How do Americans afford to go to uni?

[Snickersnack1]

I’ve just been reading this: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/advice/finding-your-university-uk-versus-us

It says:

Students apply to 6-8 colleges, with each application costing up to $75. So you could easily be looking at $400+ in fees just to apply.

Their college courses last 4 years, and can cost over $30,000 per year!! And there is no student finance, they have to organise their own loans, so with interest rates etc.

HOW is any student from an average home finding £120,000 to pay for uni? And that’s just undergraduate, it’s more again if you do postgrad, which is a must for professions like medicine or law etc.

I know that our students here leave with high levels of ‘debt’ but it is atypical debt that you don’t have to pay if you’re not earning and is written off eventually.

Imagine over £100,000 of actual debt upon graduation, before you’ve even started your career. How do American graduates even afford to live? How do they manage to save and buy a home?

I know it must be possible, but I just don’t see how?

Wow. It’s an insane amount of money!

I’d love to know how much parents save per month from birth.

Both my kids attend private unis here in the US, it’s only financially possible because they’re both very driven and worked their arses off for all four years of high school, straight As, extra curriculars with leadership roles, volunteering in the community etc, which meant they were very attractive to a lot of schools and were offered massive scholarships at several unis. We then waded through those offers to find the right fit.

As monday said, a ‘good’ private school can (as my kids ones do) charge $90k per year 😱. My son’s scholarship waived his tuition, and he has a secondary scholarship for participating in a sport, as well as other outside scholarships to cover room and board. My daughter got a ‘full ride’, so we don’t even have to pay for her meals lol, and as she has some outside scholarships too, they cover her books and other day to day expenses. Financial aid is means tested for a lot of these schools, eg. for Harvard, IF you get in, and your primary household earns less than $200k a year (which is generous actually, most schools it’s about $100k), they will cover all your expenses including stipends for travel, there’s even a winter coat fund, and ensure you have part time job opportunities.

My DH is American and had college funds set up since birth, but it wouldn’t touch the sides at either school tbh. It’s absolutely wild to me people saddle themselves with nearly half a million(!) dollars of debt for an undergrad degree, but both of them know kids attending who don’t have any scholarships, I assume they’re a mix of the very wealthy and those who feel the cachet of attending a prestigious college is worth the sticker shock (it’s not!).

The kids are very aware these funds are not a right, they’re a privilege, there are conditions attached, and the money will be revoked if they’re not being met - as I’ve seen happen. In which case, that student either transfers to a more affordable option, usually a state school, or renegotiates and/or take out loans to finish their degree.

And then they’ll have to do it all over again for post grad 🤦🏻‍♀️

Loans, grants and scholarships.

Its one of the many reasons against trans girls in sports as they can (and have) taken sports scholarships away from the intended targets.

State Colleges are a much cheaper option for local students.

Dc has a sports scholarship. Tuition alone is 60k.

they do say for many of their friends once they manage the first year, after that they can claim to be living “in state” and the fees reduce to more like UK levels. They can’t leave the state for more than a week or two though to maintain it.

most have rich parents though.

Congratulations to your children, sounds like they have worked incredibly hard and it paid off!!
Hard work does seem to pay in the US (perhaps more than it does in the UK? Up for debate perhaps)

All the answers offered so far are correct, but it is maybe also worth saying that the US is a big country with high salaries, and there are a lot of rich Americans.

Recently learned that my friend's brother in law (American doctor/surgeon in his 30s) has student loan debt of $700k!

Very few of my students are able to get by without having some sort of job. Conventional wisdom is that more than 20 hours a week and your academic life is going to suffer, but my student demographic is typically not very well off - some of mine do a lot more than 20 hours and conventional wisdom usually proves correct! Otherwise, lots of loans and scholarships as others have said, and being instate does help with fees.

@Snickersnack1Some UK students have scary debts: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68534953

many graduates earn a lot more than people here. I’ve recently recruited some roles with a salary of £30-40k. The US applicants had salaries of £90-125k!

Agree the numbers seem super scary! But it’s actually not so bad if you remember that if these students stop working, the repayments stop. And even though the debt grows with interest, it will eventually be written off. It really is more like a tax than a loan and is not debt in the conventional sense.

US salaries do seem incredibly high! It would be tempting to go over there for a year or two if I wasn't terrified of a) getting sick, or b) getting shot

He had to start paying 9 months after graduation and they took 10 years to pay off So started paying at 21 and finished at 31. He's not just graduated, he's already doing well in his career. getting married this month. 😁

fwiw, a lot of clever American kids don't go to Uni because they are debt adverse (sp?). Most my cousins kids did not go to Uni. Many who do go to Uni go part time for >> 4 years to get their degrees at a cost they can afford. Community colleges are said to be more popular than ever because you can do about half your degree using their relatively cheaper courses.

My friends from high school are mostly not white, they include Mexican citizens. They sure didn't get a free ride...

Grad students (masters or PhD) almost universally work as tutors formally teaching under-grads to help pay their tuition. Students who don't work is weird.

My step-sis moved heaven & earth to get her son prepared to get into an Ivy League Uni where he got a true free ride. It's been a shock when he wanted to go overseas for a Grad degree, that he can't get free ride for that too.

