be 30, 50, 100 thousand dollars in debt And Flippin burgers...

[pbmus]

Bernie Sanders: "It is basically insane to tell the young people of this country, ‘we want you to go out and get the best education you can. We want you to get the jobs of the future. Oh, but, by the way, after you leave school, you’re going to be 30, 50, 100 thousand dollars in debt."

https://www.facebook.com/TheHill/

[Warpy]

1. That's because wages are so depressed in this country

People used to be able to save for the kids' educations. I knew a garbage man back in Boston who put 8 kids through school.

Now they can't even save for a down payment, their retirement, or even a rainy day.

I still say kids will be best off if they skip university and learn a good, solid trade. Plumbing and hairdressing can't be offshored, there is high demand for the workers, and they'll be ahead of a lot of college grads in both pay and reduced debt load.

[dionysus]

14. That worka for only ao long before thoae areas too, become saturated...

[Warpy]

19. Dunno, I doubt that will happen, the work is far too unglamorous

and a lot of suburban kiddies only want jobs where they can keep their hands relatively clean.

I took my own advice and went into nursing. No chance of saturation there, hours are long and the work is heavy and frequently disgusting and occasionally dangerous. I did much better than my peers who went into non trade fields in mid life.

[raccoon]

27. You got that right,

I doubt that will happen, the work is far too unglamorous

[RKP5637]

29. I see this as excellent advice, because we are now in survival mode. Often good solid trades pay way

more than a college graduate gets when one sums up the layoffs, job searches and all. Also, sometimes, one can be more independent in a solid trade, not hanging onto some corporation or chasing jobs, etc. Some jobs, of course, require advanced education. ... but if one is on the fence and does not have the zest and innate drive for advanced education, etc., then IMO, they should also look at good solid trades.

[mythology]

34. People who have a college degree earn substantially more

Than those with just a high school diploma. They are more likely to be employed, have health insurance, be married and a number of other positive socioeconomic levels.

A bachelor's degree on average means somebody will make 66% more over a 40 year career over a high school diploma. A master's degree is worth nearly double.

[Warpy]

35. They used to. That has now changed

due to automation, offshoring, and mergers. Office work is no longer the route to a fat paycheck and the debt load ensures that the graduate won't be able to consider entrepreneurship or even do the ordinary American dream things of getting married, having a few kids and buying a tract house to keep a roof over their heads. Suburban kids who major in any of the liberal arts fields are largely screwed.

Your statistics are badly outdated. Things are very different for Americans under 30 these days.

[MADem]

2. Many colleges cater to students who want luxury accommodations.

Kids who just want a decent education get caught in the squeeze, especially at schools where living on campus is mandatory.

Even mid-tier colleges that used to be reasonably priced now have fancy apartments that are nicer than any accommodation I had, during or post grad, and many demand that their students live on - campus.

It's a profit making scheme. Gone forever are the two-to-a-room, shared bathroom down the hall arrangements for many students. Dorm rooms used to be the Great Leveler--rich or poor, you all had the same set-up, and only the stinking richies got a "single." Nowadays, it's like living at the Ritz.

One can get a fine education at an established community college/state school, too. New England has some great state schools.

[yeoman6987]

3. 1,000,000 times yes

That gets ignored and it agrivatez me so much. Sorry kids don't need granite counters in their bathrooms and kitchenettes. Go to bunkbeds and a desk like we all did. Have a regular dining hall not a freaking gormet upscale Resturant basically. Crazy!!!!

[dionysus]

15. At my school, all the campus apartments were like that, there wasn't a less

Affordable option. Every new complex they built was fancier and fancier, more and more $$$... as they also phased out or tore down the dilapidated old apartments.

[HeartachesNhangovers]

4. It's true. I shared a room when I was on campus

and also off campus (1979-1983 at a UC school in CA). It was a great motivator to get the hell out of there and get on with my life. On the other hand room and board (you could get a meal plan even if you lived off campus) were heavily subsidized. In theory, there was no tuition, although they had just started to raise "fees" every year. Still, I tell people that it was cheaper to go to college than to not go to college (!) because the subsidized room and board costs and the still-low fees added up to less than what it would cost for rent and food if you weren't a student. And the UC system was the "expensive" school system in CA!

Even then, it was tempting to stay in school instead of joining the rat race. I imagine that temptation might be even stronger if you have your own room.

