On the cost of a college degree...

[nadinbrzezinski]

Last week one of our tours was with a young woman who is going to the UNAM. bear in mind her education is very close in price to oh UCSD back in the 1960s. That be, mostly free.

So she heard over the grapevine (Facebook) about the insane cost of public education in the US. She was proof positive this had to be private schools, I mean the ITAM, costs quite a bit of quid, but nothing close to oh SDSU.

You know this is really embarrasing for Americans when we now refuse, as a society, to invest in our future.

[XemaSab]

1. You having a roblem with your keyboard there?

[XemaSab]

2. Eh, I liked the roof rice

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Between that and woke up at four in the morning

To catch a flight...

[XemaSab]

4. Just jerkin' your chain

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. No prob

[dkf]

6. We spend too much on awesome stadiums and coaches salaries.

And then we need to attract top notch researchers.

Maybe if the cost per student were more reasonable we could do free tuition.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. And as policy we have cut them taxes that funded it

But the NCAA is a scam at least to me...oh heresy I know

[dkf]

10. Well it does take the will of the people to pay more taxes to cover tuition.

Maybe the truth is the average taxpayer doesn't see the benefit. These types of questions should be voted on with the ability to raise taxes connected to benefits.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. As I told Salin bellow

The people leading the charge...went to those schools for mosty free or very low fees.

Greed is Good needs to become the new motto of the country. If they can't see how themselves benefited, or don't want to...

[TBF]

14. Or ... if we spent less on killing people overseas

possibly we would have funds for healthcare and education here. What a crazy, radical, communist idea, eh?

[salin]

8. Here is one of the biggest ironies.. the reason for screwing them?

that the deficits that are accruing are going to be passed on to the younger generation (the same people.)

So get an education - with debt enough to be enslaving for much of your adulthood - in order to not have to pay higher taxes later in life. Restated - have far greater debt but save later on taxes (at far lower rate than what has been paid unless you end up earning high 6 figure salaries), or push for slightly higher taxes across the board (that you will pay when you do start earning) but have much less student loan debt.

Worse - put in real terms given the GOP intransigence against any rise in taxes on higher wealth or on mega-corporations - "So get an education, so the wealthiest people and corporations can maintain paying lower taxes than your familiy likely pays, and take on that debt to enslave you for much of your adult hood so that when you finally have paid off your student loan debts and have to pay higher taxes.

This is one of those examples that throws the GOP over used and inaccurate claim that the reason to push austerity (but not in the service of lowering debt, but in the service of preserving the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations) is to protect younger people from debts being accrued today.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Add this to your irony meter

many of the pols in both parties pushing this...went to college for free or nearly free...

Greed is good...should become the new national motto I swear.

[salin]

13. They worship at the altar of Gordon Gecho.

[riderinthestorm]

12. Costs for 2012 at the University of Illinois, a public state school for in-state undergrads is $30k

http://admissions.illinois.edu/cost/tuition_freshman.html I've posted this before but seems as though there's a contingent of DUers who refuse to believe it.

I sound like a broken record but anyone saying "those kids should just work while they're in school and pay as they go" or "they shouldn't have spent so much on a private university" or "what kind of idiot racks up that much debt?" or "they could live at home and save $$$".

Well, the answer is that today's college degree costs a fortune. Its impossible to work your way through school debt free. Not too many high school diploma's net you a part time job making $30k per year so you MIGHT be able to work and pay as you go. And people don't seem to realize how expensive its gotten compared to "their day". Lastly, I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I could not have lived at home after I turned 18 - sink or swim was the motto since I was now an adult.

We should be ashamed of ourselves for making college so unaffordable. We are undercutting our best and brightest.

K&R Nadin. I was appalled at some of the responses on that other thread that we were both on.

Edited to add my older girl finished her masters degree in the UK at one of their top universities. A single year's tuition, housing and food costs, fees, books etc was $12k for a foreign student. We paid a couple extra thousand for her to travel and work on some archaeological digs so the total cost for her masters in the UK, as a foreign-full-pay student was $14k - much cheaper than anything she was offered here in the US by the top universities she applied to and got into where ALL of the programs were 2 years and at least double the cost.