ITA. Been that way since the 1980’s.
No argument from me . . . but agree that this is a different topic from the OP and warrants its own discussion thread, IMO.
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These days most state schools’ out-of-state tuition is hefty. And in some states the in-state tuition isn’t that cheap either. Rutgers is 15k in state, 32k out of state, and that’s just tuition. Another 10k+ for room and board. But it sounds like the father may have been paying every penny of his kid’s expenses, which I think is unrealistic with 5 kids. They should have been on the hook for something.
How old are you? CUNY stopped being free around when they started letting Black students in.
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is that 15k per year (so 60K total) or for all 4 years? 15k for all 4 years would be insanely cheap, but that’s what someone else said.
okay, that’s 15k per year, not in total. i just looked it up. that’s not cheap. so it’s 60k in total prior to books.
Mine was a public out of state State University. I think it was about 8000 a year? But not including text books, food and dorm.
Man back in the day my dad gave me $300 a month for expenses.
I just checked my credit card, I’m hovering between 3800 and 5000 a month these days (rent not included).
I blame ubereats.
I believe your first degree is free if you’re in the Guard.
I’m surprised I didn’t, although we were a single income household for most of our kids’ growing up years. And then there was the horse thing.
Had my eldest stayed at the first school she attended and actually tried, we probably would have been able to cover what she wasn’t able to cover via loans/scholarships on a pay as you go basis. Actually the only reason she had a loan was bc she wanted to live in the dorm. She could have commuted.
It sounds like you think taking math classes teaches critical thinking. And, in particular, the type of critical thinking that is relevant outside math professions? Lots of kids graduate from college with one math class that isn’t more challenging than a third year of HS math.
i’m guessing you asking that question itself implies an education.
I’m guessing I would have asked that question when I was a HS senior.
But, you didn’t answer it. Do we have any way of measuring “critical thinking”?
Do we have studies of kids who were on the bubble for college admissions (could get in, but not the future engineers), looked at those who chose college (are we talking 4 year or 2 year here?) and those who chose something else, and compared their “critical thinking” when they were in HS and 4 years later?
(I have to repeat my critical thinking story. To me, given the availability of statistical data, one key critical thinking skill is recognizing the difference between causation and correlation. Looking at college mailings to a HS relative, I read “Is college worth it? Certainly! College grads earn $x million more over their lifetimes than HS grads.”
Whoever wrote that probably had a college education, but failed miserably at critical thinking.)
Add in another $16K for room & board though.
Interestingly, tuition at Rutgers has been going down for the last two years in a row, and is now under $15K when you exclude room & board and books.
ETA: Oops, that was based on an estimate that assumed the 21-22 change in tuition matched the 20-21 change in tuition. Looking at the school’s website it is still over $15K for in-state students who don’t live on campus.
Out of state, living on campus is $46,407 plus books per year, so under $200K for four years, but not by much.
If you live on campus. If you’re local, you can live with your parents.
Assuming your parents are cool with that.
I know more than one set of parents who either charged their college kids rent, or wouldn’t let their kids stay with them once the child support ran out (which is often around the time they graduate from high school).
I mean, personally I can’t quite imagine my parents doing that, but I know multiple people who have been in that predicament.
my mother didn’t want me to go away to college. she was a little too unwilling to let me go. i know i’m amazing, i get it.
In general, yes. I’m not sure math for poets would. Some people learn other kinds of critical thinking.
I think this is difficult because the meaning of “critical thinking”, like the meaning of science, cannot be nailed down exactly.
This would be an interest study, but I think it’s flawed as a measure of critical thinking. It implicitly treats education as a kind of industrial process that either works or does not.
I don’t think a person’s critical thinking is automatically improved my college. It provides them opportunities to work hard and improve it themselves. However they may not take advantage of this, either because they do not want to work hard, or because they do not have the skills. Your hypothetical study does not adjust for this, even in principle.
My guess is that a lot of people are going to college who do not need to be. And a lot of jobs require college that do not need to. Your study would probably give an indication of how true that is.
and have no social life.
Don’t think my parents would’ve let me be in debt for college if I wanted to.
Asians amirite
I know that’s common, but that’s totally the parents not recognizing them as adults. Our kids lived at home (one still does) and outside of our mere existence in the same general area, there’s no limiting factors around their social life. And there’s some benefits (like, we DD, I pay for the beer, mom does laundry).
My BIL did the same thing with their kids. They hit a point and we just treat them functionally as roommates that don’t know how to clean, and this is their house to use as an adult as well (i.e gf comes and goes as she pleases, friends over, etc).
But that took us specifically deciding that we wanted the kids to live at home, so we put effort into making sure that they didn’t wake up and think “I can have more fun living on my own in my early 20’s”. Like, not complaining when they leave their 3:00am snack paraphanelia all over the counter for the 300’th time.
Both my SO and myself were on our own before 20yo, so we remember the freedoms that come with that.
Still, would you have let them done drugs in your house? Or play computer games until 6am and skip their morning classes? Or have drunk friends crash overnight? Even if they weren’t gonna do that to begin with, it’s a mentality thing. I would feel stressed out if my mom even asked me a casual question like “what did you do last night?”, even if I didn’t do anything, because that could come off as sounding like a loser. Either end of the socialization spectrum can be stressful when the parents are witnessing everything.
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