[NobodyHere]

5. Part of it is market competition

People started to realize that college dorms were a ripoff, so developers started building decent apartments near the colleges and college kids moved off campus. To counter this colleges started building better dorms.

[MADem]

9. And then they started mandating living on campus...

For "esprit de corps" and so forth (ka-ching). They also encourage students to wear school sweatshirts/tee shirts (ka-ching, college bookstore) and I have to say, I'm shocked at how many of them comply with this.

When I was a kid, if "the man" told me to wear the school colors, I'd show them the color of my middle finger--I came up in the "Don't tell ME what to do" era (LOL). It's a very different time, nowadays. Youngsters are not in a hurry to grow up--25 is the new 21, I think.

[pstokely]

16. and many of those old dorms have reached the end of their lifespans

the trend in new dorm construction is suites, many kids didn't even have a share a bathroom at home, a lot of fancy things like rec centers are paid for with fees that are voted on by students, but college student turnout in presidential elections is already low, they don't show up to vote for or against student fees, the high coaches salaries come out of athletic revenue or booster donations

[Lee-Lee]

6. So true. There is a school not far from me with valet parking

Seems "cool" when you are 18 and looking at schools but when you are 25 and have an extra $20,000 in debt because of that "cool" valet parking and apartment style dorms and 6 restaurants on campus it's not so cool..

[politicat]

7. ... I hear this a lot. It's not true.

Let's first talk statistics.

-- In 1960, the median private college population was 2000 students and the median state school population was 5,000. The 2015 medians are 10,000 for private and 25,000 to 50,000 for states.
-- In 1960, the average cost to keep one adult sheltered, fed and with running water, heat and electricity was about $100 a month or $1200 a year, which translates to about $9300-9700 in 2016 dollars. In 2016, it's $7,000 to $10,000 a year, depending on where.
-- In 1960, the largest single line item for a college's living expenses was the food budget, followed by energy, and service on bond or debt, then labor costs. Today, the largest single line item, if providing the exact same services in the same way as in 1960, would be the labor costs, and it would cost almost 3 times as much to provide that level of service. The unskilled jobs that 1960 colleges provided -- kitchen staff, cleaners, maintenance -- provided a comfortable working class life for the employees. Those same jobs today do not provide or barely provide a living wage. In contrast, food and infrastructure costs have fallen dramatically, and bond/debt service has been between 0 and 2% for more than a decade.
-- In 1960, the average dorm building was a 2-3 story building, housing between 100 and 400 people, and most schools, private or public, had dorm space for 90% of their student populations.
-- In 1960, less than 20% of households could even conceive of sending any child to college at all. Today, 90% of students can attain some level of higher education, at either the community college/technical training level or at a four year university.
-- In 1960, the average dorm building was constructed to be fully renovated every decade, and the buildings were built with 30-50 year useful lives, because all buildings were built to that standard. They were energy inefficient and often entirely inaccessible to the disabled.
-- In 1960, land costs for expansion were generally low for any institution.

I work for a state uni that recently spent many tens of millions on new high rise dorms. We had to build high rise -- we don't have room to go outwards. There's a city, and national and state parks in the way. Our total dorm capacity (when complete late next year) will be able to house 80% of our undergraduate population. (We have graduate and family housing for 50% of the grad/family population, and those graduate students willing to live in undergrad dorms are welcome to live there but they're last in line for that housing.) About 10% of our undergraduate population are commuter students (who live at home) and about 5% live in Greek or private co-housing. The rest live in the private market. The local private housing market for students is expensive, often sub-standard, and has a history of ugly code violations. The high rises replace housing that was built between 1946 and 1965 and had multiple issues, from lead to asbestos to wiring issues to accessibility issues. Most of that housing was thrown up fast and dirty, because returning veterans, then the baby boom generation vastly outstripped the capacity at the time.

These new dorms are 100 year buildings. They're built to be energy efficient, sustainable, structurally stable, easy to clean, accessible to everyone, and upgradeable as needs change. And they're getting a ton of criticism just like yours, because they're more expensive per square foot than the average suburban house. But the average house is built to last 50 years, not 100, and is not built to house 40,000 people a year for 100 years. Compare apples to apples -- we're building the residential equivalent of cathedrals -- built to last, built for the masses.

