@mom2collegekids wrote: "
I’m fine with having more no-frills colleges.
I don’t think the euro system pays for room and board. I think the student/family is still on the hook for that."
No such thing as a “euro system”, with 27 member states in the EU alone, but of course there are grants, loans and bursaries etc. to help pay for room and board. But no frills there either - that system I work in, a student is expected to survive on 670 EUR a month, about 790 USD, 300 USD of which are supposed to cover a (single) room, working out to 1.800 USD per a 6 month semester.
I looked at room and board costs for, as an example, Penn State University park, and that won’t buy you so much as a broom closet, in what is decidedly not a major metropolitan area. 3,090 USD for a double and 4,210 USD for a single for a semester, and that s just for when school is in session, which is what, 3.5 months or 4? The cheapest meal plan, again I understand for the period school is actually in session will cost almost another 2,000 USD and you haven’t covered books, travel and incidentals yet.
I don’t quite get where the money goes - are dorms and dining halls really that much more frilly in the US? (I’ve seen pretty frilly ones but then I’ve only seen top privates.) It can’t be that much more expensive to maintain dorms and dining halls in University Park. And is this really necessary, and is there a building, catering and leisure industry getting fat on this?
I get what @blossom is saying, there is a cultural expectation that students have to leave home and go away to go to college, but also a cultural expectation that they have to be exceedingly comfortable doing so. But there is also an expectation, college student being adults, that parents aren’t on the hook for financing it. And nothing is as resistant to change as an entrenched culture.