Despite sticker prices, the real cost of getting a degree has been going down

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Like others mentioned in comments, the article entirely neglects to address the distinction between grants and loans, talking only about &quot;financial aid&quot;. If you have to pay back a loan later, that&#x27;s still part of the cost.<p>The article also switches back and forth talking about different timeframes. It starts off by talking about tuition trajectory since 2014. Usually when I hear people lamenting the increase in college costs, they&#x27;re talking about a much longer timeframe, like since the 1970s. And indeed the article says:<p>&gt; This pricing strategy took hold in the early 1980s. Since then, Levine has found, the sticker cost of attending a four-year public or private university—tuition plus fees and room and board—has almost tripled after adjusting for inflation.<p>But then in the next paragraph:<p>&gt; Only students whose families make more than about $300,000 a year and who attend private institutions with very large endowments pay more than they did a decade ago, Levine said.<p>Those are two different timeframes. Either may be useful, but you can&#x27;t support a statement like &quot;well costs haven&#x27;t really gone up&quot; by just cherry-picking random numbers from decades apart.<p>The last two paragraphs of the article talk about colleges &quot;advertising their value proposition&quot; and how they &quot;can’t afford to push students away&quot;. This smacks of a corporate viewpoint towards higher education that makes me suspicious of the whole piece.

This reads like part of a PR campaign by some college-related interest group to try to influence public opinion. Prices have been and continue to rise. They say the prices stopped rising because inflation (meaning prices continue to rise but if you take inflation into account they do not), but I have not seen the numbers. There&#x27;s like gazillion ways to measure inflation, if you use the one where it&#x27;s 20% a year that might be true, but it&#x27;s just a cop-out.<p>Also, maybe less people go into prestigious and expensive unis and go into less expensive ones, which brings the average down?<p>I look into the colleges for my kids right now and honestly unclear how I can afford putting 2 kids through reasonably good schools. Govt tells me I should be able to afford to pay about $80K per year for 4 years, and I do not see how I can do that without getting HELOC&#x2F;second mortgage and tapping into my retirement savings. I just do not see how these prices are reasonable or go down.

The sticker price arms race will continue until the incentives change. Having an absurdly high listed tuition price is simply effective advertising, even if almost nobody actually pays that price. Surely the most expensive colleges must be the best.<p>Colleges know that outside of a few suckers, few will pay the full price even if they have the money. So they offer massive discounts to get you to sign. To help seal the deal, they will market the discount as something special for you based on your &quot;merit&quot;. &quot;Normally we charge $75k, but since you&#x27;re so awesome we can give you a $30k merit scholarship.&quot; Sounds like you&#x27;re getting a great deal as long as you don&#x27;t find out that the actual average charged tuition is $35k and you&#x27;re actually the one getting milked.

Gen z grew up hearing stories about their older cousins or even parents going $100,000 in student loan debt for nothing.<p>Now all of a sudden the colleges are like, well technically we can get that down to 85,000 of student loan debt for an English degree. Don&#x27;t you want to come to college and have a lot of fun!<p>I still think college is a net positive for most people, but you seriously need to evaluate where you&#x27;re at and decide what you want to spend. Unless you get into a dream school, or something extremely specific for your major almost everyone should go to community college .<p>The reason why is if you have a bad year at community college and you just don&#x27;t want to do it, you&#x27;re only out a few thousand dollars versus 20 or 30.<p>Second, when you&#x27;re ready to transfer you should have a good idea of what you actually want to do and then you can pick a college appropriately. Optimistically you&#x27;ll graduate with half the student loan debt .<p>You can have just as much fun going to a cheap community college, and then a cheap state school. And outside of a small handful of outliers the net results are going to be the same. If you get in the Harvard, go ahead and go to Harvard. But if you get into Billy&#x27;s weird expensive private school, that&#x27;s not worth the money.<p>Between birth rates dropping and student loan reality, we&#x27;re going to see an absolute tsunami of small school closures. Which isn&#x27;t good or bad, it&#x27;s just a sign of the times.<p>While I&#x27;m ranting, I absolutely resent this notion of college being necessary to obtain an upper middle-class lifestyle. It&#x27;s just not, and I know this from personal experience despite finishing college years later. You end up putting a lot of people in a really nasty loop, you can&#x27;t afford college unless you have money, and you can&#x27;t earn money unless you go to college. That also justifies indefinite debt loads, so what you have to go $200,000 in student loan debt. The nice salesperson said you&#x27;re practically guaranteed a six figure job when you graduate!<p>You graduated into a bad economy and end up working at Vons. Sucks to be you, by the way Sallie Mae expects your first payment in 60 days. May the odds be in your favor.