University student populations have vastly expanded. We also now recognize that our students have specific, adult human rights that previous generations denied to them. The right to pee in privacy, regardless of gender or assignment. The right not to be hazed in the bathroom. The right to have adult private time, alone or with another. The right to choose their own food. The right to an education, even if their legs can't carry them or their eyes don't see. And the right to not live in squalor.

In 1960, the average university student lost 3 days per semester to sickness. By 1985, that number had increased to 7 days, due to larger populations housed at higher density. We now have that number down to 4.4 lost days, in part because we looked at what causes epidemics in high density living situations. Shared bathrooms were the #1 cause, and it's obvious when you think about it. The oral-fecal route to gastro-intestinal sickness becomes very easy when 30 people are all using a shared toilet-shower space, and those toilets don't have lids. Get a stomach bug, puke or squat it out, flush the toilet and that stuff gets aerosolized all over the walls, floor and sink handles. Then 30 people use the same room, are exposed, and keep the infection going. When someone gets sick in a dorm -- and they do, and it's not just because they have a hangover -- the best practices are quarantine: stay in room, stay in bed, don't use a shared toilet. Same with respiratory viruses. This is why we build dorms with private or semi-private (2-3 users) baths instead of shared floor toilet rooms and why we build individual sleeping rooms for 1-2 people instead of 2-4. We're doing the exact same thing that hospitals did by moving away from the ward model to the shared room model to the private room model -- infection control and morale. Universities are Petri dishes full of plague -- lots of people from lots of places and all that RNA is happy to recombine and spread. We prefer to not make that situation any worse than it has to be. Healthy students perform better, and then we profs and researchers don't have to take ick home, either.

Our dorms are 2 and 4 bedroom pods around a small, central shared space with compact cooking and food storage facilities, and larger common areas on each floor. A 2 pod has one bathroom, a 4 pod has two. Each pod bedroom is either 8x10 or 10x10. The 10s can be a double by choice, but all rooms are intended as a single. Every apartment is ADA accessible -- we have showers, not bathtubs, the showers all have floor drains and hand-held heads (these are easier to clean) and we put grab bars in every bath. Every kitchen has a refrigerator, cabinets, dishwasher, an induction stove-top, a steel sink set in granite countertops and a garbage disposal. Our RAs have 100 students under their leadership, and one of the most common causes of arguments were dishes. It also turns out that dishwashers are more water efficient than hand washing. Induction stovetops cannot start fires like a hot-plate or a gas/electric stove. Formica countertops have a 5 year life-span in a shared environment. Granite will last for at least 40 years. We tiled all of the bathrooms, because we can scrub, repair grout and reseal each summer, and the tile will last for 25 years. A fiberglass insert has a 5-7 year lifespan. We used resilient and tile flooring instead of carpet, because it's easier to keep clean and lasts longer. We insulated the hell out of those buildings, not only for energy efficiency, but because noise complaints are the #2 cause of arguments. The old model for dorm space has always been to allow 150 sq feet per resident (not including halls and stairs/elevators) with that space shared between public and private or semi-private spaces. Our students average about 90 square feet of private space, 20 square feet of semi-private space, and 25 square feet of public space. We're finding that everyone is happier, more productive, their grades are improving (and that's why they're here) and the private model takes less space, meaning we can have more students for the same amount of infrastructure. It's amazing how much better life is when one has a door one can close.

Individual bathrooms or baths shared by no more than 4 people at most are less prone to leakage. This is a tragedy of the commons problem -- when 30 people are using a shared shower room, everyone has an incentive to make a mess and nobody has an incentive to clean it up. Puddles lead to leaks, leaks lead to mold, mildew and fungi, and wetness leads to structural damage. Well-built apartment buildings do not have the water management problems that old type dorms historically had, because when people have a sense of ownership over their own bathrooms, they don't trash them.

We still provide food on campus, but we don't have a cafeteria/buffet/dining hall where cooks prepare three enormous meals per day for 2000-5000 people. For one, we have 40,000 people. Even the largest cruise ships cannot feed 40K people three times a day. Cruise ships top out at about 7000 people max. We would need the capacity of 6 ships to provide that sort of dining service. We have students who don't eat certain things for religious and health reasons. Again, they're adults. This is their right. We have food providers tucked into many spaces all over campus, some in the dorm buildings, some in the instructional areas, and our dining services card (meal plan) can be used at partner businesses near campus. This includes a standard grocery store -- and not a "company store" model; it's where private citizens like me buy our groceries, too. We have a kosher eatery, a halal one, a lot of vegetarian providers, sandwich shops, noodle and rice bowl stands, pizza and burrito bars, coffee bars, bakeries, diners, smoothie carts... and we encourage the residents to pick, make and eat their own cooking by providing them the facilities to do so. Again, it's an financial efficiency thing -- if we provided the service model that colleges of 60 years ago used, the costs to our students would triple and the quality of those services would be diminished. The economy of scale for 40K people is vastly different from the economy of scale for 5000.

