Upper Middle Class Frustration

Paying for College
101

Well, for one, 50 years ago public universities didn’t have to have counseling centers, remedial education, services for disabled, LD, special needs, ESL, writing centers, IEP students, – the list goes on. A huge part of the rising costs is that we expect more from our colleges and universities, while giving them less money.

The “profit focuses entitied with terrific tax shelers” wouldn’t be necessary IF:

  • schools were funded properly
  • schools didn’t have to offer a plethora of supplementary services that didn’t exist 50 years ago
  • schools didn’t pretend they’re country clubs to attract people, well, like OP
102

@ClassicRockerDad Spot on!

103

@Quietlylurking Bottom line is that there is just a lot more competition now. I wrote in another thread: " I had a 40th HS reunion dinner not very long ago with about 30 of my classmates who had gone on to IVYs and top LAC’s like Williams etc. We were all unanimous in concluding that if we were kids applying now, with our GPA’s and SAT’s from back then, none of us, ZERO, would make it to the schools we did. To make it even worse, most of my friends had kids who either were going through the application process or had recently started college and were very bitter over the results of those applications. Kids with 2300+ SAT and 3.9+ UW GPA were being rejected with legacy, or even double legacy, status at the schools where their parents were accepted with inferior stats." I’d add here that the kids with stellar stats are pulling in the merit money at the next level, displacing the kids who would have received merit money there, who are then displacing the next group down the line and so on. As to your blanket denigration of NE state schools, schools like SUNY Binghamton are highly ranked, and have entering freshman GPA and SAT stats entirely comparable to, if not exceeding, those at schools like Dartmouth, Brown, and Vassar 40 years ago.

104

This applies to almost everything nowadays as we move closer to oligarchy.

Health care (nobody except the 1% can afford to get really sick because insurance companies – if you’re lucky enough to be covered – will deny, deny, deny). Air travel (they get to reclaim your seat after you’ve paid for it and use strongmen to enforce compliance). Government representation (bought by monied interests). A little-known phenomenon is mandatory arbitration agreements in consumer contracts, in which we unknowingly give up our right to sue a bank, hospital, nursing home, telecom company, retail company, etc. When you sign on the dotted line or agree to the terms of service, one of the terms you are agreeing to is mandatory arbitration in the event of a dispute – and the corporation gets to pick the arbitrator (guess who wins?).

EVERYTHING is anti-consumer and is tilted in favor of the very rich and corporations. College is just the tip of the iceberg. Oligarchy.

105

@tdy123 I don’t know much about NE state schools… but I suspect they’re not nearly as bad as many NE residents think since they’ve been brainwashed for the past 200+ years that there are only 8 schools worth attending…not 1 of them a “state school.”

106

^Yep, there are a lot more services today than there were 50 years ago. These things add cost.

A massive drop in demand due to increased demand in alternatives, and/or a cap on loans, would bring down price. Would it also affect quality?

107

@kataliamom

“schools were funded properly”

Agreed re: publics, but are we discussing publics? OP was focusing on privates.

How do you properly fund private universities with massive endowments? Are all supplementary services necessary? Let’s disregard the snipe at the OP, but you have a point, many are country clubs with classrooms - how many climbing walls and sushi bars do we need?

Colleges that need to tout their facilities reveal their deficiencies ipso facto. Fifty years ago, Princeton dorm room sucked. They still suck. Princeton, one of the better U.S. universities by most measures, costs basically the same as any other college. Why? Discuss.

108

There’s no question $280k for an undergrad degree is a lot of money even for someone relatively high in income. One solution is not to play the prestige game. If your kid isn’t set on IB/VC/PE/, where they do their undergrad becomes a lot less important. I’m glad we now have smart kids from Santa Fe going to Middlebury, instead of reserving all the slots for NE legacies.

109

Yes, the German and Canadian colleges have less in the way of “frills” than a lot of (but certainly not all, or even most!) US colleges, but, quite importantly: There is a lot more public funding of the German and Canadian systems than there is of United States higher education generally. Simply saying that the difference in student/family direct cost comes from the college-spending side ignores that funding priorities support the idea that Germans and Canadians see higher education as more of a public good than USAmericans do, and that has quite sizable effects on the cost of higher education.

110

@katliamom double yep!

111

By the way there is a “cap” on federal loans. There is no feasible way to cap private loans, as long as there is a cosigner.

112

Also not to get off topic but in Canada there is no substantial difference in tuition costs for students who are out of province (i.e. analogous to OOS). Students can and do apply to schools across the country knowing that all public options are likely very affordable. I am sure there is simply a difference in how public u’s are funded in each country. I would love to see a similar approach here in the US. So maybe we need School of Choice at the national level!

