How much is college worth?

Hey, welcome to Fluther @GloriaEstefan.
Is she thinking about education, or about status and prestige? The fact of the matter is, the type of degree and the quality of connections you’ve made, as well as how you grow as a person throughout college, matter far more than the name brand. I went where the money was—not the most prestigious school, one that few people have ever heard of in fact, but the one that gave me a scholarship. I graduated without any debt. I would make the same decision all over again.

There’s no harm in applying to a few big name universities. One of them might give her a scholarship, or financial aid. But if you are helping her pay for college, and she does not receive any scholarships, she should be grateful to attend a state university, and she can do well there as long as she is motivated.

Not unless I was going for something that would result in me making a whole lot of money after graduation.

I’m going to a state university where tuition is roughly $10K per year. My major is Psychology, so I know I won’t be making a bunch of money right out of college (or probably ever). Even so, I’ll be paying off about $25k in loans for many many years, and that is daunting to me. My high school GPA was a 4.1, right now my college GPA is 3.7, and my parents don’t make a whole lot of money, so I don’t only depend on loans to get through school. I have grants as well, and I’ve still got $25k out in student loans.

My best friend, on the other hand, attended a private school in which tuition was $25k per year. She majored in elementary education last year and had to defer her $50k in loans because she has yet to find a teaching job. She says she doesn’t regret it (yet), but I’d never spend so much on a degree that will cost as much (or more) per year as my salary will amount to.

Is she planning on med or law school or a degree in something like engineering? If not, I’d make sure she is VERY educated on the reality of student loans. It’s nothing to take lightly. I’m curious is to why she is so adamant about this expensive school. What’s her reason?

Unfortunately, she’s most likely an adult that feels she should be able to choose her own college, and she’s right provided you aren’t paying for a chunk of it out of pocket. If you are, you should have a say. If not, it’s up to her if she’ll be paying $100–200 per month or $500–600+ per month on student loans after graduation.

I wish you luck in this difficult situation. And PLEASE advise her against (and never consign for) a personal college loan. These are a bad idea! With her smarts, she should be able to attend college with scholarships, grants, and government-based student loans. If she can’t, the school is too expensive.

She wants to go for the prestige (in my opinion). She also feels like taking all AP classes means she’s earned it.

@GloriaEstefan Earned what? Debt?

@livelaughlove21 you don’t have to convince me.

“she’s earned it.” Might be time to sit her down to discuss expectations.
Maybe she does have a good bead on what an ivy-league-class university will mean for her, and maybe not. And how it would really be different from a university on the next level ‘down’.
For an undergraduate some mundane schools will provide more attention and better instruction at that level. At ‘elite’ schools a lot of professors are far more concerned about their latest research or presentation to pay any attention to the students.
There is also the cliché of the students at ‘elite’ schools being quite self-entitled and snobby and pretentious. I’d find that repulsive but some people thrive in a socially competitive environment.

It’s an important step, choosing the best education for your child at this stage of their lives.
In fact you could say that we seal our fate with the choices we make ;¬}

@dabbler She feels entitled because some of her relatives went to Ivy League schools.

I feel that anything over 20k is too much to spend on education each year.

It’s sad that the question basically entails a personal cost benefit analysis, because the actual worth of an education should always be a net positive—to the individual and to the society at large. Of course, there are exceptions; if she intends to study anything related to business, finance, or marketing…

Just pause to consider what it means to be indefinitely burdened with student debt. It’s a signal that what one has learned is of less value to society than the actual cost of the education. It seems to me that this is a quite deliberate attempt to disenfranchise the poor and less affluent from enjoying the personal development of an education—diminishing the net contribution to the intellectual and cultural flourishing of the society.

This is something of an aside, but I’m hoping that the internet and communications technology will allow for free alternatives to develop. The basic resources to learn most things are already freely available, but what colleges and universities offer (other than the diploma) is the social environment which allows for mutual support and exchange of ideas—it’s this last part that needs to be effectively recreated to replace costly institutional education.

I wouldn’t pay $20k. I probably wouldn’t pay $2k, but that’s just me.

I’m echoing what @dabbler said. At prestigious Ivy League schools, the professors are often under such pressure to keep researching and writing that they don’t have much time or energy for actual teaching. At the college I went to, I was in small classes with professors teaching me directly from my very first semester. It’s only from being in grad school at a prestigious name-brand university now that I realize how very lucky I was to have that unusual undergrad education.

And about how AP classes means she’s “earned” the right to go to an Ivy League… Wow, reality check needed. AP classes only seem difficult because American public education is generally such a joke to begin with.

“In 2011, the cost to attend Harvard was approximately $40,000 per year. Without taking in to account any tuition increases over four years, an undergraduate will pay $160,000 for his or her Ivy League education. Contrast that with a state school like Ohio State University where the tuition is a mere $9,711 for Ohio residents or $24,759 for out-of-state residents.”

“They found that when a student performed high enough to enter an Ivy League school, but instead went to a second-tier school, they earned just as much money as their Ivy League counterparts. This study was released again in 2007 with updated data and it came to the same conclusion as the original study.”

