kazoospec said:We just got the happy news that one of the schools my son is looking at thinks it's reasonable that we should be able to contribute 30% of our household gross income PER YEAR for him to attend and, therefore, little/no financial aid will be offered.
As ridiculous as this is, this is a normal expectation these days, right?
Also, that's adjusted gross, right? Make sure you max that 401k, its like double-sheltering :P
STM317 said:Duke said:In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :
DD#2 got accepted to University of Chicago in 2014. While it was more than we were willing to afford, it was nowhere near $70k a year. That seems suspect to me.
They're probably including room and board in those numbers:
"Tuition for the 2019-2020 school year is $57,642, while room and board on-campus costs roughly $17,004 per year". Add books, lab fees, etc and you're well over $75k per year.
We didn't qualify for the subsidies, but I can't argue with the numbers you posted. I sure don't recall the tuition being that high at all.
In reply to ProDarwin :
Nope, unadjusted gross income.
kazoospec said:In reply to ProDarwin :
Nope, unadjusted gross income.
Ah, ok :( I was assuming they went off FAFSA, which uses AGI.
In state tuition for Colorado at Boulder is $26k/year all in. That assumes living on campus and being on the meal plan, so $104k for the 4 years. For an out of state resident it's more like $55k a year. Univ of Cali is $29k a year in state, out of state is $63k, back in '88 when I graduated high school it was $6k a year for in state.
The stratospheric increases in tuition don't line up with the education you receive...
I'm pretty sure I previously linked up the John Mulaney standup where he talks about the tuition he paid to get a degree in a language he already speaks... Find it, if you haven't seen it.
Starting up a new degree soon, so my points are really just bulleted off-the-top details and nothing else.
ProDarwin said:kazoospec said:In reply to ProDarwin :
Nope, unadjusted gross income.
Ah, ok :( I was assuming they went off FAFSA, which uses AGI.
That's what we assumed as well. Nope. When my wife was helping him look into it, this school basically said, "you can fill FAFSA if you want, but your eligibility will be determined by our own matrix, so you might as well fill that out." Ironically, from everything we've read, he could "emancipate", drop out of schooling for a year, work a minimum wage job for a year, then apply with only his own income and pretty much attend with everything covered. Fortunately, there are still other more affordable options.
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
I'm glad you are taking the steps to better yourself. I'm here to help you accomplish that if you need any help/advice...
I also went to a hands dirty type of school... Engineering though. It's worked out well..
Good luck my friend.
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
It might depend on the chosen field? In my little sliver of the engineering world, where the degree comes from matters less than having one. Or more importantly, having experience. A good number of the engineers I work with have degrees from universities from other countries.
In Reply to Fueled by Caffine :
Thanks bro! Hopefully, I won't need it 
Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
It might depend on the chosen field? In my little sliver of the engineering world, where the degree comes from matters less than having one. Or more importantly, having experience. A good number of the engineers I work with have degrees from universities from other countries.
It absolutely does! Engineering needs those certs to show you understand complex math, and some areas also need practical experience over good grades- Medicine is in this weird spot where lots depend on adaptability (as the American medical system gets worse) and the ability to learn fast- good grades are obviously fantastic, but reccomendations from teachers tend to place you directly into ICUs and stepdown units directly our of school instead of nursing homes. It's why I stated my comment off the top of my head; every field is so different that you can easily make a faux pas without knowing- like I did!
I suppose the difference would be "Understanding what this degree will get you and the average that entitles" and "Understanding poor behaviors in your industry, what looks better to a prospective employer, and the like".
I don't know if it's been mentioned but it was Stossel I think that pointed out a couple of small benefits.
Later pay in to social security paired with better life expectancy and longer pay out.
Small but not nothing.
It seems quaint now, but Georgia Tech's in-state tuition and fees were about $2,500 per year when I started college. Today it's about five times higher--and none of my kids are college-age yet. In the meantime, the minimum wage hasn't even doubled and median household income has only increased by 23%.
If you have girls and they have some athletics ability put them in a sport like competitive swimming early on. Thanks to equality requirements many universities scramble to fill female sports programs because they need to provide equal moment to the male dominated ball sports. So you will see top tier schools with for example a women's swim team but no men's, and they need to spend enough to equal what they give the football team. As a result full rides for female swimmers and water polo players etc are surprisingly common. I know three canadian girls with full rides to American div one schools. They are all pretty good swimmers but not close to the top.
