<p>Adding to your depression, sorry, but if I had an OOS student at the University of Delaware I would be very upset. Our income just does not increase at this rate before or after taxes. This comes from a post under UDel on CC:</p>
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The University of Delaware announced that annual tuition for undergraduate and graduate students will increase $440 (6 percent) for in-state students to $7,780, and will increase $1,673 (9 percent) for out-of-state students to $20,260. The increases will begin with the fall semester.
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<p>There is just no end to increases. Is anyone ever going to put a stop to increases for a period of time, and slow increases? This comes at a time when oil is over $4/gallon, food prices are through the roof, etc. This is still a public school, even if it is the OOS student that is stuck with the hugest increase.</p>
<p>cpt, I am scared about the debt that our children will be shouldering. It is not a realistic amount, but I think that we will see more loans as the increases continue. I know that 2 years ago, one school met our son's need with all loans (7k including 1k of that in a Perkins Loan). This offer was wrapped in beautiful gold packaging too. Needless to say, it was an easy no thanks for us, but another student with less guidance might have attended this "dream" school. I do not think that freshmen who do not even know if they will enter a second year, should take on 7k in debt!</p>
<p>The school has higher costs too. UMass is up between four or five percent this fall. I wonder if that's going to cover heating bills this winter or the much higher electricity prices that are coming due to natural gas prices doubling. That is a gamble that you take at an out-of-state school.</p>
<p>BCEagle, I do understand the gamble, and we may only stick to publics within our state for that reason, although they are very expensive too. I know that they have increases too. I also think that something needs to be done to put a stop to the madness. Rates increase much more than middle American families can afford, and I don't think it is healthy for our country, the average American family, or the individual student. I don't think that the answer should be to allow our young people to shoulder more debt than they already have.</p>
<p>UDel is a tough situation for in staters. We have family living there, and college is a real problem. The only comprehensive state option in Del is UD. Many, many kids who do not make UD numbers, end up going to comm college because there is not the option nor the reciprocity to go to a less competitive school at those rates. Scholarships are not the answer as those kids who can't make it into UD are usually not competitive for good merit packages or competitive schools. They would have to pay OOS for some options in PA and MD and that is not cheap. So they go to comm college, which in my opinion in that state are not comparable to what they would get at UD those first years, so many of the kids are not prepared. The rates of kids graduating from UD after transferring from the CCs is not good. THis is really a situation where the state system is not adequate to take care of those in the state who want to go to college Little choice, poor quality choices, high tuition.</p>
<p>That is hard on the student who grew up in Delaware, and yes, MD, PA, and NJ are very expensive for OOS. What about the lower tier SUNY or lower tier VA or even NC public schools as OOS students? I think that most lower tier public schools in those states cost less than UDel charges for their OOS students.</p>
<p>Don't know the exact numbers as UD was not investigated for my kids. I know that when we looked at sticker price, our state schools were the best financial deals for our kids, even looking at the less expensive NC, SC, VA schools and some private options with low sticker prices. And that was with low(relatively) NY state in-state costs. Also S3 and S2 got state money offers that brought the price even lower; S3 would have made money going to one of his SUNY choices. When you live in a state where the costs are high for the state schools, it is a tough go. This is where the system is really letting the kids down.</p>
<p>Hubby and I are feeling very much that we've fundamentally let our daughter down. Finances weren't the only reason she decided to leave her little private school and come to a CUNY, but the specter of large debt on a teacher's salary made her change her mind about being away. D2 has soph PSAT scores above 210, great grades in the IB program and unique ECs, but money is going to be a huge factor, more than we ever thought, since our home equity is all gone. She's going to look at a couple of SUNYs, one of which has her second choice major, and at commuting to Hunter. Other schools like Seton Hall and Drew, as well. She had been wild about the museum program at UDel, so I'm very sad to hear about their increases.</p>
<p>"Rates increase much more than middle American families can afford, and I don't think it is healthy for our country, the average American family, or the individual student. I don't think that the answer should be to allow our young people to shoulder more debt than they already have."</p>
<p>I've had many discussions with Atana on the problems of SL and higher-ed funding on the Financial Aid board. I would prefer more in grants and less in loans. The availability of loans, especially easy loans, results in inflation and that's what we've seen for some time. To reverse that, we need deflation but deflation is very dangerous when dealing with fiat currencies. We went through that pain in the past when the central bank raised interest rates to kill inflation but it was painful for huge numbers of people.</p>
<p>If we want to improve public higher education, then we need to contact our legislators as they set the prices and funding. Out of state folks probably don't carry much clout with state legislators which means that it's up to the folks in-state to ask for better rates for in-state and out-of-state students. Our state is awful in our funding for public universities and more and more in-state students are getting shocked when they aren't accepted for the state university. The limiting factor is dorm space and we don't seem to be in any kind of a hurry to fix that.</p>
<p>I do see state universities as a bargain for the motivated student. What I see is public universities cranking up fundraising capabilities to provide scholarships and maybe aid. I was pretty pleased to hear that Jay Leno donated a million dollars to Middlesex Community College recently. His wife spoke at the commencement. A million dollars does quite a bit of good at a community college.</p>
<p>I agree with you BCeagle. It's pretty sad when kids with a family EFC of zero are just guaranteed less than $5K in money, the rest being loans. Here in NY, that can just about cover the tuition, but in many states it does not even cover that.</p>
<p>In previous years, my son's HS sent off quite a few students to the Ivies, private and selective schools. This year everyone who was accepted to our state flagship enrolled except for three who got full scholarships or a very substantial scholarship at other schools. I think this was the same for kids at the other local high schools too. It was NOT surprising when the state flagship announced they were over enrolled. I believe the economy had a lot to do with it. Why pay the $40,000+ elsewhere when you can get an excellent education in-state for under $20,000?</p>
<p>We're an upper-middle class public school and I was just comparing stats with past years. It looks like half our grads are still attending private schools, but we aren't sending many to OOS publics like we used to. More are staying in-state and there is a huge increase in graduates choosing the local public universities, where they can live at home.</p>
<p>I noticed on this years college list for my kid's high ranking Catholic school, over 1/2 of the kids are staying in state, which is higher than usual and I wonder if the economy is playing a role.</p>
<p>No difference in college distribution for our graduates - small private school with 100% placement to 4 year colleges. Two top kids this year will go to Harvard & Middlebury. The one at Harvard got some huge FA (do not know details). Most kids from our school get very significant academic scholarships and most families are not eligible for need based. My D. last year got significant merits at every school that she applied (1 - OOS, the rest in-state). She got additional few thousands in merit scholarships for sophmore year (next year) in college after she applied for Returning Students Scholarships. There are seem to be $$ available at colleges for FA, either in-state or OOS, merit or need based and overall admission competition is on a rise at all levels, which indicates increased number of applicants. The top students that I mentioned were rejected from Yale, which probably would not be the case few years ago. In fact, 2 years ago, our school sent 2 kids to Yale.</p>