Your son could have that at a state school for probably free (depending on the state, and with good grades), and work in a restaurant three or four nights a week to offset some other costs.
Ugh - depends what state school. My wife and I both went to University of Illinois (we are from Illinois). I worked 10 - 20 hours per week, and got some smaller grants, my wife got larger grants..
We still both have more debt than I care to admit... It's literally 20% of our overall monthly expenses.
I found the connections personally invaluable and worth it. My wife is just starting her PhD at U of I, so we both agree it was worth it, but just barely.
I live in Illinois. I just looked up in-state tuition for UIUC = $17k/year. That is not cheap, but it's a lot less than many lower-ranking private schools. Loyola charges $21k. Roosevelt charges $26k.
UIUC is a great state school, one of the best in the country. I'd say you got a good deal. But yes, definitely not close to free.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Going to one of your state schools is a good choice for a relatively low cost education.
It's naive to think a college degree isn't valuable. Among a collection of candidates with and without college degrees, those with degrees will not only get preferential treatment, but also once they are deep in their careers those who do not have formal degrees will be held back from leadership roles.
This is how the real world works much of the time, the idea that college is becoming less important is wrong. It's becoming more important.
I live in the midwest, and our "premier" state school is $18k/year (including housing). Unless you're going to go to community college for your first two years and then transfer, it's very hard to not incur a substantial amount of debt in completing your degree.
When I went to school in the early/mid 90s, tuition was low enough that I could basically support myself with a job and some minimal support from my dad ($1000/quarter). Those days are long gone, however.
Yes and the full ride scholarships(scholarships in general) are that much more difficult to give. My father got a full ride to a state school back in the 80s but today with his grades it wouldn't happen.
The SUNY system offers free tuition to NY state residents with annual income under $125K. That may not be too relevant for the children of HNers, but it's a huge proportion of households in NY state.
I find it’s doable to attend a college where you won’t pay tuition, but it will most likely be a semi-low-tier, state school and or your estimated family contribution must be zero.
After spending a few years at a community college, I will (I think, I need more for or against opinions) be attending San Francisco State University in the fall. My tuition looks like it will be waived (tuition is about 8k for in-state students, 17k for out-of-state students) since I’m in-state and my estimated family contribution (via FASFA) is zero (family income is about 31k). I will then just have to take out loans for living expenses and hopefully work part-time to lessen them.
I got great value from CC. But you'll want to make sure it not only has proper (regional) accreditation, but also a "transfer agreement" to the local university of your choice.
This isn't 100% necessary, but it sure helps as a guideline to know what courses have value for your future program. The naming schemes at different schools can be confusing ("Am I supposed to take Technical Calculus 1 or Calculus 1 for Scientists and Engineers?") - so having the direct transfer numbers is helpful. The advisors at CC aren't always necessarily educated and may make assumptions like EE and EE Tech being the same program..
Finally, if you're going on to a BS, the AS is next to useless in my experience (besides resume fodder). It's the actual classes that transfer that are the value, and whether you finish at CC or not is not a big deal.. (though go ahead and do it if it's just like a few classes different).
CC is cheap and there's sometimes interesting courses like archaeology or whatever so have fun with that.
Cons:
It can be a little more difficult to find a top quality internship while you're a CC student. You should still try to find one though, and join clubs and whatnot.. CC won't have FSAE but they do tend to have other stuff.
It doesn't matter though. Look at the statistics for life long earning potential for degree vs non degree holders. Even if you have to graduate with $100k of debt, you should definitely go to college.
It's easy to be intimidated by the debt load, but that fear is shortsighted. In the long term college makes sense.
Here's some data on the lifetime earning potential between college grads and non grads, from the US Social Security Administration:
"Men with bachelor's degrees earn approximately $900,000 more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with bachelor's degrees earn $630,000 more. Men with graduate degrees earn $1.5 million more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with graduate degrees earn $1.1 million more"
Just because degree holders have higher lifetime earnings, that doesn't necessarily mean graduating from college will increase lifetime earnings. The alternative hypothesis is that the attributes that drive someone to both go to college and succeed in passing classes are also the same attributes that cause success at work.
I'm not saying a college degree doesn't open doors for you, it absolutely does, I'm saying you can't look at the numbers like that and make that conclusion.
(The dropout rate is also ~45% so you take a significant risk of taking on the cost burden without a payout)
I agree with you on the point that a certain drive and determination helps in both going to college and more general life success irrespective of a degree. There are some people who would succeed without going to college, certainly.
