@bluebayou There was an article about the student debt crisis recently. It featured a student who graduated from UCLA with $100,000 in loans. She was an OOS student at UCLA. She was living wih her parents and working in retail. No sympathy here.
^^yikes, sorry I missed her, but I have made it my personal goal to discourage kids/parents from paying OOS fees for a UC. With rare exception (the Theater school, for example), they are just a really bad value (at OOS prices). And, with the stats to get into UCLA, she could have attended a wonderful private Uni, with some merit money.
Yet, these are the kinds of stories the press (and certain politicians) love. Even a certain first term Congressperson complains about her loans from Boston University when she could have stayed instate and attended a SUNY and been nearly debt free.
PS is not the most expensive one. I am pretty sure PS sticker price is 50-55K. Can’t remember the exact number. But the UCs and Umich are 65K. Penn state was my kiddo’s first acceptance last year. We were also pretty surprised with the generous merit aid offer (30k/year)even though we are OOS. Not sure if the fact that she got into the honor program has anything to do with the merit aid.
UCs and UMitch gave her nothing, not expected and not surprised. She decided not to go to PS in the end, though.
However, PSU is known for poor affordability for in state students, which should be the main affordability concern for state universities.
Agreed but the article and many posts here talked about OOS,
Are UCs and UMich less expensive instate? I don’t think so.
For students from lower to upper middle income (bottom 70% or so income) families, UCs and Michigan are likely to have significantly lower in-state net price after in-state financial aid than PSU.
I found the college graduation rate tables within the article interesting. In my town it turns out that Hispanic student graduate at the highest rate, and that rate is twice that of African American students. It makes sense to me in the context of the article. A large percentage of AA students at our high school are part of a diversity program (METCO) that buses in kids from Boston. They tend to be from low income families, Most of the Hispanic families in town have highly educated and well-off parents who could afford homes in town. Kids receiving SPED services graduate at a rate slightly higher than AA students, probably because my town is the kind of place where parents advocate for their borderline kids to get services and they can afford to send those kids to expensive schools with a lot of support.
I know that the counselors at the high school talk a lot about affordability and FA but as @compmom noted, when everyone around the lunch table is talking about attending dream schools and talking about CC as if it’s only for kids who couldn’t get in anywhere else it’s got to be harder to put affordability at the top of the list of college search criteria.
Many high school students have been told for years by their parents and others that their own academic achievement will be the main factor determining their choice of college, even though parental financial circumstances and choices are the real main factor determining their choice of college. Hence the lunch table talk about dream colleges without any regard to affordability (many kids do not have a good idea of their parents’ finances anyway). The reality often gets revealed only in April of senior year (consider the parents who tell their kids, “just get admitted, we will then figure out how to make the finances work”), and some parents try to deny reality by cosigning unwise levels of loans (or taking parent loans).
Perhaps the reluctance to tell high school students the actual reality of college choice is based on wanting to believe that college opportunities are fully or mostly personally earned by the student, rather than mostly financially inherited from parents as they currently are.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought an issue with community college is that the percentage of students who ever wind up getting a bachelor’s degree is extremely low, and the percentage of students who even finish with an associate’s degree is much lower than one would hope. That’s not to say, of course, that motivated students can’t make community college work well for them in terms of eventually getting a bachelor’s degree at an affordable price. But it’s a somewhat risky option.
This risk of non-completion is probably mostly due to student characteristics. Students who go to community colleges are more likely to be under tight financial limitations and more likely to have been weaker students in high school.
Of course, states whose community colleges are limited in transfer-prep course offerings and/or are relatively expensive are not doing students any favors.
@JHS For kids who are at risk to drop out, it’s the same risk whether or not they go to a 4 year college or CC. CC doesn’t make the kids more likely to drop out.
@Nhatrang The study I think I remember seeing specifically reached the opposite conclusion: That students with equivalent risk factors and initial educational goals were meaningfully more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree if they started at a four-year college. Not that I have been able to find it!
To me there is something very wrong here. We are getting way too entitled.
A low income person had a great in-state public option, and decided to instead turn it down and go do an expensive out of state option which is not actually better in any meaningful way.
It serves them right. People need to learn that it is not the job of the rest of the world to pay for your dream just because you don’t want to accept the great affordable option.
In the rich and highly educated towns of Massachusetts some parents and students look down on state schools even if they are affordable and offer a great education. Newton High School is sometimes jokingly referred to as “Snooton” High School 
“In the rich and highly educated towns of Massachusetts some parents and students look down on state schools even if they are affordable and offer a great education.”
We need an “Arghh” button, where “Arghh” means “you are entirely correct and make a very good point, but I do not like it at all”.
As I have said on other posts, I have been VERY impressed by some of the graduates that I have seen from U.Mass Amherst.
Another perspective… each year our high school runs a 1.5-hour “Financial Aid Night” presentation on affording college. It is well-publicized and open to everyone. This year DH and I went. There were maybe 30-40 people in the audience out of a high school of 2,700 students. I thought that was sad.
Re: #35
I take it you mean in a high school that is not 95% students from top 4% income families…
"I take it you mean in a high school that is not 95% students from top 4% income families… "
Heavens, no. Middle class for the most part, but a high number of kids get free lunch.