<p>There is so much diversity of thought on this one, and candidly–thats just fine. Its about culture, upbringing, values, your socieo-economic status, the individual wants/needs/desires/abilities of your child, and healthy dose of luck too. My son turned down a full ride scholarship at UNC to attend Pomona–and that full ride is on Mom. I was OK with that decision, as it was the right decision for him too. Felt it in my bones. Likely if I were Smart Money and did an ROI analysis, I’d be on the financial “don’ts” page. And here’s the deal; I DONT CARE. Thats not the issue for us. Others will make a very different decision on very different factors than we did. We all have are own set of mores and circumstances. And thats OK. And by the way–that’s one of the things that I really learned from 4 years of college…albeit a small state school, haha</p>
<p>ProudMom, others will make a very different decision than you did (full ride on mom at an expensive private college) because that choice is not remotely in their feasible set. There is a whole 'nother world out here. </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>We made a similar decision 5 years ago for D1 - a full tuition at Trinity vs full pay at Cornell. D1 thought Trinity was too small, even though it had a good econ department, and good alumni connection in finance. We agreed that Cornell was a better size, we thought the breath of education she would get at Cornell was better, and Cornell’s name recognition was better overseas. Yes, in our case we did consider Return, but that Return wasn’t entirely monetary.</p>
<p>“It [college]also includes fostering a life of the mind, helping one start to make sense of the world, making one ethically aware, and creating the ability to relate to, work with, and empathize with many different kinds of people.”</p>
<p>I would just add one doesn’t have to go to an expensive college (or college at all) to do these things. All of the above can happen at a community college, a library, a job, or while traveling or volunteering.</p>
<p>it is not all that logical sometimes.
if it is late windfall scholarships or summer admit lifted from WL,
“now or never!!” mindset sets in and clouds otherwise better economical judgment.
you could never go both ways at the same time to compare.
now we have to convince that we made the right choice…</p>
<p>Yes, tptshorty, but not as intensely or in as short a span of time as while getting a broad-based education at a good college. And I would submit that for the huge majority of people who do not have such an opportunity, or who have it but never take advantage of it, it never happens at all. </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
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gotta love sarcasm and inconsistency.</p>
<p>@annasdad … I absolutely agree. The reality is such that there are so many different factors go into these decisions, and we all have to make the best ones we can with the fact pattern in front of us. </p>
<p>And the reality is also that two different familes with the exact same fact pattern may well make very different decisions based on what their values, mores, and priorities are. Its all good. </p>
<p>My point in contributing on this post is simply that SmartMoneys concept and methodology of ROI on college is simply that–Smart Moneys. Not mine, yours or anyone elses. </p>
<p>We all have our own.</p>
<p>Would someone who has figured out what Smart Money was doing respond to my earlier question?</p>
<p>Personally, I am on the intangible values side of this argument, but I think it’s interesting to look at ROI-type analyses. Intangible values are great, but it’s also great to know what you are paying for them, and make a decision.</p>
<p>The big, obvious problem with projects like this is that you can’t really compare Georgia Tech with Sarah Lawrence because the students are totally different people going totally different directions, so you wind up with a study concluding that oranges are juicier than apples or apples are harder than oranges. Or, worse than that, that they are more similar than you thought – perhaps because the SLC kids start out richer, better connected, and in a market with higher pay because of much higher living costs. So on a comparable-student basis GT would beat SLC by even more, if there were any comparable-students.</p>
<p>Then you have the problem with graduate school. Many liberal arts graduates wind up with post-baccalaureate degrees. How do you factor that into the analysis? If you only compare BA to BA or BS to BS, you are getting a highly distorted sample of what kinds of careers graduates of X University have. </p>
<p>To do this really well, you would have to break things down by major or area of study, and do some controls for SES and other factors. It would be really, really interesting, for example, to see a comparison of music theater programs at NYU, Michigan, and SW Missouri. Or MIT vs. Georgia Tech vs. East Podunk State in engineering.</p>
<p>But before you even get to any of those massive problems, what Smart Money put on the page doesn’t make any sense at all to me. I don’t know what the heck they were doing. Are they saying that the opportunity to invest a nickel and earn a penny, with four years of effort, is more valuable than the opportunity to buy a $1 million AAA-rated bond at 5%? Because, um, it isn’t.</p>
<p>And that is why ROI has little meaning. Frankly the biggest ROI for me was sending the first and now the second away as not yet fully formed adults and having them “return” out the other end more mature, grateful, thoughtful and aware of themselves and the world around them. Whether that occurs at the nearby state U or 1,000 miles only has bearing on my budget tolerances which have little to do with my newly hatched adults whose success or failure is now on their shoulders.</p>
<p>For any 2 combinations of student financial need going in, career path going out, major, qualifications, and probably some other big factors I’m overlooking, the ROI for any two schools will be different. Perhaps wildly different.</p>
