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Comment by agent008t | Hacker News Reader

How can these universities be so expensive, if you can instead go to a just-as-good university in the UK for a fraction of the cost, even as a foreign student? Why does anyone agree to pay such fees?

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You can attend a public university in the US for a fraction of the cost. UCLA is $12,000 a year for tuition. You can also do two years at a community college which costs almost nothing like $50 a credit and transfer to a 4 year university for the the remaining two years.

If you add room and board UCLA is $65,000 for out-of-state students: http://www.admission.ucla.edu/Prospect/budget.htm Compare that to $74,000 for Stanford. Suddenly Stanford looks not so bad! https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/budget/index.htm...

Oxford (UK) tuition for overseas students is $35-45k/year (and people generally pay sticker price), so not radically cheaper, though you get the B.A. in 3 years not 4. Other EU countries are much cheaper, but with a language barrier (except maybe NL).

Room and board + all living expenses is around extra $20k/year. And you get B.A. in 3 / Masters in 4 years. And there are no 'legacy admissions'.

Still not clear how, if the US had a 'free market' for education, places like U of Chicago are able to compete with such steep prices.

The title is kind a click bait. The content is actually about very few actually pay for the sticker price. In essence the sticker price is becoming kind a meaningless.

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