My granddaughters first boyfriend co-enrolled in our community college (for free) for his junior and senior HS years. Nearly every class he took applied to both his HS diploma and his college degree. He also took some summer community college courses.
He ended up entering college as a junior, reducing his costs by half
In reply to EmmaNewman :
You can cut your expenses by paddling to class.
Things may have changed since then, but my dentist told me he enlisted in the Navy. They paid for the schooling and he had to give them 7 years, he also noted that when getting out of college and buying into a shop (more debt) you start slow with drilling & filling. In the military he got experience you just can't buy. Total work ups, accident victims, reconstruction and technology you can't afford on the outside.
No regrets. YMMV.
This thread nudged me to look up the costs to go to the school my sons both went to( Saginaw Valley State). Their website says about $23K to live in campus housing , plus pocket money and a car. MY boys graduated over 10 years ago and at that time we spent about $60K each on their schooling. They had to save for pocket money and books. So, basically the cost has now doubled. I'll bet the average wage in this country hasn't even remotely come close to doubling in that same time frame. Go back to my university days in Canada (early 1970s) and I could get a summer job, in a union shop and save almost enough over four months to put myself through the next two semesters. My parents helped the first two or three years , but couldn't after all three of us were in school simultaneously. We all graduated with less than $1000 each in debt. To put that in perspective, my first job as a project engineer paid $1100/month. You couldn't possibly do that today....summer wages are too low......tuition is too high.......pay upon graduation is low. As my grandsons grow up I'm not sure what to tell them to do.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:This thread nudged me to look up the costs to go to the school my sons both went to( Saginaw Valley State). Their website says about $23K to live in campus housing , plus pocket money and a car. MY boys graduated over 10 years ago and at that time we spent about $60K each on their schooling. They had to save for pocket money and books. So, basically the cost has now doubled. I'll bet the average wage in this country hasn't even remotely come close to doubling in that same time frame. Go back to my university days in Canada (early 1970s) and I could get a summer job, in a union shop and save almost enough over four months to put myself through the next two semesters. My parents helped the first two or three years , but couldn't after all three of us were in school simultaneously. We all graduated with less than $1000 each in debt. To put that in perspective, my first job as a project engineer paid $1100/month. You couldn't possibly do that today....summer wages are too low......tuition is too high.......pay upon graduation is low. As my grandsons grow up I'm not sure what to tell them to do.
My oldest chose not to do college. Son #2 is paying his own way through 2 years of community college, then looking at transfers (why pay more for those credits than you have to?). Son #3... jury is still out. He is looking at a different path.
When I started college, 12 credits (twelve!) was $250 in 1977. That's roughly $1100 today.
914Driver said:Things may have changed since then, but my dentist told me he enlisted in the Navy. They paid for the schooling and he had to give them 7 years, he also noted that when getting out of college and buying into a shop (more debt) you start slow with drilling & filling. In the military he got experience you just can't buy. Total work ups, accident victims, reconstruction and technology you can't afford on the outside.
No regrets. YMMV.
A Volvo club friend did something similar - he was an Army dentist for some number of years. Despite enlisting in the late 60's, he somehow didn't end up stationed at Vietnam. IIRC, he did his entire service Stateside.
Friend of mine was a Navy dental tech, spent all 4 years in Orlando. I went to Navy cook school and graduated #2 in the class, got orders for London to be a personal hey boy for some Admiral. #1 in class went to Camp David. Day before leaving I got called into the office, "We see that you volunteered for submarine duty".... They thought me offering to "Unvolunteer" was hilarious!
With my wife and I being 20 weeks pregnant as of tomorrow, this is a topic I've been concerned about. I've been stashing $20-$40 per paycheck into a stock account to invest, but I know I'll need to up that. Our primary hope/plan is to raise Avi in a household that values hard work, education, and STEM topics and find ways to make the little guy enjoy all these topics so he'll do well in school and earn a scholarship. Failing that, hopefully we can save enough or maybe as a last resort he can join the reserves or national guard or something - while the benefits of the GI Bill are awesome (I used it) I don't like the thought of having to potentially risk your life in war just to pay for an education.