And we are doing this for less -- in inflation adjusted dollars -- than it cost 60 years ago. Our average student pays right around $12K a year for room and board, in actual costs. Scholarship students may pay nothing -- we do offer full ride, including room and board, scholarships. Some students get partial funding; some are paying full cash price (usually international and out of state students; it tops at $19K). A 1960 student would be paying $163 per month -- which was about the take-home pay for a full time, minimum wage job -- (1470 per year) for a private room, semi-private bath and living room, access to two pools, several gyms, climbing walls, medical services, mental health services, their choices of food 3 meals a day, 7 days a week for 9 months of the year. Plus all utilities, including the ones that didn't exist in 1960 -- internet access and cable. Oh, and transportation -- our students all have passes for the regional transit system.

It costs our students and the state a lot less money for them to make their own breakfast smoothies or egg sandwiches than to staff 40 full time cafeterias and buffets. All of our frosh are required to live in the dorms; it's optional after the first year. Most stay, even the very rich kids. The smart ones realize that private housing is less well constructed and regulated. The cost is about the same -- it costs about $10,000 a year to feed, house and provide utilities for one person, and private market housing can be disgusting. It can be done piecemeal, paying rent and groceries and arguing over the internet bill, or it can be done with a lump sum payment as dorm and meal plan. And it remains a good social leveler -- the difference is that we're raising the level instead of dropping it.

Don't tell me that dorms in the old days were pristine and not plague wards. I experienced both the old style and the new, and the old style were sties. And we have data, which beats nostalgia every time. The cost of living is expensive, but in constant dollars, it's not significantly different. And just because people used to be miserable in their dorms is not a reason to perpetuate that misery. Humans get better at doing things. Progress is good.

[MADem]

8. Well, I beg to differ. See, I went to university in the Boston area, and I saw, first hand,

what accommodations were like at dorms at colleges all over the city (or cities--Boston and Cambridge) and, having shepherded young ones to college visits many decades later, I've SEEN with my OWN TWO EYES how much the accommodations have changed and the cost in dollars isn't even close to constant. Four or five hundred bucks a semester for dorm fees with crappy food is nothing like twenty grand with "extra charges " for dining access. Someone has to pay that Stop and Shop grocery bill if little Fauntleroy doesn't have charges for restaurants loaded on his college credit card, after all.

It's not a prison-style cafeteria anymore, it's round the clock "restaurants" with specialty foods and giant screen TVs on the walls. It's apartment living, nicer than anyone of that age and stage could afford out on the economy (how nice that parents who can pay are paying, but this locks a lot of kids out who don't have rich parents) --high rise living in some places--nicer than the Ritz Carlton. And the cost per SEMESTER is about ten grand--it's 20 grand a year to keep these kids sheltered, minus the food and other fees, and a bit more if they're on a five year plan with paid work internships. It IS significantly different and more expensive.

I'm not talking about state schools, FWIW--I'm talking about the big private schools, e.g. the BUs, the Emersons, the Northeasterns (former commuter school with some of the most overblown dorms in town now) where everyone is required to live on campus (with the exception of seniors and people in distant internships). The state schools still have the cinderblock dorms and smaller spaces--and the students interact with one another more, it seems to me.

It's not just the tuition that screws kids at these private schools--it's the housing and fees. And the prices have NOT stayed stable--they've increased, as much as 13 percent and increasing at private schools (with no option--owing to the "live aboard" requirement-- to get a crap apartment in Roxbury and push in with a half dozen people to save on room/board).

https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1976-77_2016-17-selected-years

http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/02/bu_dorm_offers_a_study_in_luxury/

[politicat]

12. The big privates... that's not my problem. I attended one state, teach at another.

I believe in public education and we do an excellent job. I have seen the reports on the endowment ponzi trap that plagues a lot of the mid-Atlantic and mid-west privates schools -- their tuition keeps going up, because tuition is supposed to cover all costs, plus a little to add into the endowment. But they have old buildings in need of major work, with lower enrollment (because this incoming generation is small -- we Xer's were a small generation, so we had fewer kids) so they're both raising tuition and dipping into endowment to keep going, when endowment is supposed to be for capital expansion, and the spiral eventually becomes impossible. Those conditions are indicative of a failing institution, not of a healthy academic environment.

