, some don’t. If your dad’s job wuld have ripened to 150k…well, for many folks, it didn’t. Look at engineer salaries 25 years ago, versus starting salaries today- not a jump from 40k to 150k. Only a portion of those make the huge bucks.</p>
<p>College degree is no more valuable today than a HS diploma was in 1987.</p>
<p>HS is free, college is not. </p>
<p>Our kids are paying for jobs at the bare minimum of 40K we just walked into.</p>
<p>Don’t kid yourselves.</p>
<p>Starting salary entry level jobs today are no more profitable than what we had sans the student debt/parent debt. That is if one can get a job.</p>
<p>NYC police officer requires college degree(nothing wrong with educated police force) just making a point these jobs never required college degrees, now one has to pay to enter.</p>
<p>lookingforward–those percentages only mean something if you are comparing apples to apples though. If you are comparing a state school in the 70’s to a private school today, or tuition only in the 70’s to COA if 2012, it’s meaningless. Again, I posted links to several studies that show that the percent of income on average has remained constant since the 70’s, accounting for inflation and rising costs of colleges–with incomes of families with a bachelor degree or higher.</p>
<p>There have been ups and downs in the market all along and yes, we got hit, hard in 2008 as well as in early 2000’s, etc., etc. </p>
<p>What IS different is the attitude that you NEED to go to a 60K college to get a good education so people are taking out 100K+ in loans to do that. That isn’t the fault of the college, it’s the student’s fault and if they find they can’t afford their loans, they should have thought of that BEFORE the went to that school.</p>
<p>Steve I didn’t mean to sound edgy. But, I can compare my annual $700 state fees (UC ) for grad school to the 12k today. Even then, that was small change. Granted, CA was an exceptional situation, back then. I compare my own coa to my kids’, all LACs. Not the same college.</p>
<p>My point is that sticker price today is huge. Incomes have not necessarily risen in pace. Your CNN link says that (I don’t see where you get the 8.3%.) And, I don’t see it in the CB link- maybe you can help me out here.</p>
<p>I agree kids shouldn’t go into huge debt. A savvy loook for good finaid blunts the pain, for many. And, there are many cases where “one size fits all” and kids can go wherever offers them the best deal. (That’s not a slam, it’s based on the fact that you can find good, dedicated profs well beyond the “top x” colleges.") But, I don’t think there are guarantees our new grads will walk into higher paying jobs, just for having the degree.</p>
<p>There are some states that still have some very low tuition/COA rates. These state schools aren’t often mentioned on CC, so we don’t hear much about them. There may even be a thread about them. Some don’t have much of an upcharge for OOS either. </p>
<p>What’s equally surprising is that some of these schools have very low R&B costs as well. While other schools are charging $10k-15k+ for R&B, some of these schools are charging around $5k…lol…but who knows, the dorms may be like dungeons. </p>
<p>As for the increases in the costs at UCs…I don’t like that the system is designed to overcharge those earning more than 80k to subsidize those earning less. Those who are earning $85k or even $100k really cannot afford to be subsidizing others. </p>
<p>I was talking to one of my sibs this week. He has a senior at SLO and a soph at UCLA. They receive no aid. His 3rd child will be applying soon. My bro is sick of paying out so much money. He’s to the point where the 3rd and 4th child will likely start at a CC, do TAG, just to save some money. </p>
<p>He said that many of his colleagues’ kids are now doing that to cut the cost of a UC education from $120k+ down to about $70k…and to lessen the amounts that they are being forced to subsidize others. </p>
<p>If this trend continues, then the CCs in Calif (which are quite good) will be crawling with strong upper-middle class students whose parents are just trying to find a way to cut costs.</p>
<p>One huge impact of the increased cost is the inability of students to pay for college by themselves, through part-time or summer work. Earlier this year, a congresswoman from NC made a disparaging remark about aid programs for college, saying that she worked her way through school. People looked up her school and what it charged when she went. It was a few hundred dollars, which meant she could work a basic job of nearly any sort and pay for school. That can’t happen now. </p>
<p>I went to what was then an expensive school and my favorite comparison is the annual cost wouldn’t buy a year of preschool now. I also went to an expensive high school - Mitt Romney’s, btw, though he’s older - and now the cost of that for a year is more than what our house cost then. </p>
