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?

Community colleges are also sometimes a good choice for "late bloomer" people who did not do well in high school. The daughter of a good friend of mine didn't do very well in high school mainly because of lack of effort. She spent two years in community college where she cleaned up her act and did very well. Then she was able to transfer to one of the best universities in the state and later went on to get her Master's..

Community colleges can also provide other programmes like technical courses, and associates' degrees can be either pre-university or job oriented. It varies somewhat by area as colleges are independent and can tailor their offerings to demand.

Woah! That’s nuts!!

This sounds like a nightmare. I would definitely burn out. They don’t get much annual leave either do they. Sounds like a huge proportion on their lives is spent working. Amazing if you love your job, but if you don’t it must be a terrible grind.

The article in my OP gives quite a good overview of the process of applying and getting into university. Salary-wise though your average is higher than ours.

The average salary here is about £37,000. Minimum wage is about £25,000. I’d say a typical professional salary outside London is around £45,000-£65,000. If you earn over about £70,000 you’re in the top 10% and only the top 1% earn £200,000 or more.

Where I live, a total household income of £70k- £100k is very decent for a comfortable middle class life.

The average house costs around £270,000 and much more in the South of the country. Property is ridiculously expensive and out of the reach of many.

I hope that answers your questions?

"...as far as how getting into in/college works"

As I understand things in the US (and please correct me if I'm wrong), college entry is largely based on SAT scores and then GPA and/or AP scores.

In the UK, entry is based solely on the British equivalent of AP scores (although there are some specialist tests for entry into, for example, medicine and law eg the UK has the UCAT for medicine which is the equivalent of the MCAT in the USA).

I'm not exactly sure how AP courses are graded, but the equivalent in the UK (called A Levels) are based on a single set of exams at the end of a two year course of study in the final year at high school.

There is no equivalent of the SAT in the UK (apart from the specialist exams for law or medicine etc).

Students will normally apply through the British equivalent of the Common Application (here it is called UCAS) in the final year of high school.

Universities will then generally make "conditional" offers. What this means is that if the student gets the required grades in the upcoming exams then they will be accepted.

Required grades can vary greatly (as I'm sure that they do at US universities).

I used to work for a company that recruited people from certain UK universities that were very highly rated.

One of these (Warwick) for the particular course that we recruited graduates from had a standard entry requirement of A star A star A.

They stated that the equivalent AP grades required for any US students wanting to come and study were five AP Tests at grade 5 including AP Calculus BC (and, very specifically, NOT AP Calculus AB). Would US universities insist on particular AP Test grades like this?

Of course, not all subjects have such high grade requirements.

Outside of those in demand courses, other courses might require something like 5, 5, 4, 4 in AP courses (AAB in A levels).

There is a page here about US entry requirements at Warwick:

https://warwick.ac.uk/study/international/admissions/entry-requirements/usa
.

At the other end of the scale, there is a university near me (I won't name it) where the entry requirements for US students are as follows:

• High School Graduation Diploma Grade B/ CGPA 3.0 or above plus one of the following: Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT 1), administered beginning spring 2016: a minimum of 610 in Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and a minimum of 570 in Maths; 2 Advanced Placement Tests (APs) in subjects relevant to the study area with grade 3; ACT (American College Test) with a composite score of 23 or above.

I thought the same about annual leave until I moved here. I get just as much allowance in the US as I did working in London - approx. 5 weeks (I say approx. because in London it was exactly 27 days per year, here I plan to take 25-28 days per year under an ‘unlimited PTO’ model). If you work for a big, global company, your annual leave will be on a par with your UK counterparts’. Same with maternity leave and parental leave.

No, they don't insist on AP tests here -- they can't as they are privately given. They will compare what you take to what is available at your school. This is important as some schools cannot offer all the courses. Not just poor schools but small rural ones. (Similar to how many UK degree courses require Further Maths only if offered as not all schools do.) Also, some schools do not like the rigidity of the AP system. IB is also an option in some areas (mine offers IB at some schools). Because of the flexibility of US degree programmes there are ways to catch up; you'll just start earlier in the maths sequence. You are at a fairly significant disadvantage if you do not take any calculus if you want to do a degree where it is essential such as physics or engineering, but it's possible.

Some universities don't put much weight on SATs.

The thing about leave time is that there is no guaranteed minimum. Poorer workers and new employees start out with poor allowances. It's very unequal. With experience you do get a fair amount, more than British people expect. There is a cultural difference in that it is somewhat frowned upon by many people to take a full two weeks at once. Mat leave is the killer really. The number of firms offering extended paid leave isn't huge and there can be a lot of pressure to return early. Several states have implemented paid leave, but only for 12 weeks still.

Having been through one system (albeit pre-tuition fees) and putting children through another, the UK loans system has better repayment terms, but the lack of any grant funds for the poorest is a weakness. The reliance on maintenance loans and perhaps a part time job for living costs isn't a great one, and the amounts available have failed to keep up with inflation. The US at least has some grant money available from the government (not counting institutional funds).