When my grad students talk about their post-docs, they all look hard at three numbers: projected enrollment, actual incoming fees per student, and the endowment. Ideally, an endowment should equal at least 5 times the annual income generated by student tuition and room and board. The higher the better, because endowment is a college's reserve fund. If that number is low... and they're building flashy rather than renovation? The college is in trouble and the working environment will be frustrating because all efforts are being organized towards recruiting, not doing the work of educating/research.

I have few problems with the privates having failures. If they're sitting on an endowment they're not using, that looks like rentier behavior. If they're low endowment, they can consolidate with another institution, or give up their (usually religious) discriminatory practices and join the state system. The religiously affiliated ones are at the mercy of their loudest and most extreme donors, who may force the institution to forego certain courses of study or get the school in trouble by demanding action that bring negative publicity - looking at IL Wheaton there. And the education they provide tends to be adequate, but the public unis do it better.

I'm sorry, I don't have much sympathy for that type of private education at all -- too often, it was a tool of exclusivity, to keep precious rich white kids away from anyone unlike them. Its time has passed. I note that the HBCUs, despite many potential similarities, are keeping tuition low, housing reasonable, maintaining their endowments, making capital investments in their infrastructure, attracting students and doing good academic work. If public and HBCUS can make it work, it's not the structure of college funding. It's the behavior of the privates.

[MADem]

21. You don't have to be sorry; I think it's a study in excess and segregation, too.

My comments, though, were re: private schools. The state schools will incorporate some of these "nice to have" elements in new construction, but they generally don't go OTT like they're doing at some of the private unis. Valet parking? Concierges? It's absurd. It's like they're appealing to every half-assed princeling from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with some of these "perks." It's going to crash down on them, eventually--everything has an arc and what goes around....

[Dorian Gray]

13. 3 years ago

I went to my 20th reunion at Boston college. Stayed in the dorms. They weren't what you were describing. Cinderblocks and lumpy uncomfortable beds.

You'd think they'd be offering more comfortable accommodations for us more mature alumni.

I wish I had gotten the chance to stay at the Ritz Carlton! I may have slept some.

(Cafeteria food was slightly better than I remembered, and there were many more choices, so that much is true!)

[MADem]

20. You stayed in a "traditional" room. Either you registered late or they don't like you!

Or did they charge more for the apartments? Or maybe they just wanted you to go "back in time" to the bad old days????

The traditional rooms are usually given out to the freshmen. But BC has upgraded to "suites" and "apartments" so they don't just do the cinder block cell thing anymore. That said, there are more of those in schools that have been around since the cinder-block era, though they often try to gussy them up by making them singles and charging through the nose for them.
http://www.bc.edu/offices/reslife/lifeinhalls/residencehalls/accommodations.html

4 PERSON, 2 BEDROOM APARTMENTS
4 person, 2 bedroom apartments are located in: Gabelli, Voute, Ignacio, and Rubenstein halls.

A typical 4-person apartment at Boston College contains two, double-occupancy bedrooms, a common living room, 1 bathroom and a kitchen and dining area. The Ignacio and Rubenstein Hall 4-person apartments have 2 bathrooms. The bedrooms have approximately 170 square feet of space and the living room and dining room areas have almost 320 combined square feet of space. These bedrooms come furnished with 2 desks, 2 beds, 2 dressers, 2 desk chairs and 2 closets. The living room and dining room have a love seat, 2 chairs, a coffee table, a dining room table or breakfast bar and 4 chairs. Please be sure to bring your own linen, as it is not included with the room.


four person apartment
Please note that these images are a generalized representation of 4-person apartments at Boston College and may not depict the exact layout of apartment.

4 PERSON, 2 BEDROOM SUITE
4 person, 2 bedroom suites are located in Walsh hall.

A typical 4-person suite at Boston College contains two, double-occupancy bedrooms, a small entry way, a storage closet and a bathroom. The bedrooms have approximately 140 square feet of space. These bedrooms come furnished with 2 desks, 2 beds, 2 dressers, 2 desk chairs and 2 closets.

