<p>In my view, the bottom line is spending a fortune to go to an elite school is not worth it.</p>
<p>One factor that will influence our decision is the quality of the secondary school experience. At D’s high school, D has not yet found the type of friends she is seeking. The social groups are rather rigid, and she doesn’t feel that she fits well in any of them. Her girlfriends are nice kids, but somewhat silly and boy-crazy, and none are taking honors or AP classes like D. They have way more time to hang out than D, so she often gets left out. On the other extreme are the very studious kids who, in D’s opinion, are either socially awkward or who don’t make any time for fun. Some aren’t ALLOWED out during the school year (parents make them stay in to study). </p>
<p>However, D is currently attending a summer program where she has made some wonderful friends who bring out the best in her. Her first text message to me was “Mom, there are cool smart people here!” Unlike many CCers, we had not ever been able to send her to CTY or similar programs for gifted kids due to cost, but this one was free. Most of the kids D has met hope to attend elite colleges after graduation.</p>
<p>We see D as the type of kid who is influenced by her peers, and so we’re thinking we’d like to increase her odds of having classmates, roommates, and teammates who are ambitious, goal-oriented, and hard-working by sending her to an elite school. Some kids in her summer program attend private prep schools where they have already experienced an appropriate cohort. Their parents may make a different choice.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if this new link </p>
<p>[Do</a> Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates? - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/do-elite-colleges-produce-the-best-paid-graduates/]Do”>Do Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates? - The New York Times) </p>
<p>has been referred to in this interesting discussion yet.</p>
<p>^ Thank you, TokenAdult. I’d never seen this and it’s very interesting. I wonder what the impact is in only surveying alumni who did not go beyond a bachelors in their education.</p>
<p>hmm</p>
<p>black hills state college is mostly a teachers college. How can you compare the salaries out of there to more comprehensive universities with graduates entering higher paying career fields than education? In addition, some states pay teachers much higher incomes than say south dakota, so I am not sure that reflects on the University at all but rather on the regional income levels.</p>
<p>There are a lot of variables at play here to try to make these comparisons. Schools feeding very different regions and career fields. I am not sure it is a good apple to apples comparison in many cases other than raw dollars made.</p>
<p>
This is exactly what I say and most other industrialized countries have made this choice.<br>
Are their wealthy citizens really paying the equivalent of an elite American undergrad education – $200k?
I personally don’t mind taxes if they go towards education and health care. I do mind contributing when it goes to a bloated military, maintaining bases all over the world and invading other countries for no reason.</p>
<p>I believe that both education and health care should be accessible to the average person. But it is also worth keeping in mind the old caution that a government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have.</p>
<p>In other words, be wary of ceding control of any part of your life to government. The taxes you gladly pay to support education and health care today may be used to fight an unjust war tomorrow.</p>
<p>Do you trust your fellow citizens to rise up and prevent it from happening? They didn’t last time.</p>
<p>If the government is running the schools, what do you think they will be like. My bet is that they will all be equal, roughly the equivalent of community college/mid-level state schools, or they will be tiered with thousands of community college/vo-tech level colleges, a few (50?) state flagship tiered colleges, and a very few (10?) HYPSM level colleges. If the second, your child will take a standarized test (and don’t we all love standardized tests here on CC) and the results will determine the education that your child will receive from the state. Your child may have wanted to be a doctor, but he/she will be told that they can go to beauty school instead (or better yet, the military). At least the parents won’t have to worry about the proper ECs, recommendations or essays. So this way you parents won’t have to stress about where you child will go to school - the government will tell you! Is <em>that</em> what you want?</p>
<p>^^^^ of course that is just pure speculation. Kind of like a wild guess. My guess is very different but hey that is why they are wild guesses.</p>
<p>One thing is for sure we could use more of a focus o vocational skills in parts of the country.</p>
<p>In many nations where College is free, students are put into “tracks” from an early age - one track never goes to HS and is trained for important vocational jobs like plumbing. Another track is for the average students who will finish HS but may or may not be able to go to college, another track is for the students meant to go to universities. So even though college is free, it’s only available to 1/3 students. The Govt has total control over who gets to attend since there are no private colleges. Students who are below average - 50% of the population - don’t get to go to college at all. I know in Scandinavian nations it’s more of a meritocracy where the Govt chooses based on test scores and students are put into tracks. </p>
<p>We complain college is free in other countries, but we forget only the smartest students go to college there! In America, smart students can also go to college for free or pay little tuition at public schools. In NY, everyone can go to CUNY ($2k and often free) or SUNY ($6k). Imagine if the US Govt took over colleges and only allowed 1/3 to attend - everyone would complain because most people couldn’t go to college at all! </p>
<p>I’ve met international students from Turkey and Syria who complained they took a test which determined they had to become a pharmacist instead of what they really want, so they came to America. The less control the govt has over my life, the better. They should focus on fixing up our public K-12 schools!</p>
