http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-usc-tuition-20160304-story.html
And will be the most expensive school in the country. As an alum with USC students that can afford to be there, I still feel this is nothing to be proud of. USC costs more than any other school…uh, ok.
I also don’t like the usual USC propaganda in the article with the marketing pitch on all the aid they give, but they don’t tell the whole story - that USC is quickly becoming a school of just two classes, the very rich and very poor. Students report the division in social classes is getting wider there and it is apparent when trying to find a group. Some friends who can well afford USC recently told me they couldn’t stand the stench of arrogance in admissions when they met with an advisor there.
Just because you are more expensive doesn’t make you better. I think they are getting ahead of themselves in effort to prove they are somebody.
I think USC, as many others private universities, is becoming a school of 3 classes: very rich, very poor and merit scholarship recipients. The difference between 45k and 50k is not that material. At least USC is the only school of this class offering Presidential scholarship for NMF and so many Half and Full tuition scholarships.
The fact that the tuition is now practically 70k is ridiculous. NYU is constantly bashed on for setting a tuition that is around 72k and looks like USC will soon be a victim to that criticism as well. (When I say tuition, I mean tuition + room and board)
The article says USC will now be the most expensive which is not a source of pride as mentioned above. Regarding all their generosity, If you see the demographics of the majority of merit scholarships at USC you will see they are able to kill two birds with one stone (which is a harsh old saying). They give merit to many that would get aid anyway. Not all, but most. That is why the scholarship dorm is being called one dimensional if you didn’t catch that. Total middle class squeeze out there even more than other places.
Oh brother, here comes more University of Spoiled Children jokes from my friends, like I don’t get enough of those. But seriously, it actually feels a little embarrassing to hold the distinction of most expensive university. :-S
@scotlandcalling Not sure how accurate that part is. Most of the other scholars I’ve met are middle class or above, with very few being low income. Likely stems from the whole “having access to better SAT prep/more ECs/etc” deal.
But yes, the tuition amount is ridiculous. Not surprising though, since it was $49k last year & it’s expected to rise ~$1k/year. Not that different from other privates, either. The person who wrote this article must not have had much else to write about, cause this isn’t really news…
You’d have to be crazy to full pay that for USC.
Which is why 2/3 of the people there don’t.
When considering the entire cost of attendance SC is not alone in being very expensive. If you check out these colleges/universities you will find the cost of attendance is in the same ballpark: Barnard, Sarah Lawrence, Bard, Columbia, Wesleyan, Bennington, Oberlin, Vassar and Tufts.
When the costs of the other colleges in the list are announced for 2016-17 I think you will find the others are in line with SC’s.
I have a daughter at Oberlin and a son at USC, both “meets need” schools. I found that Oberlin was more generous with merit scholarships while USC was more generous with needs-based aid. Either way, we’ve paid about 30% less than sticker at both schools.
Well, at least that makes my daughter’s decision quite easy; she won’t be going to USC because she/we can’t afford it.
We make too much to qualify for assistance (our EFC is 100%), but not enough to pay for a $300,000.00 undergraduate degree, and we refuse to deliver our daughter into indentured servitude with a non-dischargeable debt that will follow her all her life.
What @blueskies2day says makes much sense: It sounds like USC (and many ‘elite’ schools) are only affordable for the very rich, and the very poor: a bit of a microcosm of our current American society. If you’re a two-working-professional family, you’re on your own.
Hopefully, USC can use some of that money to move the campus to a nicer location…
Geez! I live in Orange County, CA and USC is very popular around here. You see a lot of USC alumni license plate frames and bumper stickers. I also know quite a few USC alums whose parents also attended the school…I wonder how they feel about the price increase…
@PoolShark223 I get you about the location…USC is a pretty campus, but the location is really not good! It’s too bad that USC is becoming only affordable to the very rich and the very poor. What about normal middle class families? I know a lot of people who are considered very affluent, who still can’t afford 4 years of $50,000 tuition…too rich for much financial aid, but still too poor to pay $50,000 a year…I’d like to know where that $50,000 is going…college tuition is outrageous! Is a USC education really worth that much? It’s a great school, but I don’t think any school is worth it, but maybe it’s just me!
@natty1988 Exactly.
While she’s still waiting to hear from UCLA, UCSD and USC, she has already been accepted at Cal Poly SLO in Engineering. Would she like to go to USC? Yes, but she also doesn’t want to bankrupt us or bury herself in lifetime debt.
SLO: $26,000/year = $130,000 BS Degree (assuming 5-Years of study)
USC = $69,711/year = $278,844 BS Degree (assuming 4-Years of study)
Is a USC undergraduate Engineering Degree really worth more than TWICE an SLO Engineering Degree?
Answer: It doesn’t look like it:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/10/29-earnings-data-college-scorecard-rothwell
The Brookings data measures “Value-added” to median student earnings 10 years after enrollment of 2001-2002. It ranks them on a 0 to 100 scale. Based on that scale, here are the top 10 four-Year colleges in California:
100 California Maritime Academy
99 Alliant Int’l University
98 University of the Pacific
96 Cal Tech
96 Stanford
95 Harvey Mudd
95 Cal State University Bakersfield
94 Cal Poly SLO
94 Cal State University East Bay
93 Golden Gate University
Here are some other “notable” California colleges further down the list:
90 USC
89 University of Phoenix (SF)
85 Pepperdine
83 Cal Poly Pomona
83 UC Davis
77 UC Berkeley
76 UCLA
72 UCSD
66 UCSB
61 UCI
37 Scripps College (Claremont)
I wonder how many USC parents know their student’s earning potential is outranked not only by Cal Poly SLO but by Cal State BAKERSFIELD as well!
