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?

in canada you pay for post secondary education as well. somewhat cheaper than the us. but parents still pay a majority.
@Snickersnack1 you mention the cost of application fees, many people in the uk equally pay similar prices for 3-4 spots at independent primaries or secondaries not to mention how independent school fees would be similar if not more to uni fee's.

i paid fully for 3 to attend uni, they left school with zero debt. not all fees came at once so we could space them out over the year. tuition was not the most expensive aspect nor books. it was housing! but in canada there are tons of options, some more expensive than others. most colleges will offer lower fees and can be close enough to home so that the commute is easy you can do two years at a local college then transfer to the bigger named uni's for the last two years and graduate with the degree from the bigger university. that helps significantly with costs. it just takes some pre approval and coordination but no more so than securing housing. lots of ways to keep costs down.

Starting salaries are NOT $125k for the vast majority. AT ALL!!! I live in the TriState and I know about 2 graduates that have ended up with a job in that scale and they both had a parent who worked in finance/tech already. The average starting salary for the "kids" I know is $50-60k and they keep on their parents' health insurance, phone plans and live in their homes if they have to!

A graduate job with a starting salary of $60k in the US (I assume you don’t live in NYC) would have a starting salary of around £24k in the UK (outside London).

There is student finance.

There are guaranteed rate loans and government backed loans.

There are direct grants (Pell grant).

There are private scholarships.

There is also university financial aid, basically where the university writes off a portion of the cost of attendance.

Some states have special financial programmes aimed at encouraging students from underrepresented groups to go to university - low income, different racial and ethnic groups, etc.

Students entitled to free or reduced price school meals can have the application fees waived.

No two students at any given university will be paying the same price for a year at university.

The financial aid process starts with parents and student filling out the FAFSA, documenting the parental and student financial picture.
State universities make their financial aid offer based on the FAFSA.
If a student is applying to private universities, the parents and student will complete the FAFSA and also the CSS Profile.

Many universities will also require an additional, individual institutional financial form to be filled out.

You receive your admission letter along with your financial aid letter. If your family income is less then $150k (iirc) you will receive some sort of a write off of the cost of attendance (tuition plus room and board = cost of attendance). Families earning significantly less than that $150k will receive a big write off.

There are extremely selective universities that offer to meet the full demonstrated need of admitted students.

I did not pay one cent toward my DCs' university education. They were all accepted into schools that offered to meet the full demonstrated need of admitted students, both private and state. Their average debt was $7k at graduation.

Students can also apply to university and sign up for ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps), do basic training, put in all of the required armed forces hours, go to classes, do all required work, and graduate and be commissioned as a junior officer. Then they serve for five (iirc) years and can continue in active service or go into the reserves. DS had a roommate who had his entire four year degree paid for with a ROTC committment, with a monthly stipend to boot, plus cost of books.

Teachers in my local high school earn six figures.

That's not necessarily true.

A really bright student with an excellent application portfolio (stellar GPA and AP results, excellent SAT or ACT scores, National.Merit Finalist, sports/ music/ art, leadership roles, volunteering, part time work, and excellent personal statement and teacher references) whose family has a lower than average income would be crazy to restrict themselves to applying to their local state school as many of the most selective private schools offer to meet the full demonstrated financial need of admitted students, and do need blind admissions too.

State universities are the public universities in each state. They are usually called University of (State Name), with a few exceptions (The Ohio State University and Rutgers spring to mind, but there are more. They are all research universities. There are also public universities with names like Montana State University, Kansas State University, Iowa State University, Southern Illinois University, etc. Some of these started off as teacher training institutions and are now fully fledged universities.

Stayed and public are the same animal.

Private universities can be research universities or liberal arts colleges. Well known names include Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford. Less well known in the UK are Colby, Muhlenberg, Bowdoin, Grinnell. These are liberal arts colleges. There are thousands of private third level institutions in the US.

Yes. My eldest was a bit cheaper going to private. My friend in another state, which has more expensive state university tuition, found that it was over $10,000 a year cheaper to send her child to a private university, and with lower student loans to boot.

For my 2nd, it may well work out better for them to stay in state, as our income is going up. We will see in 2 years.

Some state universities also offer scholarships to attract out of staters so it isn't more expensive than in-state. Not the most prestigious ones like U of Michigan and UVa, but others.

Another big driver in the growth of state universities was the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862. This created land-grant universities, which included the study of agriculture. Or, why the main campus of the University of Illinois is in Urbana-Champaign and not Chicago. In some states, there are two flagship campuses with slightly differing focuses for this reason. For example in both Kansas and Iowa, one university is strongest in liberal arts and the other has the vet and agriculture faculties. New York State famously gave its land grant to Cornell, so Cornell has the ag college and vet school, and New York State residents get a discount on tuition for those colleges.