<p>This study does not account for the effects of financial aid. The salary information comes from payscale.com, so it excludes anyone with a graduate degree. So, what happens to the multimillionaire who earned a law degree after going to Oberlin on a full scholarship? That ROI does not even go into the averages. I bet a lot more #47 Oberlin grads than #1 GIT grads get JDs, MDs, and PhDs.</p>
<p>I have no trouble believing that some hypothetical average, full-pay Georgia Tech alumnus with a random major and no graduate degree gets a better financial ROI than a hypothetical average, full-pay Sarah Lawrence College alumnus with a random major and no graduate degree. Change any one or more of those qualifiers, and all bets are off. And that’s even if you do accept the premise that financial ROI is a good basis for comparing colleges.</p>
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<p>I think ‘teaching ethics’ should be part of the overall college education. The increased corruption in the world is the outcome of most colleges unable to impart any ethical values into the students.</p>
<p>In my view a complete education has the following components
- Language (Literature as well as Communication with emphasis on writing and public speaking)
- Economics
- Finance
- Ethics and Society
- Subject of Interest (In depth)</p>
<p>I think the value of institute is not just the ROI but the overall personality development. I would prefer a less successful but socially aware child than a very successful ******bag.</p>
<p>Still the problem of this study is their deliberate attempt to exclude MIT and Caltech otherwise the following study from payscale which was used in the above study says differently</p>
<p>[Guess</a> What? Your MIT Education Was Worth It?Now with Statistical Proof! Slice of MIT by the Alumni Association](<a href=“http://alum.mit.edu/pages/sliceofmit/2010/07/16/mit-roi/]Guess”>http://alum.mit.edu/pages/sliceofmit/2010/07/16/mit-roi/)</p>
<p>Just gotta say I learned a lot more about the world by seeing it firsthand than by learning about it in the college classroom. The few months I spent traveling in Indonesia (independently, not study abroad) taught me far more about the Indonesian language, culture, people, and history than the equivalent time (a semester) in the classroom. Personality development seems to come with growing up- I’m not sure it matters that much whether one spends those years in a state school, a private school or the school of hard knocks. Spending over $250,000 to have a college/university help your child mature is one way to do it, but not the only way. As far as ethics go, it seems to me one learns ethics from example, not from lectures. Is your father ethical? Does he cheat on his taxes/your mother? Is your doctor/lawyer/broker/politician/real estate agent ethical? The people you deal with? I don’t think universities can teach ethics except through example, but those examples are found far and wide in the community.</p>
<p>This thread is so depressing. There is so much focus on income. The focus should be on passion, yet no one talks about it.</p>
<p>Give it a rest, IndianParent. It was funny the first couple of times.</p>
<p>tptshorty:
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<p>But then you are left with knowledge of only Indonesian culture. You might have learned about many other cultures along with Indonesia. </p>
<p>Classroom can provide a much broader learning and can critically discuss the pros and cons of different cultures which might be of more value.</p>
<p>Experiencing culture while being part of it might be better but for learning all cultures in the world would take a life time. While you can learn a lot in the classroom in a short amount of time.</p>
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<p>Certainly price is no way to judge about the quality of the education as there are many $200K institutes that are not even worth the paper their degrees are printed on but the same goes for the public universities too.</p>
<p>A quality education is reflected in the people personality that come out of the institutes. If a large % of the students coming out of an institute help develop the society, contribute towards making it a better place, then you can say the education is worth every penny. It can be $0 or $250K.</p>
<p>[The</a> Contributions of Institutions Such As MIT to a Knowledge-Based Economy](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/234/reif.html]The”>The Contributions of Institutions Such As MIT to a Knowledge-Based Economy)</p>
<p>The contribution of MIT as an institute and it’s students to the society is of interest to me. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/18/mit-massachusetts-150-years-genius[/url]”>http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/18/mit-massachusetts-150-years-genius</a></p>
<p>The cost is secondary if you can afford it.</p>
<p>Here is an awesome article on the ROI of colleges and a new look on how to make choices. </p>
<p>[10</a> Reasons to Skip the Expensive Colleges on Shine](<a href=“http://shine.yahoo.com/event/backtoschool/10-reasons-to-skip-the-expensive-colleges-2518407/]10”>http://shine.yahoo.com/event/backtoschool/10-reasons-to-skip-the-expensive-colleges-2518407/)</p>
<p>It totally supports our decision to send our son to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, one of the highest ROI’s for university studies in the nation. College is essential for certain majors like engineering (my kid), pre-med, future law school aspirants, etc. I am a businessman with an MBA from a top international school and I’ll be honest, some of my most successful colleagues are either college dropouts or never went to college. I may have had an edge on them at the beginning, but there is one guy in particular that has far more knowledge in our field than I’ll ever hope to have and he dropped out of Berkeley to pursue business. I almost think that for business we should bring back the apprenticeship tradition.</p>
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<p>Give it a rest, JHS. Cyber bullying doesn’t work on me.</p>
<p>OsakaDad: I certainly concur the thought in the article.
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<p>I’m all for graduating college without any debt. The parent and student should try to choose the best college that will allow the student to come out without debt.</p>
<p>It can be Cal Poly or MIT.</p>