The word &quot;loan&quot; doesn&#x27;t appear even once in the article, which I find bizarre and confusing. It talks about &quot;financial aid&quot; multiple times but doesn&#x27;t mention how much of that aid is in grants and how much in loans. If the loans have to be paid back later, that doesn&#x27;t truly lower the cost of college attendance.

I grew up in a different class than most of my peers. It’s interesting to see how many of them are willing to go all out for their kids when it comes to college. Touring many schools, application prep, savings accounts, meal plans, etc.<p>It sometimes seems as this support comes out of nowhere after years of not being involved in their child’s life.<p>So my question is what motivates this? Are they right? Is it really important for their kids future to go to a top 70 instead of 130? (I believe top 5 is worth almost any amount of money)<p>Is this based on college being a good time in their life and they are projecting that experience? Do they feel obligated to “finish strong” in regards to parenting?<p>The attitude of my parents is to make sure the degree will lead to a job, and then find a local and cheap school to get that credential. I believe there may be taboo class issues around this topic that are not vocalized.

One critical point the article doesn&#x27;t clarify:<p>Is the reduction in price <i>entirely</i> due to discounts, or is it also counting student loans that have to be paid back?<p>Because it keeps using the term &quot;financial aid&quot; throughout, but financial aid includes <i>both</i> grants&#x2F;scholarships <i>and</i> loans.<p>And if the amount you have to pay immediately is going down but the part you have to pay after graduation is going up by the same amount, that&#x27;s not necessarily good news.<p>It&#x27;s bizarre that the article doesn&#x27;t address this distinction <i>at all</i>. I want to believe the total price (<i>including</i> loans that need to be paid back) is going down -- but with student debt ever-increasing, I&#x27;m suspicious.

A lot of elite universities in particular have given financial aid for ages if you were at the lower half of the parental income scale or thereabouts. But my recollection from the 70s is that upper middle class at least pretty much paid sticker. Today, my understanding is that sticker (for undergrad at least) is largely a fiction that few people (at least non-international students) pay.<p>Which

Just in case people haven&#x27;t heard this, here is my straightforward advice (for those in the US considering college):<p>1. Unless you have schools falling all over trying to recruit you, go to an in-state public university. By &quot;trying to recruit you&quot; I mean schools literally flying you out to visit and offering you full scholarship because you are an ungodly talent in whatever you do (sports, music, etc.). Schools mailing you letters and offering you $5k doesn&#x27;t count, that can&#x27;t offset the cost of private or out of state tuitions. For most middle class people, the jobs you&#x27;ll be getting don&#x27;t care about whether you went to UNC or VT, or K-State, or whatever- public state universities are kind of all judged the same and it&#x27;s not worth the extra cost to go out of state.<p><pre><code> a. If you want to really get a good deal, go to a community college for a year or two and live with your parents, then transfer to the state school when you have done your core classes and are ready to focus on your major. b. Still apply for scholarships even if you&#x27;re going to a state school with in state tuition. Pretty much anyone can swing a few grand in grants and scholarships, and if you get a job (or are lucky enough for your parents to pitch in) you can graduate debt free. Being debt-free from a state school is far better than having $40k or more in debt from a private school with moderate name recognition. </code></pre> 2. Don&#x27;t go to a private school unless you get a full scholarship or your parents are so rich they will foot the bill for you without taking out any loans. Most private schools aren&#x27;t worth it. Probably the only private schools that are really worth it are the ones with undeniable networking opportunties- Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford. Maybe a couple others but the list is very short (and if you&#x27;re thinking about where to go to college you probably weren&#x27;t admitted to these).<p>3. Definitely don&#x27;t go to a small private liberal arts college. I have good friends that teach at these kinds of schools, and while they are a nice community to work in, they are a bad deal for students. People are starting to figure this out, smaller liberal arts colleges are at higher risk of shutting down. They unite the costs of a private school with the faculty the size of a community college, with the uncertainty of not knowing if your school will be open in four years to give you a degree.<p>If you do #1 above you&#x27;ll have done the common sense thing and you&#x27;ll really appreciate it as an adult when you hear your coworkers complaining about their mountain of debt from their college that sounded cool but turned out to be kinda crappy.