You probably would have done just as well to hop on the T to Govt Center and stayed at the Ritz! or go to Park St Station and stay at the OLD Ritz which is now called the Raj or something....

[Dorian Gray]

23. It was that...

a two bedroom apartment. The interior was just cinderblock. No matter the fancy wording, that's what it was. (Vanderslice Hall. It was slightly better than the mods, but it wasn't anything special or radically different than what was around in the early 90s when I was there.)

[MADem]

24. You should go back in time a few more decades!

Having an APARTMENT would have been unbelievable luxury! A kitchen? A separate living room? A crapper shared by only 4? Fancy schmancy!

Back in the day, you made grilled cheese with an IRON and some aluminum foil, and if you were real daring, you had an immersion heater (a wire you stuck in a cup of water to heat it) and a toaster (or, if you were rich a toaster OVEN) squirreled away. The super-rich kids had mini-fridges, cubes where they could stash their beer and so forth.

You could make a "hot plate" by inverting your iron, held in place by a few rolled towels (also handy for keeping the weed smell outta the halls) and using that to, make grilled cheese, or heat soup or what-have-you in a pot!



The crapper was usually a long walk down a hallway, unless you were closely situated (and then you had to listen to flushing all night)...you needed to set out for it before you REALLY needed to go...and the number of stalls was only a fraction of the number of users.

That BC living situation would have been paradise to me...!

[Dorian Gray]

25. Freshman dorms have always been like that.

Older dorms were always "suites."

Spoiled?

Any child who can pay full tuition for a private university probably is spoiled to a certain degree.

[HoneyBadger]

17. This really is a fascinating post

[politicat]

18. Thanks.

Behavioral economics and social psych are sort of side-lines for my academic work, so when I kept hearing my local (non-academic, the town part of town 'n' gown) neighbors having the "those spoiled kids with their private rooms..." I needed to figure out the why. Universities have a lot of institutional inertia behind them -- what has worked in the past usually keeps working. So when we change something, there's usually a very good reason and because we're academia, we have the data to prove it. And because it's public money, we have transparent accounting.

The hard part really is the emotional reaction of the parents and alumni. I'm an Xer, so I spent a couple of my dorm semesters in a shack built for the Boomer influx, but 25 years downstream, living in a triple that was intended as a double, and paying high four figures for the privilege of living in conditions I was being trained to consider public health hazards. I envy our incoming students, because they're getting good design, but I don't begrudge them the good design. I'm happy for them. I have some empathy for their parents, who are seeing a 5 figure line item in the accounting, and that's always going to cause sticker shock. But the inflation calculator is a good tool -- costs have gone down, slightly, for living expenses, and conditions have drastically improved. We do still have a tuition problem -- most students aren't paying full sticker price for tuition, but it's still expensive. And we have a major problem with wage stagnation and with out of control housing costs for their parents -- the 1960 family spent 25% of their income on housing. It's closer to 50% now, and that puts the parents and the students in a terrible position -- sell the family home to pay for an education (and thus liquidate the store of retirement wealth?) or use loans, starting the children off in debt? There are no good solutions, but it's not because the dorms are nice and the food is better. We have a capitalism problem.

The private university market is the ugly part -- they treat their faculty and staff badly, they are at the mercy of their (often ideologically driven) donors, they're often in less attractive places where they cannot attract either students or academic talent, they have aging infrastructure, their endowments are getting thin, and their costs are spiraling. But I don't have much sympathy for them, because the private university system has been a tool of class, racial and gender oppression for 150 years. Public universities and the HBCUs are the social levelers, and we're doing well.

The basic advice: if you can't afford to send your kid to a private school -- don't. They don't have a right to your money and you're already paying in part for the public institution in your state. Public universities and the HBCUs are excellent institutions at a better price. (Yes, the HBCUs are private, but they behave on the public model, so they're the middle ground.) If your kid can't get accepted at an in-state university, take a gap year and/or spend two years in community college because that indicates a need for remedial work and maturity, and that kid is not going to do well in a private setting, either. (Also, every state does have at least one community college with dorms, so if you're desperate to get your kid out of the house, look for one of those. Costs will still be lower than uni, public or private, and cost of supporting a kid is the same whether they're in your house or in a dorm. Just when they're in the house, the cost is less visible.)