My friend is a PA in a company in Texas earning the equivalent of £90k a year. I’m nhs and the PAs in my office are on around £30k. A grad from a good uni will be earning much more so I wonder if debt, percentage wise, is that different to uk?

Very very dependent on job, amount of debt taken, etc.

The problem with US student loans is that the interest rate is terrible, especially now. Undergraduate loans are at 6.53%. Parent loans are at 9%.

Again the real issue is graduate degrees where you can borrow the full cost. That is where you see most of the nasty totals. The problem is that many professions require them, including some fields that are bachelors level in the UK such as physiotherapy. Even social work requires the MSW for independent practice (though if you get your clinical hours, you can do counselling, which is better paying). Many teachers need master's degrees. It's the "pink collar" professions like teaching, social work, librarianship that really suffer as the cost of the degree is expensive relative to the salary.

Most people in the US expect to clear their student debt in their working life, but it is estimated that most graduates in the UK will not pay off their student loans in 40 years (after which the Government writes it off). This suggests to me that the student debt vs earnings ratio is not quite the same across the two countries.

Also it’s not just about graduate starting salaries. Pay is equally if not more divergent as you rise through the ranks. You also have many more instances of obscenely high pay among the professions (like hotshot lawyers earning $30m+, top plastic surgeons earning $5m+) - pay which is usually reserved for elite athletes and A list performance artists in the UK.

That’s interesting. We’re seeing that more here. I just did a masters level pgdip because every job advertised in my field now requires education to masters level - which is bs imo and not proportionate to the salary. Got to love the NHS.

Although quite a few employers, even some non-profits, offer tuition reimbursement to employees for advanced degrees relevant to the work. Mine does.

Because of our income our child won’t qualify for most loans but we cant afford to just pay for it either. we have been saving vigorously since the day she was born. Seriously, we opened an account for her as soon as we got her social security number. grandparents add cash to her college fund for birthdays and Christmas. it’s just part of being an upper middle class parent. You have to save the money.

I hadn’t thought about this before, but could this be a powerful motivator for those trans athletes in US universities women’s sports? Does this effectively mean these men / boys get to go to uni for free? I had always just thought they wanted to be placed highly in the sport, but of course this all makes much more sense.

it's theoretically possible, but there's so many variables. Not all sports involve that sort of scholarship. Only division I schools offer scholarships. At Division III, it factors into admissions but there's no money. And scholarships may only be partial.

(The most notable case, Lia Thomas, transitioned after admission. So whatever her impact on sport, it didn't factor into admissions.)

or I should say: it was theoretically possible because due to Trump, the NCAA has said that trans athletes need to play as their birth sex. So it's not even a concern now. The NCAA always had stricter rules than high school; you had to be on hormones and there was a waiting period.

It's common to need decades to repay the loan, which is quite easy to get. It's like repaying a mortgage, really.

Even before the election, there were over half a million student athtletes in the NCAA and less than THIRTY were trans. It really isn't as big a deal as lots of people seem to imagine it as. There really isn't a bunch of dudes in spandex stealing our girls' futures.

As for paying for it, you negotiate. You get your financial package with your offer and it's completely normal to go back and say that you need more. Whether you get more is dependent on how much they want you. One of my kids goes to a school that is $60 a year. They were offered a $25k pa academic scholarship. We ended up paying $20k a year all in, including food plan, as DC successfully self advocated for themselves. I was so bloody proud!

It's also completely normal for people to get into an Ivy League, for example, and choose their best state school instead in order to keep the costs down.

A lot of people do military service as it gives financial assistance towards university after a few years. We’re there and started saving a few years ago for college accounts. Our 5 year old has $20k already, but I’m a UK citizen so we would support paying for our kids to study abroad if it’s financially better and the course made sense. Also the uni savings plan has tax advantages and can be converted to a pension for them if not used, so it’s not a waste either way. Agree though that the prices here are ludicrous though.

That’s still 30 women (because let’s face it, it’s always women) that lose their education to men.

it may not be a big deal to you, but for those 30 women it’s a huge deal. It’s their education and their lives. Their futures have been stolen.

one man taking a scholarship away from a woman is one too many.

if each scholarship is 80k per year, that’s 9.6 million dollars worth of education stolen from those 30 girls and given to men.

Jesus Christ how did the thread get hijacked like this? 🤦‍♀️

Ugh not enjoying this but no. Not everyone who plays gets a scholarship much less a full freight one. So you can’t possibly estimate that.

Housing is not as expensive basically and tax rates are lower (and salaries higher) so it is possible to save the money and is ingrained as something you have to do. Very few go private for schooling either. Elite universities are needs blind and gaining a scholarship is an industry in itself. You can’t compare $30,000 to what that is here with our salaries, housing costs and tax rates.

Also I don't think the Ivies give athletic scholarships. Scholarships tend to be need-based in the Ivy League.

There's the craziness of costs in US higher education, but it also reveals how much the taxpayer subsidises students in the UK.

Higher ed is pretty much socialised here (with an effective graduate tax as you don't pay if you're lower income). While the merits are debatable, it is not necessarily the case that it's much cheaper here, just that the costs are hidden and/or shared.