The cost of living in California is so crazy high. Their salaries are close to double mine on paper but they seem to have half the disposable income I do.

Ive just come back from the US…last night there was an advert on the telly where a girl got into uni and her pleased and emotional parents rang a mortgage company to remortgage the house 😳

This. It’s very tax efficient saving too.

Generally Americans have less of a sense of entitlement than Brits and believe in funding their life choices.

Also, graduate salaries are much, much higher in the US so they have a chance of actually paying off their six figure debt.

That’s what I said! I saw it too. Couldn’t believe it. Or the constant drug adverts.

i advise students on uni applications, in an international school. We have a few that do end up going to the US, all of them have phenomenally wealthy parents can basically pay up front for a top school.

state colleges are cheaper, but most international students don’t aim for them.

Students applying to the top, private universities may:

• have very rich parents who can fund them outright
• be incredible, outstanding students - top grades, brilliant extracurricular etc and the university will offer a good level of financial aid package. This might include grants, loans, or a requirement to work for the uni. Parents will take on huge loans, remortgage they houses etc to pay their contributions.
• merit / sports scholarships - again for outstanding students in a specific field

The acceptance rates at top US unis are extremely low these days - less than 4% at Harvard. They really do cream off the top international talent - or at least they have up until now 🤷‍♀️.

Weirdly Ds applied to the UC system and to a Private uni. We were in California and average income earners.
Once they had sent him the offers, it ended up costing less to go to the private with their financial help. It was also closer to home and so nice I wanted to move in too.
Dd is in Uni now, last kid, in the UK system. Very different.

I have 2 DC that went/are at Ivy leagues.
The colleges offer 100% needs met by way of bursary rather than loan.
So basically if you get accepted your family means are assessed and your offer is based on that. They fund everything tuition, accommodation, full meal plan, travel, books, and “miscellaneous costs”.

Obviously only a tiny percentage of students who apply get accepted and a lot of students who get accepted come from wealthy families who can support their children without financial aid from the college.
The aim is to graduate without debt.

He's just turned 18, his major is Chemistry but I know they dont really concentrate on a full path for a few years yet. I dont think he will do more than half his subjects in Chemistry and he can choose pretty much anything else.

I know someone who's College major was Oboe and they are now a Scientist.

In the USA with a child at uni. If someone has $1M in debt it's VERY unusual and involves medical school for 2 people. Federal student loans are capped at $30K for undergraduate; beyond that you need to get a private loan. The eyewatering totals you see are often for postgraduate programmes. Research PhDs are often funded (it's frequently said if you can't get funding you shouldn't do it) but professional programmes are not.

So the fees are all over the map. It could be only a few thousand for a local community college (FE college), it could be $70K for an expensive private. Plus living expenses.

What you actually pay and what the sticker price are are VERY different things! At the top end privates students with a household income of under $100K don't pay any fees and many have guarantees higher than that, plus funds for living expenses according to income. SO if you are actually really poor, you won't pay a penny for anything: meals, books, room, all included. Need based financial aid is the biggest category but schools may also have athletic

There are partial grants and loans through the government and states may also have their own programmes. The issue is really in states that have high fees for state universities; they don't have enough aid to make up the gap. Mine is about average with the top public university costing $12K a year for fees.

My eldest is at an expensive private and our out of pocket cost is probably similar to or less than what we'd pay in the UK and she won't have a tuition fee loan. by our estimates she will have a loan debt of about $15K, just the basic federal loans.

It all depends on your income. If you're wealthy or poor (and clever!) you won't have a problem. If you're in the middle you need to start saving.

At the moment average student loan debt for undergraduate is actually higher in England than it is in the USA.

I love this flexibility! I really wasn’t ready to choose my undergraduate degree age just turned 17 when we filled in our UCAS forms. I made a career change later in life and it took 2 additional degrees and 7 years in total! I think US degrees are better, in this respect.

The first time I was ever in the US I was fascinated by drug ads on tv that slagged off competing brands. ‘Headache, Brad? Throw away those crappy Brand X pills and try Advil! You’ll feel better in a jiffy!’

I applied to grad school in the US and was offered a full scholarship for four years that coveted tuition, accommodation etc. I declined in the end and took a scholarship to a UK university, but it was a bewildering amount of money. The fees alone were $75,000 p.a.

But when I was working in a US hotel, I was fascinated by the enormous sacrifices made by ordinary, lower-middle-class US parents for ‘college funds’.

There was a woman I used to eat lunch with who worked in the accounts department 8-5 daily, went home, had dinner with her DH and young children, then drove to her night shift job, where she handled out of hours medical calls at a central call centre. On a good night, she got a fair few hours of sleep, on a busy one, less so. Then she drove home again in time to shower, change, get her kids up and have breakfast with them, before driving back to her 8-5 day job.

I think her DH also had an ‘extra’ weekend job.

Oh one comment on acceptance rates: Unlike UCAS the US does not have any limit on how many universities you can apply to. (I think the Common App caps it at 50.) While many universities have an application fee, not all do, and some have waivers.

This means that students can put in tons of applications, if they want to write all the optional essays for the prestigious ones. It artificially drives down acceptance rates and it's believed that universities tacitly encourage this to make them look more selective. Every year you hear about someone who got into all 8 Ivy League universities for example.