[exboyfil]

32. It is no picnic for the instructors who do the heavy lifting

at the state schools though. Adjuncts and Lecturers are poorly paid.

I agree with your sentiment about community college. Actually you are better off taking community college classes than high school Advanced Placement classes (assuming you can afford them at the time).

If you have access to a good state school, I would strongly recommend it over paying the much higher private tuition. On the other hand for very good students from lower income parents, I would strongly recommend taking a flyer at the prestigious top tier private schools. Because of the need based financial aid, these are often lower than state schools. Of course the Catch 22 is that the state school will typically offer financial packages to those students that further reduce the cost (to zero in some cases).

The biggest problem for state schools in some states (California and Virginia for example) is that access to the flagship state schools is more competitive than for the prestige private schools. In a smaller state like mine the two flagship universities are easy to enter, and only a few majors are difficult to enter (Nursing for example).

[politicat]

33. I'm well aware of how badly grad students and adjuncts are treated.

I'm a researcher affiliated with a major research university. The whole academic structure is moving towards the temp model, thanks to way too many MBAS and bidness friendly glibertarians getting elected/selected for boards of regents/governors. It's not doing anyone any good. (Grumble, grumble, no edu is not a business, no, we're not interchangeable parts, no this is not a mass production facility. Go back to ruining sears and leave us alone.)

The small advantage of being at a state at the graduate level is that grad students do have unions at the state levels, which isn't a guarantee of better conditions, but makes it more attainable. The top tier privates do, too, but any school that doesn't go by an extremely recognizable single word name (columbia, Stanford, etc at) has been campaigning against their grad unions or eliminating them entirely. Which opens those conditions for exploitation, and that's exactly what's happening. And then there are the religious institutions.

The adjunct problem is worse, and I think it's going to take major strikes and refusal to cooperate with the new model. (Which is going to be difficult, because needing to eat is a thing...) We have to expand tenure, but between conservative opposition to academic freedom, and some egregious behavior by a small group of asshats who managed to attain tenure... BoRs like the ability to just not renew contracts.

And that's also the downside of the CC model -- CC profs and lecturers are also often on single class contracts or short-term contracts. But the terms and conditions there are better for everyone, and I've been impressed with the CC to BA/BS model that the commuter colleges are using (Metro State in Denver, U of Maryland Baltimore, as examples.)

[FSogol]

26. Completely agree. Thanks for posting that. n/t

[Initech]

10. I saw a statistic one time...

Where it was like for every 100 math, science, econ, engineering, accounting and IT majors, there's 100,000 that go into something where there's way too many majors, like Media Arts Design. Go into an industry where there's a shortage and you're almost guaranteed to get in. Go into an industry where there's a surplus and you will be denied.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

11. If businesses want employees...

to have greater education/skills, they should pay for it, at least most of it through taxation.

Does our military expect new recruits to be trained BEFORE they can join and get paid? Did tradesmen in the old world demand that new workers pay for their training as cobblers, coopers, blacksmiths and the like beforehand? Of course not.

What next? Gaining "legal ownership" of all the land where the African Bushmen live and telling them "tough shit" if they don't readily adapt to the new world that our markets generate? "Go to school and get an education!"

[MineralMan]

22. Choosing what to study is important in this.

As an old English major from the 60s and 70s, I chose one of those majors that didn't have a clear path to economic success. When I graduated, I fell back on my auto mechanic background until I figured out how to make a living with an essentially useless degree. I ended up becoming a freelance writer, and make a good living over the years. Others went into teaching, journalism or other areas.

Nothing has changed, except English majors have a lot fewer options today. The newspapers and magazines are either gone or have cut way back. Teaching is still an option, but freelance writing isn't a viable entry level thing any more.

If I were talking to someone young, looking for direction, I'd probably encourage them to find a trade to fall back on and work in that trade until they found an opportunity. A degree, in itself, in most of the Humanities majors is pretty useless at the entry level. You need more than that to make a living early after graduating.

Of course, there are majors that almost guarantee decent employment if you do well in college. If you screw around and barely pass, though, even those won't assure you of a decent position.

Frankly, learning a well-paid trade is a good idea these days. There's a shortage of skilled plumbers, electricians and HVAC people. Other jobs are also available in other trades. But all take training and experience. I suggest that young people try their best to get that training and experience, rather than working as an unpaid intern somewhere.

