There has to be some upper bound to the cost of education, right? Or will I have to put aside a few million to send my kids to college twenty years from now?
But I think the trend to keep an eye on isn't the price of an undergraduate degree, but a graduate degree, as an undergraduate degree won't be nearly as useful as today, which already isn't as useful as 20 years ago in many fields. Indeed, both my wife and I have graduate degrees.
My wife came from a middle-class family that was college oriented. I came from a working-class/poor environment. My mom sent me off to college with $200 and a suitcase, and I subsequently paid for everything else, including housing and tuition, myself. But I barely made it through; I just wasn't culturally or academically equipped to do college. For example, my first week of school I was preoccupied with finding a job, I always prioritized working over school even when, financially, I didn't need to, and I didn't appreciate the value in developing relationships with professors (that felt more like cheating, reflecting not enough time spent studying). So what concerns me more than college right now is primary and secondary school--preparing my kids so the transition to college is seamless and natural. Fortunately, San Francisco has many excellent public and private schools. The public school district has language immersion programs in several different languages in addition to non-immersion early language programs, as well as other enrichment programs; and the parochial private schools in particular are relatively affordable--cheaper than daycare, even. (Though daycare can be crushingly expensive--whether run out of a garage or attached to a fancy private school, rates are similar--so I guess that doesn't say much.)
So the price of college? Meh. That's poor people thinking. My goal is to put my kids on a college trajectory and let that carry them through--hopefully to graduate school. Of course we'll save as much as we can, but that's not something I'm concerned about. In my hometown middle school and high school counselors often discouraged kids from college because the costs were presumed insurmountable for most families. In truth 1) they were ridiculously misinformed and misleading about the options and alternatives, and 2) setting kids up for failure whether or not they ended up going to college. Nope... worrying about cost right now is counterproductive.
Amazing. Land of the free seems to be quite keen to come up with innovative ways to enslave its citizens...
This was the entire point of even including that anecdote. You can pay insane prices for very good education in any developed nation, regardless of their political system.
The real stick is law school. If you don't end up in a top program, you better end up at the top of your class unless you like starting salaries of 45k after a >200k education.
San Francisco public schools are awful.
https://californiapolicycenter.org/san-francisco-unified-dri...
>No issue has been more contentious in recent years than how the SFUSD has handled the new Common Core mathematics curriculum. Algebra has been taught in middle school for ages, but because so many San Francisco middle schoolers have done so poorly at it, it is not even taught until high school anymore. Parents whose children didn’t do well with Algebra are OK with postponing it until the 9th grade, but for families eyeing college and looking ahead, this is a complete disaster.
> One parent who toured a government school for her 4-year old who could already read was told that she could tutor other students still learning to read; she ended up in a private school because her mother felt there would be very little challenge for her with so few children at her level.
> when she toured another government school and asked about challenging her daughter with math, the teacher looked down her nose superiorly and informed her that it was wrong to give any child any opportunity all children didn’t receive and she would never let any kid do more advanced work than the others.
https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-sf-educational...
> On the most recent round of tests, 87% of San Francisco Unified’s black students performed below standards in math, as did 79% of Latino students and 78% of Pacific Islanders. Ninety-six percent of districts in California that serve black students had better reading scores for low-income black students than San Francisco did, Innovate found.
Our oldest is currently attending TK (transitional-kindergarten, for those who turn 5 between September and December) at a public school, we've toured several public and private schools for kindergarten already, and we've spoken extensively with other families in our neck of the city (north and west). There are dozens of schools in the system, but at least for primary school your kid will be just fine. The middle schools and high schools can have more problems, but again that's a reflection of larger social and economic problems that older students unfortunately bring into the classroom; you can't fix that stuff through school. The staffing and academic programs at the public schools are as good as anywhere, and in some areas unmatched.