On the topic of scholarships, there's a TON of them out there that go unused. When I graduated high school, my grades were just okay (mostly Bs) buy my parents insisted I go to college, so I started looking everywhere. Within a day I found a local college that offered two full ride scholarships per year, so I and a girl applied. We were the only ones that applied, and we were both awarded those scholarships.
infinitenexus said:I don't like the thought of having to potentially risk your life in war just to pay for an education.
My wife grew up in homes that were absolutely terrible with finances, so she was conditioned to see free=good. She went into NROTC as a nurse and did fine and made killer money for a nurse, but she joked once that our daughters can go to college for free just like she did. I basically said what you said verbatim, haha. I bailed last minute going to West Point because I figured that if I was going to put in that much work for the military then I'd make a career out of it, and I didn't want to be a career officer. Instead, I went to a cheap state school within commuting distance and my parents put up the roughly $3k/semester. I figured any ABET accredited engineering program was equal. My dad now admits that he thought I was idiot at the time, but it has paid off in spades. After moving states a couple times, I ended back up within commuting distance to that same school, so I'll give you three guesses what the plan is for my daughters if they don't have solid aspirations that can only be met elsewhere. And I just checked, tuition and fees is $7k/yr which sounds perfectly reasonable in light of everything.
GIRTHQUAKE said:Starting up a new degree soon, so my points are really just bulleted off-the-top details and nothing else.
- An interesting point a friend of mine made was that the amount of "free money"- i.e. in grants and federal assistance programs- means colleges are caught in an odd position of actually wanting more and more people to enroll and pay, but not necessarily graduate. This is because most people pay for college through installment plans, whereas those grants and such can be in liquid cash as lump sums- they are also accredited institutions whom likely will have the money, while a single person might loose a job and have to default. This means colleges can now charge what they want without quick or sudden retribution from the free market and the like.
- Out of state tuition is just absurd to me; my state college has it, but it's only $4-5 over the stock tuition which is under $100 anyway. What's the point?
- The last 4 years has seen a massive uptick in the amount of "HURR, TRADE JERB BETTR THN STOOPID LIBERAL FARTS DEGREE HURR" posts throughout social media, which really hastened me leaving most of those platforms- and most of those whom were reposting that crap, were like myself and making $15/hour or thereabouts. Like STM317 thouched on, there's millions whom are turning to this tribalist bullE36 M3 mindset to justify their decisions when in reality, I believe BOTH systems need to be used because of how volatile working in America has become. I've been in EMS for nearly 10 years and a manager for part of that; my wages have never gone up and people are shocked when they learn how little I make or how poor most of my benefits have been.
- There are fields where your test results and responses from your teachers/peers matters more than the college you went to- Medicine is one of them. You need to know your schools reputation. The one I chose has a rep of taking working-class people already working Medicine and getting them degrees- their students are looked upon highly despite low tuition costs because they typically have already been "in the field" and aren't greenhorns. Contrast to a nearby "top tier" school which is now floating $720 a credit hour- they're a phenominal college, but they cater to rich kinds only. They won't get their hands dirty right away, and everyone knows that.
- berkeley the American mindset towards college. When I have kids, I'm imposing onto them that there's no shame at ALL in taking your time, so long as a degree is in hand and you make enough money to be happy. You shouldn't NEED a degree to make enough money to be happy in America, but them's the breaks. I'm lucky to have multiple colleges treated like public utilities here, with costs less than $80/credit hour. Find them, use them for your prerequisites. If you don't take the short time to find cheaper, should you even get the degree in the first place?
I missed this the first time around but I'll touch on the trades thing you mentioned.
First off, $15 is not viable in the trades at all. It was 20 years ago but unless you are the absolute bottom of the barrel, you aren't making less than $20. People push trades because you basically can walk into a job , make a livable wage right away, make much much more in a short amount of time and there's bunches of trade jobs available. $40 an hour isn't an unrealistic goal and I've made over $100 an hour several times in my life. I do primarily concrete.
Also saying that it's tied to one political spectrum is totally wrong.
Some people don't like construction and I don't begrudge them but to totally dismiss it like you did is at best foolish.
I do think that people have moved away from seeing college as a way to get a career and more as "hey look! More school!" I know quite a lot of people that have an impressive education and work as say....a barista for minimum wage.
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