[exboyfil]

30. My daughter's best friend has

a very good needs based scholarship to one of state schools. Unfortunately she is somewhat directionless - first she majored in Bioinformatics but found she did not like doing research. She then moved on to Computer Science. She did not like that. Now she is an English major. She wants to be an editor. If she was my kid, and I was picking up the bills, I would have already cut her off and told her to get a job. Her directionlessness will hurt less since she has a scholarship, but I have a sneaky suspicion that she is borrowing at least a portion of her expenses. She is chewing through a wonderful opportunity though.

My daughters are the other extreme. My oldest (the one with the English major friend) took her first two years of engineering while still in high school (it was a plan we worked on together that probably could not be duplicated today since some of the key engineering classes are no longer offered online). She graduated in two years as Magna Cum Laude in Mechanical Engineering and is now gainfully employed with a Fortune 500 company. She did not miss the last two years of the college "experience".

My youngest completed 75 college credits while in high school. She finished all of her credits for immediate entry into a two year (actually four consecutive semesters including two summers) BS Nursing program. She can live at home, but the tuition is twice the state school. I still consider it a bargain though since she does not have to live on campus. The nursing school, while not as prestigious as the state BSN program, still has very good outcomes with a NCLEX pass rate of 87% (the state school is 94%). The program has the second highest number of BSN NCLEX test takers in the state to the state school (126 vs. 140). In prior years their NCLEX score was equivalent to the state school. She is halfway done with her courses and doing well (a little bit above a B+ for her nursing classes with a 98% projected NCLEX pass estimate). Knock on wood but she may be done by August of this year - only 15 months after graduating high school. She has several classmates that have already taken 4-5 years to finish a Biology B.S. from a private college before entry into the Nursing program. I can't imagine what their loans must be at this point.

Both of my daughters took non-traditional paths, and I would emphasize not listening to the counselors at school. Find out during a child's sophomore year (or earlier) what courses from community colleges transfer to which universities. Also find out how Advanced Placement and CLEP are handled at these schools. At least our state has a significant number of online options for community college credit. Also the state schools do that as well. These offer excellent opportunities even if you are not near a college, and the scheduling flexibility is also important (both children took classes over the winter break for example).

It is funny that some of the things I did with my daughters during their time in public school were eventually adopted by the public school. One of the better developments are dual community college/Advanced Placement classes. For the state schools the community college credit is a lot better than having the Advanced Placement class (for example even getting a five on Chemistry gets you one semester of credit vs. the two semesters you can get with the two community college classes). The Advanced Placement is important for those seeking entry into more prestigious colleges though (which I think still screw the students by making them repeat those classes or taking more advanced classes than they would otherwise have to to get their degree).

Some of the counselors at my daughter's state school (actually they are just schedulers as far as I am concerned) tried to throw up road blocks to her plan to graduate in two years. For example a woman counselor told my daughter not to sign up for Sophomore Design because she would have too many older boys in the class. My wife (who was not yet my wife at the time) was finishing up her Freshman year at a state school when we met. She told me her advisors were recommending taking all of her General Education classes first. I pulled out a Gantt Chart on her major and showed her that she would take five years by doing that (she finished in four with only one class her final semester).

[n2doc]

28. frankly if huge student loans had not been so easy to get this would not be an issue

Because schools would not have been able to raise tuition so much. It is just like housing, when loans became much easier to get, it opened up the market for a while, but now housing is unaffordable in high demand areas.

If we pay for tuition so that it is free for the students, there has to be significant controls on the cost paid, or else we end up just like the health insurance industry.

[exboyfil]

31. At least at my daughter's state school

You had a variety of housing options. The first year she stayed in a 2 room pod with bathroom (2 students/room). The second year she stayed in a two person dorm room with common shower that was like college dorm room in the 1980s. The 2 room pod is $2K more for the 9 month academic year.

The dining is definitely different, and it really is a lot more expensive for someone like my daughter because she is small. It used to be traditional meals in cafeteria like setting (two entree options through a line - no seconds). Now it is equivalent to a Golden Corral buffet. On the other hand she did have lots of dining options, and the to go meals would be equivalent to a $7 meal from Subway for example. At the end of the year they are very liberal about letting students use up their dining credits. I ate several wraps paid for by my daughter's dining credits. They were also liberal about letting guests use dining credits in the main dining hall. I suppose they may tighten this up eventually.