<p>BTW, a new paper examines the relationship between state funding cuts and tuition increases. No surprise: tuition goes up as public funding goes down. The goal of the paper was to examine whether decreased public funding or increased federal aid is driving tuition hikes. As to the latter, some people are claiming that availability of aid, from Perkins to loan guarantees, pushes up college costs. (Others say that is a feeble excuse to justify cutting aid to education, but I’m not getting into that.) The paper looks across the board, from states that have increased funding - notably ND and TX - to the ones that have cut it the most. Biggest relationship is that funding cuts generate tuition increases. Yes, that’s kind of a “well, duh” finding but the idea has been challenged, as noted above.</p>
<p>It’s silly for any older person to say, “I worked my way thru college, so others can, too” because costs have changed so much. </p>
<p>Yes, if a student can work, live at home, and commute to a good low-cost public, it would be possible to graduate in 4-5 years. A student loan and some earnings could cover the costs. </p>
<p>But for those living in states with high cost public tuition (Ill, Mich, PA, etc), the tuition is so high that a student would likely have to take 6+ years to work their way thru college.</p>
<p>I looked up my alma mater and here were the numbers:
1987-88 COA- $3279
2011-12 COA- $8684
165% increase!</p>
<p>Keep in mind, this says they have converted everything to 2011 dollars. My actual tuition was about $1300/year and I had a tuition scholarship for up to $1200/year. </p>
<p>Here’s the real kicker. I make almost the same amount of money right now that my dad made in 1987. We both had college degrees, white collar professional jobs. So, I make what he made 25 years ago, but the cost of everything has skyrocketed, especially college. When they said my generation would be the first that would not do better than their parents, I scoffed. There it is though, in black & white.</p>
<p>a sibling attended a CSU in the 70’s and the per semester cost was about $50…now it’s about $3k a semester. [url=<a href=“http://www.buylegitgear.com%5D:(%5B/url”>http://www.buylegitgear.com]:([/url</a>]</p>
<p>I distinctly remembered my experience because I paid all the bills (feasible back then with work, a small scholarship, and a monthly stipend from parents.) In my four years, 1983-1987, at a Big 10 engineering school, in-state tuition doubled from 800 dollars a year to 800 dollars a semester. I was able to get a summer job at a factory and earn about $4500 during the my first summer and then stayed on campus all of the other summers, although I did work 10 - 20 hours a week on campus. </p>
<p>Dave_N–not true–it’s very possible for a kid to “work” their way through college with scholarships today. Our D is looking at a net cost at one school of $2000, without loans, because of scholarships. She can EASILY earn that in a summer. Most of the schools she is considering are coming in between $6,000-10,000 without loans and with the same “stipend” from her parents, will easily be able to earn her portion of the bill in the summer or maybe with a very part time job on campus. We are full pay so this is strictly scholarship money.</p>
<p>Our oldest earned about $5000 in the summers working for an amusement park. That not only paid his portion of what was left of his schooling costs after his scholarships but it also was enough for spending money throughout the year. He did have a very part time job on campus taking tickets at events and earned about $700 through the year doing that. He still had money in the bank when he came home each summer. We slipped him a $20 here and there when he came home for visits but paid nothing out of pocket for his schooling. We are paying off his student loan for him, all $2500 of it, because we didn’t need to pay for him during his schooling.</p>
<p>I think it’s a sketchy analysis, and one that certainly fails to explain the 30-year trend of tuition hikes exceeding inflation.</p>
<p>“Before 2007, changes in public institution tuition do not appear to vary closely with public funding…However, after 2007, the group of states with the most funding cuts (Group 1) also has the highest growth in tuition in each year, with an average annual growth rate of 3.4 percent in tuition.”</p>
<p>“it’s very possible for a kid to “work” their way through college with scholarships today. Our D is looking at a net cost at one school of $2000, without loans, because of scholarships. She can EASILY earn that in a summer.” - SteveMA</p>
<p>This argument is silly. It may be possible, but unlikely. No body is saying this never happens. But most students don’t get a COA of $2,000 or less, because most student don’t get THAT much in scholarships. I would replace “very possible” with “very unlikely.” </p>
<p>It is very unlikely for a kid to “work” their way through college with just scholarships today.
