Is an American college degree really worth the cost?

Student Lounge International Students
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<p>Hello everyone,
Most of the forum’s users are prospective undergraduate students at US universities and I was wondering what you think about the real worth of an American education for foreign students.</p>

<p>I went to an international school in Europe. Some of my classmates went off to study at American universities and some went to European universities. Those who went to the US usually paid full tuition since asking for financial aid would have seriously hurt their chances of admission, meaning that the family invested up to $200K on their undergraduate education. </p>

<p>Back then, my friends and I were convinced that an American college degree was definitely worth the money. However, now that we are young adults a few years into the workforce, I think our views have somehow changed for several reasons:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>If you don’t stay to work in the US after your degree—there are visa issues to be considered for foreign students and many people just realize after four years that they prefer the European lifestyle—, you probably won’t be paid more nor have a better chance at a position than someone with a public European university degree. At the end of the day, you’re just a 22-year-old without work experience and aggressive recruitment from prestigious universities is just not part of European HR culture where experience is more valued than raw talent. </p></li>
<li><p>Even if American universities do give you more options in terms of course offerings and study abroad than the average European university, the difference in cost is just so, so great that it doesn’t seem to be justified. (You can go to a very respectable university in Europe for 250-1000 euros per year.)</p></li>
<li><p>The enormous cost of an American undergraduate degree can force some to postpone or forego graduate school. With so many European young adults getting graduate degrees due to the relative low cost of education, you may end up looking underqualified if you only have a Bachelor’s by the time you hit 30. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>So I would say that if we look at price-quality relation, major public European universities are still winning. Of course international rankings place American universities on top, but I would say that the factors that account for this (research, Nobel-prize professors…) are not all that significant to an undergraduate student that’s just going to class and taking exams. In fact, there’s an advantage to not having so many star professors: they’re actually forced to teach. TAs don’t exist in Europe—you get the real professor every single lecture. </p>

<p>I realize that I’m looking at things from a European perspective which may be completely different from, say, an Asian one since American degrees are highly marketable in countries like India, China or South Korea. </p>

<p>I think it also depends on the family’s means. It isn’t unreasonable for a very wealthy family to splurge on their offspring’s education for the prestige that comes with a US degree even if it doesn’t make strict financial sense. However, if it means debt for the family or for the student, I’d definitely say to just get an undergraduate in a good university in your home country and try US schools for a graduate degree that comes with adequate funding. </p>

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<p>I think your perspective is spot-on. </p>

<p>An American education – the full college “experience” – can be a fun one and an interesting option for students for whom $200,000+ for a 4-year degree is not an issue, or those who manage to get significant financial aid. </p>

<p>For everyone else, I think European schools are the more sensible choice, especially considering they will be working in Europe after graduation. </p>

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<p>Plus which, having someone pay for your education (which is what happens to a large extent in most European countries with government subsidies) is a huge benefit. That’s why in-state tuition to a good public university very often is better from a cost-benefit perspective than full-pay at a private one for Americans. Can even Harvard make up for the large tuition difference between full-pay there and in-state tuition at Cal/UMich/UVa(/UT-Austin/UCLA/W&M/UNC/etc.)? Very likely not.</p>

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<p>A lot of Americans don’t think a US college education is worth $200+k, no matter what the name of the school. </p>

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<p>“Can even Harvard make up for the large tuition difference between full-pay there and in-state tuition at Cal/UMich/UVa(/UT-Austin/UCLA/W&M/UNC/etc.)?”</p>

<p>It depends on family income. For families with median family income in the United States (around $60K per year), Harvard is free, except for the expected student contribution (typically around $4,600 per year for the first couple of years), and for poorer families, even the student contribution may be reduced or eliminated.</p>

<p>For families with higher income, costs rise. However, my experience is that I’m paying less for my two sons to go to Harvard than if they were paying in-state tuition at our state’s flagship college. My income is considerably above the median family income in the United States.</p>

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<p>For a surprising number of colleges the difference could be the other way (slightly cheaper at the elite private rather than Flagship public until income well over 100K)</p>

<p>To be paying more than the $27000 (approximate UT instate total cost) at any of the more than 50 elite private colleges which meet financial need your family income would have to be higher than you might think (there are 60-100 private colleges that offer to meet full need). Run the numbers on the college’s calculators - it will usually be well over $100K family income before you are paying what the instate college tuition is (now if you can qualify for merit aid that complicates things - but that varies a lot by flagship public colleges).</p>

<p>Obviously for those who incomes are over $200,000 they could be paying as much as $30,000 per year more at the elite private (120K more total), but even at those levels some (HYP) claim to provide need based aid.</p>

