Seems insane, but it’s going to be the norm pretty soon. Not just private schools either.
https://www.nj.com/data/2019/06/see-how-much-nj-colleges-could-cost-in-20-years-hint-a-lot.html
I understand the article is primarily referring to state schools, and it doesn’t really distinguish between tuition and COA. However the fact is that a lot of schools already cost more than that, so it is not really shocking.
I was shocked when I looked at the calculators projecting the price of a state school when my current 3-year-old is 18. It is truly shocking to think of paying a quarter of a million dollars for a public school degree.
"I was shocked when I looked at the calculators projecting the price of a state school when my current 3-year-old is 18. It is truly shocking to think of paying a quarter of a million dollars for a public school degree. "
Our goal when DD was born was to save for four years in a private college (we weren’t ruling out publics, but we wanted to be covered either way), and 15 years ago we were looking at $250,000 (using savingforcollege.com). Now the most expensive private schools are $280,000 for COA.
1). 20 year projections are projections.
2). It’s NJ. Look elsewhere.
They are postulating out of their posteriors. Maybe the public universities which they looked at, in NJ, are getting pricey, but the vast majority of the kids in the USA are not living, or attending college, in the Garden State. There are many many good colleges with COA for four years closer to $80,000 or less. the vast majority of public colleges cost less than $30,000. Even the most expensive are less than $40,000 COA, so the net price is south of $160,000. A lot, but well short of the $250,000 this article is screaming about.
Looking at their “model”, their predictions as to increase in colleges prices over the next 20 years has absolutely no relationship to what has happened in the past. It looks like they were simply looking for a mathematical model which would result in public colleges having tuition around $250,000 by 2037.
I sure hope that these jokers aren’t giving out financial advice, or if they are, I sincerely hope that nobody is listening to them.
These are nominal prices, right?
2037 dollars are not 2019 dollars. Any more than 2019 dollars are 2001 dollars.
If they were being honest, they would be stating prices in 2019 dollars.
I did not think the price of private colleges would go over $50k a year. That even sounded preposterous to me. So wrong I was!
Also, are they simply extrapolating the percentage price increases of the past 18 years over the next 18? The problem with that approach is that in general, state funding as a percentage of the budget of publics has dropped over the last 2 decades. For many publics, it’s already a pretty low percentage (at one point in time after the Great Recession, UVa, CU, and PSU were getting all of 2% of their budget funded by their respective state governments), so in percentage terms, in-state tuition shot up like a rocket. But state support can’t drop below 0 (unless some state government decides to use it’s publics as a piggy bank to fund the state government), so that extrapolation seems quite questionable.
Well, my 2 oldest attended public college in N.J., the grand total was about $120,000 each. The next one is going OOS public, again $120,000 with merit. She also received very generous merit for private colleges, bringing the total down to $120,000. Maybe we need to move before the next 2 kids go to college.
Also, my husband attended the same in state public university that my oldest graduated from, for under $30,000 30 years ago.
I wish I had been more pessimistic about projections when my kids were babies. We saved what I thought was a large percentage of our take-home pay, since birth. It’s still not even close to being enough. Our savings after 18 years will cover about half of an instate public. I would say it’s better to assume the worst when it comes to rising college costs. You save for 18 years, pay all your disposable income for the 4 years they are in, then help them with loans for 10 years after. Paying for college is basically another 30-year mortgage.
@Mjkacmom, half or more of that $120K is R&B. I don’t see where you can move to that would give you substantial savings. Take a look at in-state costs elsewhere.
@ccprofandmomof2, it depends on what you call “college”. Commuting to college is still attending college. So is attending CC and then transferring.
But yes, live-away college, especially at privates, is expensive now.
Dd’s tuition was $13,500 a year, DH’s was $2000 a year. I don’t know of any NJ school that provides free tuition for those at the top of their class, I do hear some states do. Ds’s public tuition is $17,000
@PurpleTitan Yup, I’m aware of that. I teach at a community college–hence the username. However, the OP was talking about residential four year colleges, so that’s what we were discussing in the thread.
^ Right, but live-away college is very much a luxury good, even though it is a luxury good that nearly all middle-class American kids think they are entitled to. But that is a cultural expectation.
In one of the biggest most productive economies in the world, the vast majority of uni grads were commuters attending big bare-bones commuter publics (many of whom don’t even have what Americans would consider a proper campus). Yet I do not see German adults being maladjusted or deprived because of that.
@Mjkacmom, yep. Back in 1989, more of in-state students’ tuition was subsidized by their state. Now less is. BTW, $13.5K 2019 dollar is $6.5K 1989 dollars.
FL and GA publics are tuition-free to their top students. There maybe other states that have programs like that (or the Kalamazoo Promise).
Rutgers-NB awarded 90 full-rides in 2009. They also had 10k, 5.5k and lesser merit scholarships. I doubt they are completely gone.
It’s difficult to get a full ride scholarship. Though I didn’t know Rutgers NB or Rutgers, in general, gave that many full rides. Are they for in state applicants? Only one I have ever known to get a full ride award from Rutgers was an athletic recruit.