We had to make an agonizing decision last week. Although our
very smart, talented, hard-working senior HS daughter was accepted to NYU, her “dream” school, she has decided to enroll at UMASS-Amherst for next fall. Statistically we rank as an upper-income family (annual gross income well above $200K)we could not justify the $52,000 price
tag for NYU compared with the $15,000 +/- price (adjusting for the free tuition MCAS bonus)for UMASS.
While the decision was very difficult, I believe UMASS offers her many excellent opportunities and we will be able to give her an undergraduate degree without taking on debt and adding stress to the family finances.

College costs have been rising faster than inflation over
the last 2+ decades, coinciding with the decline in long-term interest rates that have made mortgages and home equity loans cheaper. Until recently, home equity loans have been relatively easy to get because of increasing house prices.

If many people finance their children’s education with easy-to-get home equity loans, and if they are sensitive only to monthly payment levels, have historically low mortgage rates effectively made people more tolerant of high tuition costs? Now that home loans are harder to get, will colleges have to slow tuition increases?

Alternatively, will colleges use “price discrimination”, whereby they increase the “sticker price” but offer discounts to people less able to pay (a strategy analogous to the airlines charging business travelers more than others on the same flight). Harvard has moved in
that direction with their lowering of tuition for families making less than $180K/yr.

I took 2 years off between high school and college. I moved
into the city, worked at low-paying jobs, supported myself, and sowed my wild oats.

That is probably the only reason why I did so well in college. It made an incredible difference in maturity and motivation. I was always serious about my studies, missed only 1 class in 3 years, and did very little partying.

The #1 factor was that I was in college, because I wanted to learn, not because my parents told me to go.

The last time I tried get a carpenter for work on my house,
it took almost a year. If I had a son, I’d advise him to go to trade school rather than go into debt for 10 years to get a job that probably doesn’t pay as much as a skilled craftsman.

Remember, these days even white collar jobs are being outsourced.

In my father’s generation, high school graduates were hired to do a lot of the jobs that today require a college degree. And they did them just as well.

And we seem to think today that college is for everyone. When 2/3 of Americans are going to college, there are college students with below average intelligence.

Of course,
a) When I went to UMass, it was dirt cheap, even accounting for inflation.
b) I was in that minority who went to college to learn, not to get a career, though I did wind up getting a career.
c) Yes, I do have a degree and a key.

If students want to save tens of thousands of dollars, why not work hard to take lots of AP courses along with a few community college courses while in high school, and then place as a sophomore or junior in your first year of state college?

I have a freshman at UMass Amherst.  My concern is many students often use UMass as their fallback school if they are not accepted to their first choice.  Now they may be choosing more for the price than for the fact they were not accepted in other places.Â
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I assume UMass and other colleges accept students with a mind to the fact that only a certain percentage will actually go there.  I’m guessing that this fall’s freshman class will be much larger than usual?  Have State colleges taken this into account?  Or will the campus be ‘bursting’ with freshmen this fall?
 

The discussion misses a huge problem: middle-class families
in high-cost Massachusetts whose EFC is greater than $50K year but whose kids aren’t able to gain admission to Harvard or Stanford, which have begun using their wealth to reduce costs of middle-class families.

It’s still true that the truly brilliant and the most needy can afford college, but what about the effect of bankrupting middle-class families who are expected to fund $200K educations without subsidized loans or assistance?

What is the reason that college should be entered right after high and be completed in 4 years?
When my daughter first went into college, she was at a private college that at that time, was $30,000 per year. She withdrew before she finished her freshman year. She is now 24 years old and has made the decision to go back. She will be a full time student this fall. because she is 24 the advantage is that her father’s and my income is
not considered when she applies for financial aid. As a result she has qualified for much more money. This allows her father and myself to help out more. In a perfect world everyone goes to school right after high school,
but we don’t have a perfect world and maybe we should think outside the box. Who says an 18 year is ready to make a life decision about what they want to do? Also, an older student tends to be more committed and serious.

I graduated May of ‘07 from a private college in western NY.
During my four years tuition was raised by 5% every year. Yet our education programs didn’t get any more funding. The college said that they put all our money into newer better campuses to attract more students. Why are we paying more for our “education” when the money isn’t going towards classes?