State universities are the public universities in each state. They are usually called University of (State Name), with a few exceptions (The Ohio State University and Rutgers spring to mind, but there are more.

Also there is at least one example that works the other way. The University of Pennsylvania is private and a member of the Ivy League.

Yes that’s the case with my family and friends in the US. Parents start planning for kids’ university education much earlier.

You've reminded me of my bewilderment on a US pediatric Crohn's disease forum. A huge majority of parents were very sad their child was no longer eligible to join the army. That the army would pay for university was a family tradition for a many US families.

That the army would pay for university was a family tradition for a many US families.

This brings to mind another option that is available to a few, which is to attend one of the service academies, such as Annapolis (Navy) or West Point (Army). These are a complete "full ride." In fact, they pay you to go there.

The son of a good friend did this, serving the minimum after graduation. It generally requires a minimum of 5 years' active duty serving as an officer. It is also considered a very prestigious credential that opens a lot of doors in civilian life.

One of eldest’s classmates got into West Point. It’s extremely difficult and prestigious. Not only do you need to go through their admissions you need to secure a congressional appointment.

people also join the armed forces as professionals (doctors, JAG corps) as they can pay for your training or grant student loan forgiveness.

The military can also provide very good technical training. None of mine are suited for it, but it’s definitely not to be looked down on.

Quite a few people have mentioned “cost of books” being included in a grant or bursary.

I have also seen it mentioned elsewhere.

which makes me think this is a significant cost for it to be mentioned on it’s own?

now I went to uni in the dark ages but books weren’t a huge cost. You could usually get them second hand from a graduating student. Couple of hundred max a year?

dc’s scholarship at their university is done as a percentage. 100% be say $100k/year which is what the uni have calculated to cover everything. Tuition, rent, travel etc, it’s not proportioned out, they obviously take out tuition, then anything left is paid to the student.

There’s no separate “cost of books”, and as far as I know for the first year at least they haven’t had to buy any. Presumably between online resources, libraries, and course mates/previous years.

why does it get brought up as a separate cost so much?

Books were a massive bill for my Ds at Uni. First semester we ended up paying full cost for most as we didn't know the ins and outs and they ranged from $100 to $200 per book. After that we found that the bookstore sold the used books online starting at a set date before each semester, so I spent time on Boxing Day with a booklist for the new year saving some of the cost. They boxed them up and had them waiting in the campus bookstore.

Parents can transfer their gi bill to their child too.

Science moves on, of course, necessitating new books (regularly costing $$$) but also pubiishers are very greedy and come out with not always necessary new editions all the time.

I graduated from uni in America 25 years ago, luckily debt free thanks to generous financial aid (grants and scholarships) as well as generous parents. But most of my peers are still paying off their student loans. It's just the way it is.

DS considered the med school followed by armed forces active service route in order to avoid the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ of debt he would otherwise incur. The cons were too strong for him - having to renounce his second country citizenship (which would impact all of his potential descendants too), the armed forces dictate your specialty and they increasingly outsource everything but primary care, so he would have been stuck in a primary care specialty and maybe even one he really wouldn't have chosen like OB/Gyn. The big negative was the military ethos though.

It's worth noting though that males over 18 are not eligible for Federal student financial aid if they haven't signed up for Selective Service, aka the draft. This means certain loans and grants are not available to them. There is a box in the FAFSA (or there was last time I looked at it) where males must indicate Selective Service status. There are some exceptions but you have to verify medical conditions or CO status iirc.

Dwight Eisenhower wore the fact that his entire education was free from elementary school all the way to graduation from West Point as a badge of pride in the potential of America.

Funnily enough Eisenhower’s mother was upset he went to West Point! She was raised Mennonite (though she later became a JW) and they’re a peace church.

books depend somewhat on subject. The publishers’ new trick is course codes for online problem sets and such and they can’t be reused. It’s an issue in STEM courses particularly. in English, history, other subjects that are less reliant on traditional textbooks, there are more options for getting them cheaply.

Yes but the cost of living is higher in the US. Health insurance averages between 10 and 18% of pay depending on where you live. Property taxes are often 10 times higher here than the UK's council tax. Food is more expensive, although last time I was in the UK it definitely seemed much more expensive than other years. Really the only cheaper bit is the price of petrol. Trust me, when we first moved to the US we thought that salary increase was like we were millionaires! Turned out that we were very much not but it was nice while we still believed. 😀

Very few graduates are paying property tax, most will be renting. Whereas in the UK, everyone pays council tax even if they don’t own. But yes, COL is generally higher in the US, however I think I it’s more than made up for by the higher pay. Everything is 20-50% more expensive in the US but pay is 2x or more.