Posted on 11/19/2008 8:50:35 AM PST by reaganaut1
Thanks for the replies. Congratulations to your children.
My children aren’t old enough for college, yet. But, right now we’re planning for them to start in community college early, transfer the credits to a four-year college, and commute from home. I first earned an AA from a community college. I lived at home, worked, and paid the tuition. Later, I transferred those credits to a four-year college. By then, I was an older, mostly part-time student, so I wasn’t living “at home,” anymore, but I never had any college debt to pay off. And commuting really works out well for a student living at home. It’s a sensible thing to do, especially considering the high cost of college. I’d worry about what kind of roommates would be assigned to my sons in a dorm, anyway.
Does that include “Room & Board”? Bet it doesn’t.
At the risk of pointing to Joe-the-Plumber yet again... a trade, a strong-work ethic, and a modicum of “business sense” and you can make a nice living. Of course you might have to get your hands dirty & work irregular hours — something that High School counselors recoil from...
“If the kid’s career was only 20 years, that’s only 10,000 a year more they’d have to earn with a college degree, versus no degree, and if the kid’s degree was from an Ivy League college, he’d be earning much more than the normal college grad.”
You’re forgetting to factor in present value and opportunity cost.
The cost of the assumed degree is not just $200,000. It’s 200,000 plus what the student could have earned in a real job. Entry level folks can make $25,000 a year. So the real cost is $300,000 for a four year degree.
Then when the graduate tries to recoup the opportunity cost over 20 years at 10,000 a year, you have to account for present value. $10,000 paid 20 years from now is not worth very much. In fact, the present value of $10,000 per year for 20 years discounted at a 3% annual rate is 148,774.75.
So even 20 years later he’s still in the hole by about $51,000—just on the $200,000 out-of-pocket costs. In other words, $200,000 is a bad investment if your return is $10,000 a year for twenty years. At $10,000 a year, you break even in 31 years. And you still haven’t earned a dime in profit. To recoup the $300,000 actual investment (out-of-pocket plus foregone earnings) takes over 75 years.
None of this takes into account the risk that the market for the speciality your student trained for changes and you get no earnings bump (see EE’s, computer programming).
And none of it takes into account that two years in, your student may decide to major in, say, French Philosophy.
And that’s if he didn’t borrow the money for his education but paid after tax dollars. If he’s paying 5% interest on loans taken out to finance the education, the balance is even worse.
I went to elite undergrad and graduate schools and have a list of honors at each. It helped right out of school. 5-10 years later, it didn’t mean squat. My performance as a professional was all that counted.
In other words, the author is right. An elite college degree is a lousy investment. A state college degree living at home is a marginal investment.
So, are you a fish monger, an unbudsman, or a shrubber?
Our son made college and universities his personal career for many years before finally getting a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university of world renown. He did a lot of this on his own, working some, but a lot using college loans; but now he is having to pay the piper, and is pretty astounded with the reality of it. We helped him through the initial four year program (he already had a year in before graduating from high school), but finally got to the place where we couldn’t keep it up. Oh, and the LIBERAL arts education means just what it says - L-I-B-E-R-A-L ! The colleges and universities are full of professors who push the liberal agenda. - To them, regular people like us are considered SO irrelevant and stupid.
Many states now have the “150 hour rule,” which means you need a fifth year of school. However, if you already have other credits and will be taking additional accounting classes, that shouldn’t be a problem for you.
Don't Send Your Kids to College by: James AltucherHey James, screw you. Even Cop applicants now *need* a BS in Law Enforcement (like from WIU) in IL. A college Degree today is like a HS Diploma was in the '60's - A Must Have..... James Altucher ... holds a bachelor's degree from Cornell and was a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also a nationally ranked chess master.
Granted some kids make lousy choices and get useless degrees as to getting a job. Like a B.A. in 13th Century Chinese Art, Philosophy or a B.A. in Babylonian History. Without a PhD in those the kid will wind up selling pencils on a street corner. Or asking, 'do you want fries with that'.
However that's where a parent should come in with some sound advice. You know - like you will give YOUR KIDS, ahole.
It boggles my mind every time I think of it that the US Navy is paying for me to attend one of the top engineering schools in the country. I get a monthly stipend, too. The only thing my parents pay is room and board and occasional random expenses. I have a guaranteed job upon graduation.
All of that and I get an EE degree from Virginia Tech. It just blows me away how awesome this is. Of course there are downsides, like the Chemistry test I have to go take in about half an hour.
No. You are absolutely right. I can vouch for it myself. Luckily I stopped halfway through and have had time to let the koolaid dissipate from my system. It truly is toxic and I am ashamed I stood for the left when I was in college. I wish I had a way to set the karma right.
Yes, it does.
No one will care about B’s or C’s in your classes once you get a job. It’s more about sticking with it.
I knew people who were top of their class in high school, but dropped out of college.
I’m not gifted, but I stayed with it. I nearly flunked out of Chemical Engineering. I managed through the first 2 years okay, but just didn’t have the desire/interest to study that hard for the last 2/3 years. I switched to Computer Science, and my grades went up and I was happier. I graduated - a year late, but who cares. I did it.
Because I did poorly in Chemical Engineering my last year, my overall GPA wasn’t great (2.5), but it was enough to get me a good job. Then you make your own destiny!
One of my daughters is looking into accounting. I think it is also a good fit for women that want to be mothers. I know lots of CPAs that get hired on during tax season, and then take the rest of the year off (or work part-time).
What are you talking about?
If you join the Corps at Texas A&M, you can also get a partial scholarship. If you sign on to be in the reserves, then you can get your entire college paid for.
“Georgia residents are eligible for the Hope scholarships. “
Yeah, and because of that, the schools were able to raise tuition and overcome any benefit of the Hope Scholarship. All the gov’t scholarships did is to inflate the cost. You don’t get anything from gov’t for free.
In the last 20 years, college tuition at the school I went to has gone up to over 10 times what it was then. That’s ridiculous for a commodity that has not increased 1000% in raw material costs.
Good to know. I’ll argue that the next time my Dad is harping my grades (”I want all A’s” something I haven’t done since elementry school)
I was an AW when it was considered to be a critical rate.
$10,000 bonus when $10,000 was worth, well, $10,000. They threw in factory school at Lockheed plus computer school when computers were on their way up.
Late in my 4 year enlistment I was in a traffic accident which took me off flight status, so I decided to go with civilian life and the GI Bill. I became a chemist.
I loved organic chemistry. I had to. I took it three times.
Thanks for the reply. I don’t have any kids, much less any getting ready for college. My familiarity with tuition rates is, as a result, not very ‘current’. In reading over the thread I noticed that there are still some schools that are pretty reasonable as long as you are in-state.
I went to Penn State from 78-81. I knew a lot of out-of-state students then. I wonder what the percentages are now?
I couldn’t help wondering why anyone would want to go to Penn State as an out-of-state student when they could easily go to Ohio State, Michigan State, Rutgers (NJ State, if you will). There weren’t THAT many programs at PSU that were ‘unique’, and would justify the marginal increase in cost.
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