You need a plan. Couldn’t agree more. But when current statistics show that a very high percentage of American families can’t come up with $750 for a car repair (especially when that car is needed to get to work for the primary wage earner) good luck getting people to focus on retirement or educational planning.
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Tuition fees 2022-2023 to 2024-2025 | Current Students | University of St Andrews shows for University of St. Andrews tuition:
Scotland students: £1,820 (about US$2532)
Rest of UK students: £9,250 (about US$12,871)
International students: £25,100 (about US$34,924)
Wowza
This is sort of the crux of the problem. Just like it’s been shown that a majority of people aren’t capable of making sound decisions about borrowing money, due to the way the brain works for the average person, the same is true for the college process, and retirement and college planning.
Half of the people saying “well then people should plan better” were people who were born into a great situation, and didn’t have to plan as much as they think they did. The other half are exceptional people, who are not the norm, who learn advanced finances, how financial aid works, how merit works, how to get tax breaks from the insanely complicated tax code, and so forth. A lot of those people can be found on sites like this one. This audience isn’t really the reality.
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So it seems to me, those from Scotland are doing fairly well here if they stay “in country”. One of the top 100 colleges in the world, has a 50% acceptance rate, and tuition is 20 times cheaper than tuition alone at top US schools, unless you stay in our own state, at which point you are paying about 6-7 times more.
However, it looks like a university in Scotland for local students there has lower tuition than a community college in many US states, not to mention commuter-based state universities. Many US college students are not getting the premium residential college experience that you are referring to.
Not born into a great situation here. Low family income. Free lunch through school. Family with parents that didn’t finish high school. I graduated with good grades but no idea about college. I worked trade jobs for 5 years and was told several times to go to college. I enrolled and worked my way through CC full time while also working full time. I ended up getting an associate’s degree and landing a good job that led to another good paying job. I didn’t have any training in finance or economics, etc. I did realize that I would want to retire one day and when my kids came along I knew I wanted to save for their college costs. I made good money and I sacrificed things to save for retirement and my kids college funds. I made things happen. People can control much about their life. I am now using those funds to almost exclusively pay full tuition at the in-state flagship. I will also have a comfortable retirement if things continue the way they are going.
People don’t have to get born with money to do well. People don’t have to come from experienced families to succeed. It absolutely helps in both instances but it can be done. We all make choices in life. Those choices lead us down paths. Luck is also involved in some instances as well as being in the right spot at the right time. People are capable of much more than some of them realize. Many just need a push. I wish I had been pushed earlier. In the end it worked out well. So yes, came from very little but ended up full pay.
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The real question is how many Scottish student attend university for “free”. At St. Andrews it’s around 28%. It’s significantly less than those who attend community college.
According to public-spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, only one fifth of applicants who attended the elite Edinburgh University and St Andrews University in 2015 came from Scotland. UCAS statistics for 2018-19 indicate that the number of Scottish students attending Scottish universities declined by four per cent in comparison with 2014.
This is a long-term trend. Since 2010, the proportion of offers to Scottish students from Scottish universities has consistently fallen. One in five Scottish students did not receive an offer from a Scottish university in 2015. In contrast, offer rates to RUK (Rest of UK) and non-EU students have increased by on average 11 per cent between 2010 and 2015.
No everyone gets to attend college in the UK. Not everyone attends for free. It’s misinformation to compare US and UK or EU schools because they’re very different. And if Americans are ready to start paying higher taxes to fund colleges go for it. There’s always unintended consequences. The UK stopped free tuition bc more upper SES were benefitting than lower SES. It’s not the quick fix.
And as I said before if you think they’re a great deal your children can apply and attend.
My D is looking to return to the US because the experience there wasn’t what she hoped it would be.
I know people who can check ten sites to find the best deal on a phone, will Yelp a restaurant (and all the ones in that zip code) before committing to a takeout bowl of pasta, and are addicted to 15 different “influencers” and will read every word they post on “grooming” before buying a bottle of shampoo.
And they look at you as if you are nuts when you ask “Did you run the Net Price Calculator to see if that college is affordable?”.
So for kids growing up with parents who don’t speak English, don’t have internet access, are growing up in a homeless shelter- yes, this stuff is complicated.
For people who are MASSIVE researchers on every trivial transaction, have learned every nuance of the “Free Brittney” movement, know more about some pop star than they do their own cousins- no, this stuff is not complicated. It is time-consuming, it is boring, it’s not as much fun as asking “Hey Alexa, where did Lady Gaga buy her boots” but it’s really not as arcane as the tax code.
For the “having money gives you more options, that’s not fair” crowd- yes, having money gives you options. We moved from a low cost of living part of the country to a high cost. Our choices were literally “Gross House A” or “Less gross but tiny house B”. Exactly two places to live which were in our budget. Yes, having more money would have opened up a LOT more choices, but you gotta be grateful you can afford to rent a place when there are families raising their children in grandma’s garage or under a bridge.
This audience isn’t typical of the college going population because we’ve all CHOSEN to educate ourselves. There is no financial aid fairy who is going to sprinkle dollar bills on your kid. There is no admissions fairy who is going to wave a magic wand and have you say “Wow, Rhodes College is far from my house, but what a great institution- and it looks like they want kids just like mine” or “Why should I pay X for my kid to get an engineering degree when Missouri M&T has a higher rated program AND is half the cost?”
Nobody criticizes the folks who do the research to figure out that a three year old Honda is a better deal- purchased and financed- than a brand new Nissan which is leased. That takes legwork. But most folks are happy to invest the time knowing they could save a couple of hundred bucks a month.
But college? To save many times that-- all of a sudden that’s too hard???