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<p>@notjoe & @2018RiceParent‌ :</p>

<p>That’s why I had the word “full-pay” in there. If you’re not upper-middle class, the elite privates can be a terrific deal (as they were for me and my parents). If you’re full-pay and you have other options (and kids who can get in to Ivies/equivalents would, unless they didn’t apply to cheaper alternatives), the other alternatives can well make far better sense.</p>

<p>The list prices of American universities are truly insane these days. Note that full-pay at a top private in Japan like Keio or Waseda is close to in-state cost at some of the more expensive American state schools.</p>

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<p>@PurpleTitan‌ </p>

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<p>@PurpleTitan,</p>

<p>I misunderstood what you wrote. I thought what you were asking was whether the financial aid that Harvard provides makes up for the difference between full tuition (+room, board, etc.) and the full in-state cost of public universities.</p>

<p>The question you’re actually asking seems more subjective to me. Is Harvard at full price really worth the cost differential between it and in-state tuition at state schools?</p>

<p>I guess my answer there is, at first blush, probably not. Who wants to spend a quarter million dollars when $80K will do?</p>

<p>But the effects of financial aid once again come to the fore, since it’s not a question most folks have to answer. With one child in college, Harvard financial aid phases out a little north of $200K of annual income (or a lower income but a higher level of assets).</p>

<p>My view is that for folks getting lots of aid, it’s hard to turn down Harvard, and for folks with money to burn, it’s tough to turn down Harvard. I do think there’s a group in the middle - families that make between $150K per year to several hundred thousand per year, where the value is iffy. From $150K and up, financial aid phases out fairly quickly. If you’re making $225K per year, and you have to pay $63k per year for your kid to go to Harvard, you may nudge him toward the state school at $20K per year, especially if you have little or no college-specific savings for your child. But probably as your income moves up from around $300K or a bit more, swallowing a $63K per year school bill may seem a little more reasonable. The relative cost differential fades, and the incremental advantages that may accrue from an Ivy education become relatively greater.</p>

<p>Complicating this, of course, are questions of major (who would go to Harvard at full price for engineering if he or she could go to Georgia Tech at an in-state price? but who wouldn’t want to go to Harvard who wanted a career in high finance?), and also of competing scholarships. Let’s face it - students who get into Ivy League schools are often the students who are not asked to pay full price from state schools.</p>

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<p>Yep, I daresay that any kid who gets accepted in to HYPSM is also able to get full-tuition scholarships to some where with an honors college. Depending on career goals (and how firm they are about them; for instance, someone deadset on med school really should go the full-tuition honors route, but someone aiming for Wall Street has a better chance at a Street target), that may be the best choice. However, those schools likely are not a tier down, but several tiers down.</p>

<p>However, if you compare schools that are closer together, in-state is easier to think of as the right choice. For instance, full-pay for CS at elite privates (but not Street targets) like WashU, Vandy, JHU, Rice, or even CMU (which is really good in CS) vs. in-state for CS at Cal, UMich, UIUC or even UT-Austin, GTech, UDub, UW-Madison, UCLA, UCSD, or Purdue? Unless you have money to burn, it would be hard to justify the former over the later.</p>

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<p>Purple, are you talking about American students or international ones? Because the paradigm is different for each. </p>

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<p>@katliamom‌ : Kids who can get in-state tuition, so generally American students (though some states/schools allow all kids who studied for some years or graduated from a high school there in-state tuition).</p>

<p>The point is that with Europeans getting a heavy discount at EU schools as well (their version of in-state tuition), full-pay at a private or OOS is difficult to justify.</p>

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<p>I get it, thanks. The whole “worth” issue is complicated for US students, since it can be claimed that some privates (the Ivies, for example) are “worth” extra due to the privilege associated with them. They can open many doors that would otherwise be hard to crack. That may not be at all the case for international students who need to go back to their home countries and who benefit less from that privilege, especially if we’re talking the less-well-known Ivies such as Penn, Dartmouth or Brown. And I’d dare say that paying full OOS tuition to any public isn’t “worth” it to an American student, and that includes Berkeley, widely believed to be the best public university in the U.S. The doors it opens would be also open to just about any other grad from a respected public. </p>

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<p>@katliamom: well, to use the fields that I know best, there are other publics as strong in CS and engineering as Cal, and there are other publics that are Wall Street targets, but the only other state school that is both is UMich. Still, if you can get in to Cal OOS, you can probably get in to an Ivy/equivalent, and if you’re paying the same exorbitant rate, I’d choose the Ivy/Ivy-equivalent.</p>