MSN

Spending $160k on school sounds ridiculous. I could buy a condo and send her to UCLA for that.

How defined is her career objective? If she wants to be a big city tax attorney, attending an East coast Ivy League school might be advantageous when she starts looking for her first job. If she’s thinking that she wants to be some kind of lawyer, she probably wouldn’t get her money’s worth.

Attending an undergraduate state school would give her time to hone her objectives. Then, she could go to a more prestigious grad school. When I see bios of people in public sector jobs, this is often the path they chose.

Why don’t you tell her what you’ll pay, and let her figure out how to pay the rest. Let me tell you this. You are awfully generous. That should get her into Harvard or Princeton and she’ll keep 20k a year in profit. Why? Because if you get into those schools, they pay your way.

You should encourage your daughter to apply where she wants to. Do not worry about money until you have the financial aid packages. The sticker price of most schools is not the actual price after financial aid. The schools that look expensive, aren’t, because they have huge endowments. The real expensive schools are surprising schools, like Drexel, which somehow offers very little aid.

There is a website that tells you the average amount of aid a school offers. That’s a better gauge of the cost. But you really don’t know until you’ve been offered a package. If your daughter is all AP classes in a really good high school and she gets a 4.1 GPA, and gets 95th percentile on the SAT or ACT or better, and she has lots of clubs and activities and she is a leader, then there’s no way she won’t be able to go almost anywhere she wants for free.

Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, Amherst and Williams all cost upwards of 50K a year. Their students pay less than 30. Well, there’s variation, but it’s kind of like that. If your daughter wants to go into business, she should go to Williams. Lot of business geeks there. But then she might make money when she gets out of grad school.

I would not be concerned about her earnings immediately after college. On average, People with a college degree make at least ten thousand a year more than those with high school degrees.

I’m trying to remember what I learned about the comparison between prestigious schools and state schools. There is a difference, but I think it depends on something else in addition to school. Like what field you go into. Oh. I remember.

It is better to go to a state school if your grades make you top of the pack there, than to go to a prestigious school if that only puts you below average there. Your earnings will be better if you are at the top of the class than in the middle of the class. So if your daughter goes to a prestigious school, she better be good enough to get a good aid package, otherwise it will be better for her to go to a state school.

Well the good news is scholarships.

I go to a school that costs a ridiculous amount per year, don’t even want to say it, but I got a badass scholarship which brought it down nearly to the cost of a state school.

Students who do well in high school generally can afford to go to a “fancy” (private) colleges via merit scholarships and need based financial aid.

@Mariah I have to disagree there. I was constantly told in high school (by teachers, counselors, etc) that, with my grades, I would get a free ride at my college of choice. I was in all honors and AP classes and, like I said, ended up with a 4.1 GPA. My parents are very low income, so I also got need-based assistance.

Even at a state university, I’ll graduate with $25k in debt. People tell kids they’ll coast through college with no problem, but this isn’t true as often as it should be. I could NEVER afford an Ivy League school, even if the school paid some of it. Those great scholarships are few and far between. I applied to many and only got one small one.

My point is that no blanket statement can be made about how easily a good high school student can afford to go to an expensive school.

OK, my only point is that she should still apply to these dream schools of hers, get her financial paid package, and see if it’s workable.

@Mariah Except at $50 an application, it’s still pretty painful.

I attended a Cal State for my education and am enrolled at the same university for my Master’s Degree. My entire undergraduate education was fully funded by the state, and my graduate education costs me roughly $220 per quarter, which I am more than able to pay with as I have been employed by the school since my senior year. My classes rarely exceeded 28 students and I am close to a number of the professors at the university who are more than willing to act as a referral and write letters of recommendation for me—and are better able to do so since they have worked more closely with me than they would have were our classes doubled in size.

I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything in the world. My education has cost me more time than money. I doubt that I would have been happier at a UC, let alone an Ivy League. It’s just not the education environment that I wanted. I am ambitious, driven, and passionate about education, and I didn’t get the same vibe from most of the AP students I went to school with (I was not a straight-A student until my senior year of high school.)

It’s great that your daughter is ambitious, but it’s more important that she be realistic. Not that she won’t get into the schools, not that she won’t get a scholarship to the schools, but that she should maintain those ambitions without the expectation that you are going to pay for her complete education if she wants the most expensive one that the world can offer.

My parents have only paid for the gas money to drive me to the bus stop. If I were forced into taking huge loans, I would only accept them knowing that I wouldn’t ask my parents for a single penny.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s important to know you have options and you should keep them open. An Ivy League education doesn’t have to cost any money. Then again, even if it’s free, it may not be the right place to go. I know of several people who went to Harvard because of the name, and they wish they hadn’t gone. It wasn’t the right place for them. They went just because of the name.

You should select a school because it is right for the student. That means the student needs to know clearly what they are looking for. They should have visited ten or twenty schools to get a good idea of what the differences are. In this way, they can really know what they want, and be pretty sure which school that is (or schools).