Hacker News Reader

Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

The prices in USA look exorbitant. If a worker works full year for minimum wage, they earn $7.25 * 8 * 253 = $14674. Such worker will have to work for 6 years and 9 months to pay tuition costs for 1 year, if we assume that they don't have to pay taxes, buy food, visit a doctor and pay the rent.

A house may cost several hundred thousands dollars or higher. If that worker has paid for a university, no way they will be able to buy a house in their remaining lifespan.

Who is going to study in this university? Billionaires' kids?

View on HN

Private school tuition is the same as healthcare in the US.

Everything has an enormous sticker price for anyone who asks, but no one is expected to actually pay that amount. And if you do pay that amount, it's just because you're a sucker who didn't get in on the fact that it's just a made up number.

Rich kids may pay that amount, but it probably gets flipped around into some tax-advantaged "donation" that also helps people feel good about themselves.

Poor people get "scholarships", which are really just the university cutting the sticker price down to what they actually need from the person, with some creative shuffling of funds to make it look like they are paying "sticker price".

Healthcare works exactly the same. The key is to have enough layers of bureaucracy that no one can quite figure it all out.

I don’t believe it’s true that rich people are getting to write off college costs as a donation. They might be paying them out of a tax advantaged 529 account. The magnitude of this advantage is such that middle-class people probably care the most about it.

there are very few people who don't consider themselves middle-class, so that's not really a useful category I'd think.

Case in point, my original tuition value of ~16k/year was reduced so much by scholarships that I was actually making money going to school. This is an unusual case, but it wasn't unusual for other people at this school to be getting thousands in scholarships per year.

It's not exactly the same. Tuition had a standard process for showing the school your financials so they can set a price. It sounds like open-ended pickpocketing but it's a competitive market with a clear coordinated timeline for the offer process, so you can choose the school with the best price for offering.

> The prices in USA look exorbitant. If a worker works full year for minimum wage, they earn $7.25 * 8 * 253 = $14674. Such worker will have to work for 6 years and 9 months to pay tuition costs for 1 year,

Someone earning minimum wage does not pay the full cost of tuition. In fact, few people ever pay full tuition due to scholarships, grants, aid, and various discounts. Only very affluent families pay the full tuition costs.

Families with low incomes pay well under $10K per year, all included, for even the top colleges.

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/05/opinion/colum...

Of course, it's all still more expensive than it should be. I don't pretend this system is good, but it's absolutely not true that minimum wage earners are paying $60K+ per year to get college degrees in the USA.

Minimum wage in Chicago is $12, not that it makes a huge difference in the math.

I think you can make the argument that if someone is going to be making minimum wage after getting their degree, they should go to a cheaper school like a community college or a trade school. Or just start working right out of high school.

Or those with scholarships.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com