Should you incur substantial debt for art/music school?

College Majors Visual Arts and Film Majors
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<p>Here is a post that I did concerning majoring in art at CMU. However, it may be applicable to any art, design or theater major. It will give you something to think about.</p>

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<p>Be advised: CMU themselves noted that total cost of tuition, room, board, fees and books will exceed $50,000 per year. This also doesn't count transportation home, medical insurance of $900 per year etc. The admission's officer that I spoke with mentioned that the actual cost is $52,000 per year if everything is filtered in. This also doesn't take into consideration future cost increases!</p>

<p>Sadly, whether you major in computer science, engineering or business, which can command some high paying jobs or art,which usually doesn't pay as well, the tuition, fees and room and board is the same.</p>

<p>Kakle, here is what it takes to amortize $150,000 of debt over 15 years:</p>

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<p>Principal borrowed: $150000.00
Annual Payments: 12 Total Payments: 180
Annual interest rate: 8.00% Periodic interest rate: 0.6667%
Regular Payment amount: $1433.48 Final Balloon Payment: $0.00</p>

<p>The following results are estimates which do not account for values being rounded to the nearest cent. See the amortization schedule for more accurate values.
Total Repaid: $258026.40
Total Interest Paid: $108026.40
Interest as percentage of Principal: 72.018%</p>

<p>Thus, they would need to pay $1,433 per month just to pay off their college debt! This is in addition to taxes,which takes up about one-third of their salary, mortgage or rent payments, car payments, food, insurance, gifts, travel, entertainment.etc. I think you get the message.</p>

<p>Also, for $100,000 in debt, the monthly cost to amortize it over 15 y ears would be $955.</p>

<p>Interestingly, assuming no college debt, if you take the same $1433 per month and invest the money at 8% for the same 15 years, they would have $273,941 at the end of 15 years! Note, the same $1,433 per month for 30 years would be worth $582,107. For 40 years it would be worth: $808,960</p>

<p>Thus, unless you get some substantial scholarship money, tell me how a person who majors in art, education, music, drama, or other low paying major will be able to afford paying off this debt?</p>

<p>Note: I am NOT saying that you shouldn't major in these areas. What I am saying is that, in my opinion, it isn't worth being in debt as a result of undergrad education more than about $50,000. If you need to go beyond that due to poor financial aid, you should seriously consider public university alternatives.</p>

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<p>"Thus, unless you get some substantial scholarship money, tell me how a person who majors in art, education, music, drama, or other low paying major will be able to afford paying off this debt?"</p>

<p>Taxguy, I think that as you mentioned in a previous discussion of your calculations, the same effective cost is true even if you 'forward pay' the debt by having saved/invested earlier, before enrolling in school.</p>

<p>But there is one major difference, and that involved the 'generation shifting' of the debt. We managed to save/invest enough so that, in combination with some gifting by our parents (children's grandparents) and our own current income, our kids graduated from college without any debt. Of course, this involved foregone income on our and the grandparents' parts, but from the kids' perspective they could enter the working world without debt.</p>

<p>And simply from their perspective, that changes the way they looked at job opportunities after graduation. (The same might be true if they graduated with a lot of debt that we, the parents and grandparents, paid down or paid off.)</p>

<p>With this in mind the question shifts a bit from your initial one of "should you incur substantial debt for art/music school" to "should you save/invest (pay) a quarter mil to attend art/music school?" </p>

<p>Another aspect of this is to pose the question differently (somewhat foreshadowed by your initial comment): should you spend all that money on art/music school compared to alternatives? My son got a degree in economics. He's not working as an "economist" but pretty close to that without an MBA degree, and is making an interesting career based on that. Not everyone has all the range of alternatives within their grasp (or skill set). So what's the aspiring artist/musician to do if they DON'T get a degree in art/music?</p>

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<p>Assuming my EFC of 0 works in my favor for most of the schools I'm applying to (non-art), I won't have anything too substantial to deal with. :)</p>

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<p>Rence, I am happy for you if you don't have substantial debt upon graduation. I didn't post this thread to hear from folks who won't have debt nor am I making any opinion about which school to attend. I just want people to consider the implications that are implied in many, many threads of CC about "attending the best college at any cost or bust."</p>

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<p>As Taxguy knows, and for readers who are unaware, there is an existing thead on this same topic and subject heading in the Parents Forum. We do not want duplicate discussions all over CC. </p>

<p>Here is the link to the existing thread on the Parents Forum:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=326598%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=326598&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Back in April, when taxguy started threads on this topic on three different forums, I had merged them for the very same reason and posted at the start of the thread, the following note:</p>

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A note from the moderator:</p>

<p>Taxguy started three threads on the same topic with the same post on three different forums: The Parent Forum, The Parent Cafe, and The Arts Majors Forum. Rather than three separate discussions on the same topic, along with copied posts between them, we have merged all three threads into one and it is featured on our main page as well as in the Parents Forum with redirects from the other two forums.</p>

<p>Please realize that when threads are merged, all the posts are inserted in chronological order. Thus, responses to posts may appear a bit out of sync since discussions are combined.

[/quote]
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<p>I won't merge this time but am closing this thread and redirecting readers to the existing thread that taxguy started on the Parents Forum back in April which is already a merge of the three threads he began on this topic on various forums. Let's keep it to one place. Thank you.</p>