<p>For internationals, the Ivies/equivalents will also open doors to Wall Street and MBB consulting, and those are industries that are willing to sponsor and hire without regard to nationality. However, you better be sure that you’re good enough to be picked, since, as you pointed out, if you go back (to Europe, anyway; in many countries in Asia, many American schools are held in higher esteem than all but a handful of local schools), paying the extra money may not have been worthwhile. Also, for those industries, you can go through a European school as well. Oxbridge & LSE are feeders in to the City, and McKinsey loves the engineering grads of German universities, while if you go to an Grande Ecole, you probably can do alright (despite the atrocious amount of opportunities that France offers its young people).</p>

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<p>Imperial college produced a few top hedge fund guys in Europe. I do agree with PurpleTitan, my kid did not even applied to WashU, Vandy, JHU, Rice, or CMU for CS. She even had a free application to Rice. The just cost does not justify. </p>

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<p>Unless you get into Harvard and co. a private US college/uni is unknown in Europe. It’s better to go to a state school - and make sure it’s a state that people in Europe have heard of, like CA, NY, FL, TX…
We are facing this right now, and I am losing sleep over how to deal with it. My kid is French-American who wants to study forestry, but that doesn’t exist as such in France. So we’re looking at NA schools. Some of the possibilities are Uni British Columbia, Oregon State, Colo State…Purdue and Cornell have good programs but are unknown in Europe, so what’s the point in to trying to get in?</p>

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<p>@coco958 does your child plan on living in Europe or America after graduation? The reason it’s not a widespread major in Europe is simply because they have no trees left!</p>

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<p>I woudn’t go that far! But it’s not a university subject here, more like one you do in a vocational school. We’re looking for something different, so that - and language/cultural affinity - make NA schools an interesting option.</p>

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<p>Hmm, in my opinion it’s worth studying at an american university if you only get into the top 25-30 universities as an international student. As an american student it doesn’t really matter at what university you study.
I also have to mention the great internship/research opportunities you can get as a student at an american university, you can get the same opportunities in Europe as well, but it’s slightly harder if you ask me.</p>

<p>Also, it’s really hard to get into a good master’s program/MBA in the US and slightly easier to get into the same program at a good european university.</p>

<p>All and all I think undergraduate and graduate admissions at the US universities are ridiculous, and even though I respect the effort people put in to get into these schools I think they should raise their acceptance rates by a bit while European universities are just as good and offer students a higher chance of getting in.</p>

<p>If you ask me to pick between a university that offers the same courses/classes and teaching method as Stanford University,and Stanford University I would probably pick Stanford University( You know,just for bragging rights).</p>

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<p>As someone who will be starting university next year, I don’t think that studying at any american university is worth the sticker price for a regular family, particularly if you aren’t going to study in the states. Obviously, schools like HYPSM will always be worth it because if you aren’t well off then you’ll qualify for aid and if you’re well off then the sticker price probably doesn’t matter to you.</p>

<p>For example, when I applied to university this year, I got into Top 20 Universities in 3 different countries: Canada, USA and UK. Not comparing the pedigree of the different universities and looking at just cost for a moment, my degree in Canada (paying the domestic rate) would cost about $100 000 to $120 000 over 4 years, my degree in the US would cost $250 000+ over 4 years (didn’t get FA anywhere :frowning: ) and my degree in the UK would cost about $150 000 over 3 years. Just looking at cost, going to the states doesn’t make too much sense because I shouldn’t be paying double for a degree in the US compared to Canada or the UK. (And the UK even takes a year less) </p>

<p>Comparing pedigree for a moment, I didn’t get into HYPMS and because they’re all Top 20 (Top 10 in the US and UK) schools, even prestige doesn’t make up that much of a difference. Sure the difference between an US school such as an Ivy or UCB or Chicago and a school like UCL or UofT is significant, but it still doesn’t justify the massive cost difference. And the prestige difference between any top US institution, including HYPMS, and UK institutions such as LSE (for my major) and Oxbridge is non-existent, yet the price gap is huge. And even though paying for tuition at any of these institutions wouldn’t have been a problem for my family, it still made absolutely zero sense to pay for that American college degree. So I ended up going to a UK institution I got into and paying that ~$150 000 for my degree and I don’t regret my choice. (Well I haven’t actually started school yet, so maybe in October when I start I will regret it, but at least for now I don’t!) </p>

<p>I think for US degrees for internationals, it really only is worth it if you can get significant FA that drives the cost to a level that is comparable with domestic rates or the international rates of other countries. Or maybe if you get into HYPMS, the difference will be so great that any price makes it worth it. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t get in. But from my experience with choosing between top notch institutions in the USA and abroad, I didn’t think it was worth paying that extra $100 000+. </p>