I recently attended an informational session for kindergarten enrollment at my son's school. I arrived and followed the signs to the room and sat down. When it began the principal asked, "who here only speaks English"? I raised my hand. She said, "the english language session is in the portable building", and I ended up in a room about the size of a walk-in closet. For the first half of the session, until some stragglers arrived, I was the only person there, so basically just had a one-on-one with the school official. The 15 or so parents in the main session all spoke Chinese, even though enrollment at the school is maybe half Chinese and this was the only night such a session was offered. (Which is to say, no other white, black, or latino families showed up.) All of which goes back to family life. Many in the Chinese community in the city are poor or working-class (only very recently have rich mainland Chinese began immigrating to SF), often immigrants or first or second generation, but they're extremely engaged academically and very demanding. It matters, both for their kids and the schools more generally.
That's too much cash for an undergrad education, and the payback is often not there. Here are some other options:
* Canadian universities -- similar quality of education to most U.S. state universities at a significantly lower cost. Close to home (cheap airfares, or within driving distance for most U.S. states), culture is similar, education system is very similar to U.S.
* Continental European universities -- free or close to free in many countries, plus your kid gets to have a study abroad experience in Europe at no extra cost. Many colleges in Germany for instance have instruction in English nowadays so there's not even a need to learn a foreign language (well, one should but one doesn't have to). The downside is the style of education in Europe tends to be very hands-off and less pedagogical (sink-or-swim), so if your kid isn't that independent they're not likely to survive.
The only things to take care of:
* Make sure your kid does summer internships in the U.S. if they want to get hired in the U.S. Studying abroad means losing the U.S. network, but that is remedied by summer internships.
* FAFSA -- most Canadian schools as well as schools abroad are FAFSA eligible.
For me, a U.S. education is only worth it if you're going to a top U.S. school. Otherwise education abroad can be as good as (and in many cases, superior to) the average U.S. college.
At my university, as a Canadian citizen I pay about $7000 a year for my program (mathematics). An international student is looking at $38000 a year.
Want to do a more popular program like software engineering? As an international student, you’re looking at $55k per year, not including books, residence, or meals. Maybe not as expensive as some Ivy League schools, but those schools often have extremely generous funding available for low income families.
This makes me doubt the theory that government loans are behind high tuition.
I think there are just too many counterpoints for the student loan thing to be accurate outside of a vacuum.
Loans help increase the cost of schools with lower social economic status (middle class) schools like state schools.
Loans allowed many schools to charge private costs for public education. Professor salaried have risen, cost structures are too high to support unloaned demand.
This is untrue. If anything, the rapidly growing pool of poorly paid adjuncts has lowered the median salary. Perhaps you could take a look at this book for a deeper understanding of the issue.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/16/herb-childres...
No other metric matters.
The cost has to come down, and that includes the cost of instruction etc.
That’s simply not true. The vast majority of the increase in cost is due to the explosive growth of non-teaching administrative staff.
When wealthy donors earmark their gift for a new library or sports complex, it’s the students who end up paying for all of the staff to maintain the building and run the programs.
That said, its not really the only metric that matters, but it does matter a lot. And it matters a lot more than all other metrics around cost because you can easily reduce those other metrics if they are truly bloat.
Professor salaries cannot easily come down, and you cannot easily add more kids per class.
Good professors pay for themselves by bringing in grant money.
With a positional good, demand can never be really satisfied, because everyone always wants something further up the chain, so prices expand to whatever people can possibly pay.
The economic effects will be more indirect than the last one. Folks will delay homebuying, they will have fewer children later in life. Schools and Colleges will be competing for fewer people. Many small liberal arts colleges will close.
Meanwhile, my entire education (5 years, 144 credit hours, compared to the usual 4/120) cost me ~$32,000... In Canada. I didn't live in a dorm, didn't buy a meal plan, and paid for pretty much all of it over two summer internships, and one fall one.
0: https://www.daad.de/en/study-and-research-in-germany/plan-yo...
Though people who wish to study here from outside the EU have to prove that they are financially solvent and able to support themselves before they come here. This is done by depositing about 10k euros into a German blocked bank account.
This site is a great resource for foreign students, detailing pretty much everything involved: https://www.studying-in-germany.org/how-to-study-in-germany/
No, because that wouldn't make sense as an investment. Already it often doesn't make sense. Hence the student debt crisis.
Colleges will have to adapt and bring costs down as people increasingly opt for alternatives.
Even paying international student rates, their education will be much cheaper.