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"Seriously, $50K/yr tuition for Stanford? my undergrad would cost less than two Teslas."

This might be a nitpick, but this is a bad analogy. If you have $50k * 4 years sitting around to pay for it, sure, it's probably worth it. That's not how it works, though.

You have a giant pool of 17-18 year old kids with 0 assets and minimal skills. These kids, in general, need to borrow to go to school. If they have to borrow $50k/year for 4 years, that's $200k in loans, plus they graduate with accumulated interest over those 4 years.

The better analogy would be selling an 18 year old kid getting a loan for a $200k car that they get in 4 years. Where this isn't accurate is that after 4 years, you can repossess the car if they don't make payments. With a college degree, there is no tangible asset. If the kid decides after 4 years that he wants a bicycle, he can turn in the car. If after 4 years at Stanford, a person decides to do something that doesn't pay the bills, now what do you do?

And, since the loan is up-front, all of this risk has to be accounted for. Right now it means saying that the loans can't (easily) be discharged. To me this seems somewhat fair, with the argument being that nobody forced the kid to go to Stanford (pay $200k for the Porsche), they could have gone to some state school (the used honda civic).

My point is that it's extraordinarily cheap compared to what I'd expect to pay for a "best in the world" anything else, not that it's affordable.

It would be crazy, I think, to expect a 'best in the world' education without it costing a substantial amount of money.

I'm not saying it's fair to a kid making that decision, and personally, I think that bankruptcy laws are central to civilization. I'm just saying that it's amazing how cheap a 'best in the world' education is.

Certainly, I don't oppose the government just paying for colleges; after all, that's a big part of why Berkeley is so cheaper. I'm just saying that running a good school takes money, and the fact that the best in the world schools (at least by my perception) are so cheap is a counterpoint to this idea that costs are spiraling out of control.

Costs have increased a ton, so unless the quality has also increased a ton, it doesn't seem crazy to expect a "best in the world" education for substantially less money.

And the whole non-computer world matters a lot, here. Most people go their entire lives without ever having the means to buy two high-end cars. Start paying that when you're 18 and the cost of financing goes up substantially, too.

Well, by definition, very few people are best in the world. And we still want most of the rest to get a college education. Not to mention "the best in the world" schools tend to attract students from very wealthy families, who don't need tuition support as much.

>Well, by definition, very few people are best in the world. And we still want most of the rest to get a college education.

Why is that? speaking as someone who doesn't have a college education, I'm fairly certain I would be less wealthy, by a good bit, had I gone to a mediocre school rather than no school at all. I mean, there are non-monetary benefits to school, too, and while I'm looking to go to college now - I just wasn't ready at 17.

It seems to me like the problem is the number of jobs that look for a degree even though college is little more than a class filter for them.

>You have a giant pool of 17-18 year old kids with 0 assets and minimal skills.

No you don't. People who get charged $50k for Stanford (and other top-ranked schools) have enormous family income/wealth, and for better or worse the social contract of our system is that parents contribute to their children's education commensurate to their ability to pay. The only people stuck borrowing the full amount are those whose parents could pay but refuse to.

You do get stuck borrowing that kind of money if you go to an expensive but not very good private school (how much help is available to middle-class kids scales with quality). A middle-class kid borrowing through a state flagship school (who generally gets no assistance) is more like $100k.

Great, but how is that a positive? Stanford is a top level university, but it's simply out of reach for those who cannot afford it. University admissions should be purely merit based in my opinion.

Many elite schools practice need-blind admissions - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. Financial standing has no merit on admissions, and if you can get in, you get to attend regardless of the financial support you require.

Its a great system, but it unfortunately falls apart for the less-elite schools which don't have massive endowments to rely on.

University admissions are need-blind when you're playing at this level, and qualified students from families who can't afford it are given aid packages that make it free or nearly free.

Compared to many other institutions, Stanford does a good job of dealing with that issue. 85% of students receive some form of financial aid. There is no family financial burden for incomes $60k/year and lower.

Stanford is not a fantastic example. It is very rare that a Stanford degree or UCB degree doesn't pay off

Stanford also heavily reduces total cost of attendance for people that make middle class salaries.