<p><em>Edit</em> As for the original article, I agree NYU is not worth the debt. I love my college but I don’t believe it’s worth it to take out lots of loans - the girl made an intelligent decision.</p>
<p>Hat and Alix2012 - Nobody suggests the government have total control of college education. We only wants to government to pay for college cost for students to attend any public and private school if they are capable. We already have many wonderful public colleges like the University of Michigan, Virginia, Calfinornia,… Students and faculties at these colleges are not controlled by the government and their study and research. They only thing that ties their hands is the money.</p>
<p>I hope people don’t bring up reasons to get sidetrack.</p>
<p>My only problem with current financial aid practices is the way in which all private colleges have similar policies and don’t really compete on price for the most desirable students. People who complain about government involvement should realize that the current system is far from a free and fair open market.</p>
<p>this may have been posted,if so I apologize…</p>
<p>[do-elite-colleges-produce-the-best-paid-graduates.html:</a> Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/107374/do-elite-colleges]do-elite-colleges-produce-the-best-paid-graduates.html:”>http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/107374/do-elite-colleges)</p>
<p>Anneroku, where do students get to go to the college of their choice? In China, where the competition for ANY university is so tough that kids make themselves sick preparing for the entry exams? In Korea, where kids have commited suicide when their scores weren’t high enough to get them in? In the UK, where kids who are “late bloomers” or perhaps have LD’s (but are very smart) get tracked into air conditioning repair or hair cutting by 9th grade instead of being put on a college prep track?</p>
<p>I’ve written before about my cousin in Europe who would have been at a solid second tier engineering school if she’d been raised in the US. But she’s learning cake decorating and hopes to apprentice herself to a caterer or event planner.</p>
<p>You must be joking if you think the “free” universities around the world allow kids with college aptitude to attend college without stringent gate-keeping. After all, when the tax payers are footing the bill, kids who weren’t solidly “on track” for the elites by age 13 or so are shunted into vo-tech programs.</p>
<p>Do I think everyone needs to go to college? Of course not. But would you want your kids future determined by 8th grade… especially if you had a boy who may or may not be exhibiting the Type A work habits required to be in college prep in most places around the world?</p>
<p>I agree with Blossom. My SIL is European and comes from the rare family there who bucked the system. She did not make the cut to go on the “Gymnasium” which was needed to go on to the university. So, her parents put her in a private school which is something rare in her country. A late bloomer, she did very well and ended up going to a premier university and becoming a Fullbright scholar. She has an advanced degree from Harvard as well now. Had her parents gone with the tracking system, she would not have had those opportunities.</p>
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<p>This is laughably simplistic. It gets down to every individual’s situation. If you’re capable of a Goldman Sachs banking job and want to do it, good luck trying to get there from SUNY-Albany instead of Columbia. If you just want a middle class job, you may have a point.</p>
<p>Coolweather - Michigan, Virginia, and some of the UC schools are excellent colleges, but they are no where close to being “free”. Instate tuition is very reasonable (IMHO), but if you don’t qualify for “need” you are looking at costs of $60 to $100K over the course of four years (assuming that you can graduate within four years). OOS costs are nearing the price for most of the top tier schools (at Michigan at the time my son applied OSS tuition was about $37k and Harvard was about $45K). And in Virginia, the University is mandated to take students from across the state, not just the best in-state students who apply. So you can have top grades and top scores and still not get in because of where you live.</p>
<p>Hat - I don’t disagree with you on post #317. I am not talking about the current state of the system. I just want to promote the idea that evey young adult should be free to go any college if he or she has the desire and is capable to do so. Our society should pay for the cost of going to college, regardless the college is a community college, a state university, an Ivy college, or a military academy like West Point, Naval Academy,… My previous post is a rebuttal to the idea that the colleges will be controlled by the government if the government collects taxes to provide money for students to go to college.</p>
<p>“This is laughably simplistic. It gets down to every individual’s situation. If you’re capable of a Goldman Sachs banking job and want to do it, good luck trying to get there from SUNY-Albany instead of Columbia.”</p>
<p>Good luck getting a job with Goldman Sachs from anywhere!</p>
<p>Being an immigrant from exUSSR, I’m quite familiar with free high education system, as well as with free health care system and I’m completely, totally opposed to both of them (beyond basic point). “Free” system decreases value of product and as result decreases the quality of higher education and health care.</p>
<p>With that being said…
[QUOTE=Alix2012]
In many nations where College is free, students are put into “tracks” from an early age - one track never goes to HS and is trained for important vocational jobs like plumbing. Another track is for the average students who will finish HS but may or may not be able to go to college, another track is for the students meant to go to universities. So even though college is free, it’s only available to 1/3 students.
[/quote]
Who did you come to “1/3” conclusion? Even if there are three tracks that does not mean they have an equal number of participants. Public vocational school system exists in USA as well as associates degree. That does not make college education available only to 1/3 students, does it? By university, I believe, you mean an institution which provides master degree or equivalent. I’m not sure how many students in USA are aiming for postgraduate degree, but I do not think the number is significantly different from 1/3.</p>