Much better. </p>
<p>It used to be much more possible for kids to work their way through college 25, or even 15, years ago.</p>
<p>I graduated in '75 from a pvt. college. No scholarships or aid of any kind so my parents paid the full COA. Total four year cost including tuition, fees and R&B totaled $15,500. </p>
<p>Today, at the same college, the 4 year cost is $170,000. Eleven times the price!</p>
<p>Cornell my freshman year (77-78) cost $6700 ($4400 tuition and $2300 r&b) … a student could pay for school themselves (with federal student loans … at that time a student could pay to attend any school in the country if they were willing to work during school and breaks and take out loans.</p>
<p>Today Cornell is $56,000+. There are some in-state schools at which a student could pay their way and some merit scholarship scenarios where a student could pay their own way … however, the options are nowhere in the same ball park as when I was in school.</p>
<p>Whatdidyou=aren’t you the one that told me that the instate schools were $8000 where you live? Having a net cost of $2000 after a scholarship and some help from your parents would be VERY easy to do with that starting price. </p>
<p>People. you are talking 30+ years of rising costs. I remember in the early 70’s being able to buy 2 full sized candy bars and a pack of Wrigley’s gum for a quarter. Now that would be at LEAST $2.80. A loaf of bread was also a quarter-now it’s about $2.50 on sale. A gallon of milk was about $.65. We used to be able to take our family of 5 to McDonalds for dinner and the total bill was under $5, now you can’t get one meal for under $5. Costs have gone up for everything. Heck, gas was $.36/gallon and now it’s $4.00. The point is, if you look at the studies comparing apples to apples, the costs have risen proportionality to salaries over the past 30 years. Apples to apples is the same school with the same job in the same towns, not some state school back in the early 70’s compared to a private school charging 60K today or the “median income” today compared to 30 years ago because you haven’t factored in the LARGE number of low paying jobs that have been added to our country in the past 10 years. If you compare median salary of a person with a bachelors degree and 20 years of experience in the 70’s to that same job/experience today, the proportion of income is identical.</p>
<p>Back when I was in college we heard this exact same argument-college costs are out of hand, if it keeps going like this college is going to cost 50,000 when our kids are in school, blah, blah, blah. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Compare the costs from 1975 to 1985 and you will see the same jump as you see from 1985-1995 or 1995-2005, etc.</p>
<p>I don’t see how we can begin to talk about same job in same city, a straight line of income increases, all along. And, the idea there may have been college cost jumps, all along, doesn’t prove salaries have kept pace. Isn’t that the point of your first link?</p>
<p>Apples to apples, it seems to me, isn’t anyone’s discount with good financial or merit aid - we’d have to compare invariables. Sticker price.</p>
<p>Per the Census info for 2009 (first batch of figures from the 2010 survey,) the 80th percentile income caps at about 100k. In 1990, that category capped at about 87k. That’s in 2009 constant/adjusted dollars, a 20% increase. (Which, yes, makes it seem like lowballing the actual number differences.) But, mathmom’s link (post 1,) is also adjusted dollars, so:</p>
<p>In roughly the same period, Harvard tuition shows a jump from 26.4 - 39.9k or 51%. If you want random schools from another tier, how about, oh, say, Carleton- 27.8 to 43k (54%.) Rice: 13.6 to 35.5 (161%.) Truman State: 3.6 to 7k, in-state (96%.)</p>
<p>I’m not feelin’ the love. If a family earns less than 100k, it’s even harder.</p>