Stanford (or other big name schools) are probably a bad example, because if you get accepted, they'll ensure that you can attend regardless of your financial situation. Most "big name" schools have instituted programs in the last couple of years whereby they'll cover your tuition without (or with very minimal) student loans. For example https://nobarriers.uchicago.edu/

The problem is the the rest of the schools out there - 50K might be on the high end, but 20-30K is quite common, and having attended those, you might end up with a huge loan and a worthless degree.

That's exactly right: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?243744-Stanford-Univ...

Expand the "Costs" section and you can see that if your family income is less than $100K, you're probably going to pay a small fraction of $50K.

If your parents make a lot of money but won't pay for college, you get stuck with the full bill. One of the many big wholes in the financial aid game.

Anytime a pervasive worldwide, nationwide, or statewide problem has been reduced to a fairly rare intra-family problem, that's still a great thing.

Is it fairly rare? I know a lot of upper middle class friends who's parents had 0 savings and could not help at all with college, but by income guidelines they were expected to contribute a lot.

I have no data on how rare it is. My anecdotes suggest that it's more a matter of how the family prioritizes and allocates the income they have. There is a very tight spot in the curve where you make a "good income" but your associated lifestyle expenses are such that all of that income is allocated before any is earmarked for college. I still view that as a choice, though.

Oh it's a choice.. but it is a choice of the parent screwing the kid.

College is one of the first real things you do as an adult. i.e. you may sign up for giant loans you owe the rest of your life. Silly that the kid is responsible for the loan side, but if he has irresponsible parents he gets no financial aid.

If the alternative was every kid got money just based on the parents saying they wouldn't pay, it would take me less than one clock cycle to conclude I wouldn't pay for my kids either...

It's just not that impressive. If you want to work at a startup in SF, your output and immediate impact are most important.

Why would I want to work late hours to take some kid out of college under my wing and clean up his mess?

OR I can take the guy with open source, who can demonstrate his coding chops in a pairing session, that will have an immediate impact to the project?

If you think the prestige of an A-List school is going to get you on the fast track to a job, save your 200K, start contributing to some major open projects, and build a real portfolio.

> It's just not that impressive. If you want to work at a startup in SF, your output and immediate impact are most important.

First, my experience is that startups are good for 'entry level work' - they pay a lot less than the big companies do. Unless you are at the very top (and in that case, a degree from an elite school matters a lot to VC, I am told) you are better off at a larger company, unless you don't care about money. And SF is... well, it's SF. Especially if you are like me, an unstylish, overweight nerd[1], you are much more of a 'cultural fit' in the valley. (it's stupid that sort of thing matters, but it does.)

Next? at least at the big companies, while a degree in general doesn't make all that much difference (I don't have a degree myself, and I'm at google right now, though I'm a contractor. I don't think a degree from a easy to get into school would make any difference to my pay rate) - a degree from Stanford or Berkeley is a different sort of thing. Half the big companies in the valley came out of Stanford, and we still use little bits of BSD every day. Lots of people at the big companies were educated at those schools, but almost none of them are down with the marginal folks, the contractors like me. (to be clear, I'm only marginal at one of the top-tier big companies like google. At Yahoo, for instance, I was pretty good. Not the best of the best, certainly, but well out of the marginal category I am in now. I suspect I might be good enough to be an employee at Facebook or Linkedin, even, though that has yet to be tested. Everything is relative, especially standards.)

[1]https://prgmr.com/~lsc/images/luke_at_2972.png

It's misleading to quote only the tuition number. Most people will have to pay for lodging, food, and other necessities, so those numbers are the better ones to use.

If you didn't go to college for those 4-ish years, you'd still have to pay for lodging, food, and other necessities, so it depends on what you're trying to analyze which number is better to use.

Okay, but if you didn't go to college those 4 years, you'd have a full-time job to pay for those things. For most people, 4 years of college implies 4 years of not working, or 4 years of low paying part time jobs.

A lot of people cover those costs with student loan money, so they're relevant to a conversation about student loans.

Agreed, but IMO they're not relevant to a more general "cost of college is less than 2 Teslas" conversation, which is why there are two different treatments that are reasonable.