&gt; This means that there’s often a chasm between the published cost of attendance, or sticker price, and what people actually pay once financial aid is factored in, or the net price.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s different now from when I applied to colleges, and it&#x27;s anecdotal, but coming from a middle class family with a 4.0 GPA, I didn&#x27;t qualify for financial aid at most of the colleges I looked at. I could get some merit based scholarship money, but not enough to make a significant dent in tuition, much less total cost (including food and housing). My parents&#x27; income was too high for me to qualify for financial aid, but they didn&#x27;t have enough money to afford for me to go to the colleges I wanted either, and even if they could, they wanted me to pay for college myself. As a result, I ended up going to a much cheaper, less prestigious college, rather than the more prestigious ones I initially wanted, in order to avoid mountains of student debt.

It would help improve things if universities, not the government, was responsible for student loan debt. Schools have no incentive to lower costs when they have no liability

this is a wild take. we don&#x27;t care about the cost of education 10 years ago. Look at a 50 year horizon and how on a generation basis how much more significantly expensive it is.

Americans have some of the best and cheapest colleges. First, most people don&#x27;t have to pay tuition (low income) or a lot lower than tuition. Then, in-state tuition is ridiculously cheap. Citizens are eligible for a LOT of grants and scholarships. They can work on-campus as teaching&#x2F;research assistants which offer fee waiver and get paid a decent wage! Their parents&#x2F;grand-parents&#x2F;etc fund tax advantaged college savings account, which has to be used for college! They can work off campus or any remote job. And finally, a range of federal&#x2F;state grants, loans, etc are available. Student health insurance is also incredibly cheap. And health centers on campus. And there are no rules that say you must go to college and be done with it at this age (unlike other countries), US is incredibly flexible, you can defer, do part-time, do slowly (work one year, college next year), lots of options!<p>The only people who pay sticker price are international students. I don&#x27;t know if we can say American higher education is subsidized mostly by people from third world, taking massive loans, usually half of or almost all of their family&#x27;s net worth!

It&#x27;s true that the top line tuition is generally discounted through financial aid, but that&#x27;s been the case for decades. People aren&#x27;t shocked at the absurd tuition, but at the rate of increase that vastly outstrips aid, making the normal discounted cost increasingly unaffordable.<p>The actual shocking costs are buried well below the top line as services and facilities that you&#x27;d expect to be paid through tuition are separately charged but mandatory fees.

This is only secret to people who have money.<p>Its been well known for 50 years that poor students with good grades get pretty much full rides to top tier schools due to scholarships.

This is super unexpected to me. Sort of tangential but it reminds me of healthcare costs discussions, where orgs like National Nurses United will point to rising sticker prices and say that health systems are screwing us all over. But it&#x27;s more important to understand actual spending trends and sticker price is just not a great metric to have that discussion.

I do not believe this article at all. The evidence they provided is not compelling. Who ya gonna believe, them or your own eyes?<p>Behold Simpsons Paradox. The question isn’t “are people paying more or less out of pocket”. The question is “how much is the school I want to go to going to cost me”. Perhaps costs are “down” because people can’t attend the good schools they got into and they’re choosing to go to lesser schools. The author would have you believe this is a good thing!<p>The school I went to and the degree I earned in 2007 costs more than 3x today what it cost me then. But yeah sure go ahead and tell me the real price is going down.<p>What an imbecile.

Im certain this doesnt include the quality and value both real and perceived, lets assume that it is cheaper, so is the quality

Author states its lower &quot;Once tax incentives are factored in&quot;. As she is not my CPA, I must call BS.

the value of them is much less however

This article has turned itself into gas-lit pretzels, trying to make excuses for the current horrible state of college education. It reads like a propaganda piece directly written by the lobbyist organizations for private and public colleges.

I have always believed that the concept of a college should be abolished for bachelor&#x27;s degrees - the concepts can and should be learned on one&#x27;s own via learning materials, lots of practice, simulations, and an eventual certification. Education should truly become accessible to all. Currently it is nothing but a moneygrubbing racket. A college makes sense for doctorate level programs only.