But going to college makes the path much easier, even for talented and motivated people. So I take that into account and look at the numbers, and stand by my assertion that except for maybe the most unique cases college makes sense for the vast majority.
So let's follow your logic and assume it's clearly in everyone's best interest to go to college, and 100% of high school graduates go on to university.
Now the market is flooded with bullshit degrees (assuming no one drops out, putting themselves in an even worse financial situation) and the value of a college degree just went down. Now what?
Turns out that already happens without a degree. Welders and electricians are held in pretty high regard compared to someone who spent 4 years in classes that have no real world application.
Mmm... I think your point is valid, but perhaps a little over-emphasized.
It certainly is worth noting what you are mentioning, that there is more to life than college. The overall summary still is true, though, that college educated students do better career earnings wise. There's just a lot of variance and spread you have to take in account.
There is a lot of spread depending on your major. In addition to the lifetime earnings, the site does note that there is huge variance within each major itself. As quoted, "the highest-earning 10 percent of high school graduates out-earn the bottom tenth of graduates in every single major".
Unfortunately this report does not seem to go in much detail on two year degrees. Because community / 2-year college in the US is so much cheaper than 4 year colleges typically, I am willing to bet that -- especially if you have to go into debt -- there are some good paths there where the pure rate of return is higher than some college paths these days. (The high school diploma path only OTOH doesn't seem that great unless your atypically REALLY self-motivated.)
I do think that chasing career paths solely based on current income is a bad strategy. If you are really into music and meh on molecules, no matter what the average numbers say, it's probably better to be a top 10% musician degree holder than a bottom 10% chemical engineer degree holder.
My point is that there is prosperity outside of a college education, and that we should think about what assumptions are made by employers about people who do get a college education.
That may work if you graduate, but a lot of people end up dropping out, they still get a large portion of the debt, but without the degree. It's really worth at least considering if you're likely to finish before you start.
I have a high school diploma. I dropped out of University after a year to get a startup job in '97. As a self-taught IT worker my lifetime earning have far exceeded all of my University-degreed peers (some Ivy!), even with two market crashes and job losses under my belt. They are earning less or equal to me, and still have staggering 5 and 6 figure debt loads.
There are always exceptions, none of these are hard-and-fast rules.
> As a self-taught IT worker my lifetime earning have far exceeded all of my University-degreed peers (some Ivy!)
What were their degrees in? Did any of them go to private liberal arts colleges? Those are more important facts when assessing their careers than the mere fact they went to college, especially when comparing with someone like yourself, who seems to have had good timing jumping into a new-ish, growing industry.
My parents paid for everything for both my sister and I. I lived at home and commuted, she moved to the other side of the country and dormed/rented. I spent a 5th year in college because I didn't know what I wanted to do for a career.
Having a sibling (me) enrolled in higher education reduced what my parents paid for my sister's tuition by a huge amount, so I was kind of pressured into staying an extra year, but I would have done it anyway because I got to finish a second degree and I wasn't paying.
Funnily enough my sister and I majored in the same non-STEM major, but she went into it with the goal of working in finance from the start, and the main qualifier for that was the school she went to and not the degree itself, while I was kind of planning to go to law school afterwards but wasn't set on it.
Total costs for me for tuition were around $30k, since I did 2 years at community college (not by choice, my high school grades were abysmal). My parents also paid for nearly everything for both of us (food, bills, gas for me, dorm/rent for her, and anything we charged to credit cards within reason if we asked first). She went to an ivy league and I'd ballpark what my parents spent on her tuition alone at $200k. Living expenses were probably another $100k.
She started her career right out of college, I leeched off my parents for another three years and then decided I wanted to go into software development because two of my friends were able to work remotely full-time and that seemed amazing to me. That's honestly what sold me, though I haven't felt the need to find a remote position because I live right next to work and actually enjoy coming into the office.
I don't think college was worth it for me TBH, and when I say that, I mean me as an individual/person, not people in general. I barely made any friends due to commuting + being shy, didn't really enjoy it, I don't felt like I learnt anything I could not have learned on my own, made 0 friends that I still talk to or see on a regular basis today, and I don't think my degrees were a significant factor in starting or continuing my career.
When I have kids and start preparing them for college, I will definitely encourage them to live on-campus. I'll also do everything possible for them to be able to graduate without debt.