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Just my thoughts: WPI and RPI are also smaller (I suppose so is Champlain but Champlain is pretty unknown). Some of these schools have their own wrinkles, especially when it comes to majors. But it’s hard to justify paying more for one large state school over another when none are among the very top tier publics overall (though some may be in specific fields). But your experience as an undergrad at a large public probably won’t differ much from another large public outside of specific wrinkles, honors programs, etc.
Unis in Canada, Ireland, Scotland, and Australia aren’t exactly terrible. They would all be publics and to Americans, with the International surcharge, would cost roughly as much as OOS publics do (and some are a little cheaper) though some are smaller like St. A’s, some (Edinburgh, St. A’s, Toronto, McGill, TCD), I would put on par with the top American publics like UMich/Wisconsin/UVA/W&M, Waterloo is an engineering/CS powerhouse (think GTech but tougher), and some of the Scottish, Aussie, and I believe Irish unis would offer seminar-style tutorials.
So you could potentially find good value at unis in those countries.
True, but you know that you need to research a car or cellphone purchase because they are businesses that are out to screw as much profit out of you as possible. Many people have the not entirely unjustified belief that college, like (public) elementary and high school, ought not to be like that. It can be a shock to realize that colleges are a business too, and in many cases they adopt yield management strategies, like airlines, and highlight a luxury experience in order to get as much money out of their “customers” as possible.
In other countries, as in the Scottish example above, there’s a lot more outrage when colleges behave like that and admit less qualified but higher paying English and foreign students to chase the money.
They aren’t terrible academically but they do not come with all the amenities that US kids and parents often expect from their university experience. And the pricing is commensurate with that in my opinion.
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Not every American gets to go to college or finish college either, though in the US, in the majority of cases, it is due to cost and family circumstances more than anything else.
Absolutely agree. My point is that posters often point to schools in the UK and the EU as examples of higher education where children get to go for free. As if any child that wants to attend college can do so at no cost. That’s not true. Some kids get to go to school tuition free. They all have to pay room and board. Or live at home or live in a private flat w roommates. And in Scotland for example there is a cap on how many kids get to go to school tuition to free. Not everyone does even though everyone pays taxes towards that goal.
Yes, it’s different. European uni kids tend to have to make their own entertainment and opportunities rather than have it spoon-fed to them by their uni. Then again, outside of England, I don’t think any of them pay as much for uni as Americans do even for in-state at the higher-cost publics. And many can still study abroad through Erasmus.
One way to think of European undergrad (outside of Scotland) is that its more like attending grad school where you study for only your major/masters, except they are much cheaper than American master’s (and in Scotland, add another year where you can study other stuff).
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The thing is, the (live-away) American undergrad experience is a bunch of stuff bundled together + price discrimination. Which is why it costs so much. But I think you will see the bundle get disrupted as many industries have been.
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Same for large numbers of US college students who attend community colleges and commuter-based local universities while living where they lived before attending college. It is only on these forums that the residential college experience is thought of as the norm.
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Just when you think your done with CC something draws you back…
It’s so ironic that there are active threads right now like this one- Wow, university in other places is so much cheaper! while at the same time folks are worried that there isn’t enough “support” at the places their kids are interested in attending, others are upset that a college their kid wanted to attend just eliminated a bunch of non-helmet sports. And then come April we’ll read from parents with kids with potentially fatal food allergies asking about the nutrition staff at XYZ college, and kids with learning issues worrying how to get extended time, and kids with psychiatric issues worried that the campus health center doesn’t have enough mental health resources, and people worried that the 14 person staff at Career Services isn’t enough to help their kid get a job.
All of the above.
There is no single model that is going to work in a country as big as ours. Some kids need lots of support (good luck getting that in other countries). Some kids don’t. Some kids need a semester or two to ease into college level work (good luck getting that overseas) and others are ready for advanced, grad level work already. Some kids know exactly what they want to do academically and professionally (the European model- even for kids who don’t know, they get forced into some sort of a track) and some haven’t even picked a major by end of sophomore year.
When a talented kid cannot afford to get a college education- I think that’s a tragedy. A talented kid commutes to a local university because that’s the cost effective way to get an education? Not a tragedy. A talented kid goes to a college ranked 78 and not 32 because he had to chase merit? Not a tragedy. A talented kid spends two years at CC and then transfers to the flagship to get a four year degree with a huge savings? Not a tragedy. A talented kid takes a gap year because he/she didn’t understand how financial aid worked- and so all the choices are unaffordable- so kid gets a job and applies to a completely different set of schools, all of which can be affordable? Not a tragedy.
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So, because European undergrad tends to be like a junior masters program (while a lot that is covered in intro/distro/core classes that American freshmen take is covered during their HS years; A-Levels Maths and Further Maths covers more math than 99% of American HSs even offer and even most non-math STEM majors won’t cover as much), many continental Europeans take a gap year or 2 to figure out what they really want to study and do with their lives.
As for commuting to college or a CC then transferring, sometimes that is still tragic if you can only commute to a CC but the public 4-years in your state that offer the major that you want (like engineering) are too far away to commute too, don’t offer much fin aid, yet still cost too much over 2 years to be affordable. I believe the PA and IL publics all charge in-state tuition of about $15-20k/year now. Add in living expenses and it’s close to $70k over 2 years. Even if our American student John lived frugally on $10k/year, that’s close to $60k/2 years. $60k is pretty hard to come up with working a gap year and summer jobs, and loans can only over a small portion of that. Compare to Germany where tuition is free, so even if there is no uni close enough for Joachim to commute to, he would have to come up with less than €30/3 years. Much more doable by saving up gap year earnings and money from summer and PT jobs. Plus, I believe many European countries offer loans to students to cover living expenses.
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