113

^^
I don’t think that would ever happen. Some states have long invested huge sums to have the schools that they do. it wouldn’t be fair if all of the sudden access/cost was equal across the country.

Not to mention how unfair it would be for locals to not have access to their local colleges requiring them to dorm elsewhere. The point of state univs is to serve their residents, and often their local residents. All this would do is be a benefit for the affluent.

Also, keep in mind that Canada’s population is nowhere near the US’s. 320M US vs 36M Can
I think Calif has a larger pop than entire Canada!

114

^^ I get it but making the point that state borders and state funding effectively limit affordable public options. I live in California and grew up in Canada and while the size of both are very comparable, there is a broader range of accessible and affordable “good/excellent” universities in Canada vs. California. Of course I know the School of Choice concept is not going to happen here . . . but it is a significant factor limiting affordability and choice. If universities were funded at the federal level and everyone could compete to attend, it might make them all better. Anyways, just an opinion that I felt was related to OP.

115

While people are fixated on the UCs, California has very affordable CSUs to serve the mid-tier students who could not get into the UCs, plus the community colleges. The way the US is structured around the federated state systems, it’s up to the individual states (and their voters) to determine how much they will pay to support affordable colleges within those states. A national choice system would not work as some of the states (and their population) who do not support their own educational institutions via taxes will effectively leech off those who do.

116

I, too, wish college in the US wasn’t so expensive for all but the 1%. I definitely see room for improvement, and am glad to see the cost of college becoming a prominent topic in our national discourse.

However, having just completed my oldest child’s college admission process, I do think we get one thing right in the US, and that’s the shear number of college options, and the vast variety of those options. On the public side, you can go to a large flagship, a 2 year community college, and everything in-between. On the private side, you can find a college of 15,000 or a college of 2,000, a college that specializes in STEM degrees or liberal arts, a college that is affiliated with your religious denomination or a college that has no religious affiliation, and on and on.

I had heard that college could be cheaper overseas and my youngest child is interested in going to college in Canada, so I looked into options in Canada, the UK, and Germany. What I found is that colleges in these countries tend to be public, large, and while they offer good academics, are pretty bare bones. Some of them don’t even have dorms, much less all the other extras that US colleges tend to offer now that have been mentioned in other posts in this thread.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned on CC, it’s that each family has its own parameters when it comes to college type and affordability. A few CC families do not have to make any sacrifices - their bright, hard-working children get into highly selective schools and they either get full-rides (incredibly rare, I know), or their families are wealthy enough to pay the full amount without having to cancel their housecleaning service or cut back on vacations. Most CC families have to sacrifice something. Maybe it’s sending their DC to a public, or scrimping and saving for 18 years, or tapping home equity or retirement funds, or taking out parental loans.

DH and I weren’t willing to sacrifice on the college type-DD wanted a private LAC. So we chose to sacrifice on affordability. We are spending the maximum we can afford without making any major current lifestyle changes, while ensuring that we will have the same amount available for our younger child’s college, and without affecting our retirement. All in all, we feel lucky, grateful, and proud.

When college cost reform does occur, DH and I hope it will go to families that are needier than ours first (and then, if that’s truly achieved, sure, we’d be glad to see some go to families like ours and OP’s).

117

How many states have reciprocity with neighboring states like Minnesota and North Dakota do? Each of them have agreements with other states and with 1 or 2 Canadians provinces.

118

I think this is what’s at the heart of your issue. You somehow believe upper tier schools owe it to families who can be close to full pay, at least on paper, both an admissions spot and enough money to make it affordable. It’s not the colleges’ fault that you look down on the schools that are affordable for your family.

It happens at all levels, I think, and it’s unfortunate. Kids who can’t afford upper tier achools look down on whatever they deem lower tier, kids who can’t afford residential college look down on the local 4-year commuter school, and kids who can’t afford the local commuter school look down on the community colleges. None of this is helpful. Anyone of any income level who focuses on a narrow subset of schools is likely to be disappointed.

119

“Let’s disregard the snipe at the OP, but you have a point, many are country clubs with classrooms - how many climbing walls and sushi bars do we need?”

Speaking as someone who is a trustee at a private day school (tuition ~$45K) our biggest yearly expense BY FAR is teacher salaries and health care. I also work at a public university (tuition ~$10K excluding room and board.) Around 64% of our professors are adjuncts (extremely underpaid, I might add.)

I know it’s much more complex than that, especially with a handful of schools with HUGE endowments, but it’s not ALL sushi bars and fancy whirligigs.

120

“It’s not the colleges’ fault that you look down on the schools that are affordable for your family.”

Amen to this! @austinmshauri