@PoolShark223 very interesting! I doubt many USC parents know that! Cal State Bakersfield?! Who woulda thunk it!
You learn something new everyday!
All I see are well intending but shortsighted parents falling victim to clickbait rankings and a deal-hunting mentality when it’s your kid’s futures you’re talking about.
Go ahead, send your kid to Cal Poly SLO and ignore the fact that not only is a 5 year Bachelor’s a foregone conclusion in a public school engineering program, but the opportunity cost of a year of lost earnings nullifies any pertinent savings in tuition. Why is this part always overlooked? You’re not paying $130,000 for a degree at Cal Poly. You’re paying $130,000 + $100,000-$150,000 average mid-career earnings and 1 year of your child’s lifespan.
USC’s not just a place to go to to get a degree. It’s easy to view it that way from the perspective of a parent, when you’re not the one that has to live there for 4 years and has to affiliate with whatever school you end up attending for the rest of your life. When that school’s logo is the one you hang proudly on your office wall, stick on the back of your car, represent on your LinkedIn page. Most people ever only go to college once, and their perspective on life is formed by the people they meet at that school and the people they meet in the workplace that went to that school. Do you want your kid to be around people who are academically among the brightest and most ambitious in the nation, or those who went to a school just because it had the lowest price tag?
I’m not a financial planner, so I can’t tell you whether USC would be a good financial decision for your economic circumstances. But I can tell you there are 2,400 universities in America - a large enough selection to create a perfectly efficient free market for the consumption of higher education. Among these, USC is the 10th most applied university in the nation, and 1/3 of students who are admitted, enroll - a higher yield rate than any UC other than Berkeley. 52,000 families every year see some attraction in this high-price tag product, and there’s either something they’re all not seeing, or there’s something you’re not seeing.
USC has fine schools of education and social work. While these are vocations in many cases both those professions are not known for having the highest salaries.
As noted in the article readers are advised to take caution in considering the various factors used in the rankings.
Full sticker at most private universities is truly affordable only to the wealthy, like most luxury automobiles. Many would like to attend private colleges or drive a new Mercedes, but we don’t get a lot of disgusted people posting how unfair it is that luxury autos charge so much money. Private universities have always been luxury items and in the past, only the very rich could attend (or frankly, were even admitted).
Now, some very expensive schools like USC have made financial aid available to very low income students. This should be considered a step forward. As for the middle class who are simply not prepared to spend $250K per child for a college education, don’t expect privates to be affordable. They are not unless you find one (like USC) who give a big discount for NMF or to hundreds of other top merit students (as USC chooses to select them).
My kids and all their T/P friends are exactly middle class and I’m a little tired of the rumors that sometimes come up here on CC that Trustee and Pres students are really FinAid students. These rumors mostly stem from fine upper mid class students with excellent applications, but who didn’t get selected. Because the decisions are holistic (and opaque), it’s tempting to think there is a secret plot or reason one has been overlooked. It may feel less of a personal blow, I get that, but there is simply no proof and–frankly–no motive for USC to do ding middle class full EFC families. They already have FinAid for low income students. But USC has other institutional needs–They want to woo middle class high achievers to attend USC over other admissions (such as ivies), they use the merit $$. The very low income will already be awarded FA grant aid, so the most persuadeable section is middle class and wealthier students who are price sensitive. Furthermore, the finalists are selected by the academic Schools (not near the FA office, nor interested in FA concerns) to lift the achievers in each School’s field. They would like to brag (in four years) about these sorts of students being Fulbright scholars or starting successful start-ups, etc. The biggest common denominator I’ve noticed in merit finalists is they submitted applications that showed them to be leaders and go-getters and innovators and outside-of-HS achievers. FA is not what’s on the mind of the admissions group at Thornton or SCA or Marshall.
Be all of that as it may, I do agree that $70,000 per year for college is gut-challengingly expensive. I didn’t find it any “cheaper” when it was only $60,000 / year. Sometimes I watch Antiques Roadshow and occasionally a dealer will tell someone the painting they brought in is worth…$35,000!!! Or $50,000 Or $100,000. And the person looks like they just won the lotto! They are speechess!! And I always think that even if they could sell it for that much, it would barely pay for one year of college. Sheesh!!
Families have to look at more than the sticker price to determine if USC is the right choice. Of course you don’t want to saddle your kids with insurmountable amounts of debt, but trying to make one of the most important life decisions based on Return on Investment is not very prudent. A better measure would be to look at how happy graduates are with their choice to attend a college - and one way to do that is to look at alumni giving rates.
Alumni giving is a strong indicator of how graduates view their education, overall college experience and how it prepared them for their careers and lives. The highest alumni giving tends to be smaller private schools, but despite is large size, USC’s rate is high at 43% - higher than Stanford (34%), Harvard (37%), Columbia(34%), and Yale (38%) - UCLA’s is 13%.
Many colleges are expensive, and the increase isn’t that much in the scheme of things, I just hope USC isn’t the most expensive, that is not a first place prize a school wants to have, unless it is actually the top elite school. It gives the school that foo foo overpriced image. My guess is the staunch defenders of the price tag aren’t actually paying for it but have no trouble saying why everyone else should pay it (to fund them I suppose). I think there is a fine line between greatness and becoming a joke again, which they had just worked themselves out of in recent years, and I don’t want to see it go back to that. Image is important in the college game.
I was wondering what’s the likelihood of receiving (generous) school grants, NOT loans?