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I have student loans. I work full time while going to college and still have to take out loans as I have other things to pay for as well. I don't get financial aid, as my 20k a year means I make too much for it. No lala land here.
And one of my jobs (I actually have a full-time and part time job) was/is at McDonalds. And I have one degree already. But I live in a farm town, with one small local college and not many jobs. Obviously I will be moving after.
Not everybody has the same situation.
I'm currently in my JR year of a BSN (Nursing) Program. I will have taken out 47K in Federal Sub/Unsub loans by the time I graduate in May 2017. My tuition is paid for through pell grant b/c I am a single mother. However, I live 2 hours 1 way from my university. Due to the extremely high COL in my area, and needing an apartment bigger than a studio, I have been forced to live further out.
When it comes to Nursing, on top of your regularly scheduled classes and lab time, you have an additional 12 hours a week of clinical time. This further cuts into a students ability to work. Nursing school takes up about 50-60 hours of my week between classes, clinical, lab, commute and studying. It is amazing that I managed to work PT for the last year.
I don't particularly look forward to paying an estimated 480/month in SL back, but I have already established a plan on how I will do it. My daughter will be starting college in 2020 and I'm nervous about how I will pay for that. It seems like one can not really get ahead. When it is all said and done I will be making about 6/hr more as an entry level RN than I was in my previous job. However, I expect to double my Pre-RN salary by my 3rd year of nursing.
Here's a reality check. The "affordable" land grant university in my state costs $25k per year. The middling state university I attended twenty-five years ago costs about the same, which is eight times what I paid as an undergraduate in the eighties. Our kids could very easily graduate from college facing six-figure debt without the money we have been setting aside for their educations since the day each was born.
Is this for tuition and room & board or just tuition?
The large public universities in Missouri have tuition's that range from: $4.3k (Northwest Missouri State) to 10.6k (University of Missouri Columbia).
Room and Board is something that you would have to pay for even if you weren't going to school, so it's not really fair to include that in the cost of education.
If I wasn't going to school and instead working, I would still need to put a roof over my head and eat.
Is this for tuition and room & board or just tuition?
The large public universities in Missouri have tuition's that range from: $4.3k (Northwest Missouri State) to 10.6k (University of Missouri Columbia).
Room and Board is something that you would have to pay for even if you weren't going to school, so it's not really fair to include that in the cost of education.
If I wasn't going to school and instead working, I would still need to put a roof over my head and eat.
I realize you are talking about Undergrad, but by way of comparison, the in state med students at Mizzou when we were there for residency in the mid 2000's were paying around 30K per year. That's almost triple the tuition at the private, highly rated Med school my husband attended. Sometimes, schools they keep Undergrad tuition low and stick it to those in the graduate and professional programs, which I suppose is not an entirely unfair thing for a public university to do, since their mission is primarily at the Undergraduate level.
I'm currently in my JR year of a BSN (Nursing) Program. I will have taken out 47K in Federal Sub/Unsub loans by the time I graduate in May 2017. My tuition is paid for through pell grant b/c I am a single mother. However, I live 2 hours 1 way from my university. Due to the extremely high COL in my area, and needing an apartment bigger than a studio, I have been forced to live further out.
When it comes to Nursing, on top of your regularly scheduled classes and lab time, you have an additional 12 hours a week of clinical time. This further cuts into a students ability to work. Nursing school takes up about 50-60 hours of my week between classes, clinical, lab, commute and studying. It is amazing that I managed to work PT for the last year.
I don't particularly look forward to paying an estimated 480/month in SL back, but I have already established a plan on how I will do it. My daughter will be starting college in 2020 and I'm nervous about how I will pay for that. It seems like one can not really get ahead. When it is all said and done I will be making about 6/hr more as an entry level RN than I was in my previous job. However, I expect to double my Pre-RN salary by my 3rd year of nursing.
You would have access to more federal loan dollars than the typical undergrad, but even at your 47K in student loans, that is still under what you can expect your first year salary to be, thus it is considered an "affordable" debt load for college...plus, like you said, your future earning potential far outweighs the costs involved in paying back those loans vs not going to college at all.
Is this for tuition and room & board or just tuition?
The large public universities in Missouri have tuition's that range from: $4.3k (Northwest Missouri State) to 10.6k (University of Missouri Columbia).
Room and Board is something that you would have to pay for even if you weren't going to school, so it's not really fair to include that in the cost of education.
If I wasn't going to school and instead working, I would still need to put a roof over my head and eat.
A friend and I were talking about this issue. Some of the expenses included in a year of college are expenses that would be incurred anyway, such as clothing, health care, entertainment. However, the room and board issue is more complex. If your student moves out, your housing expenses do not change much. Oh, you might pay a little less in utilities, but not much. Your mortgage, taxes, insurance etc are what they are no matter who is living there. So "room" certainly is a cost to figure in. Your grocery bill will probably not go down "too" much if your student moves out, but his/her costs will certainly go up, either with a meal plan or with cooking on his/her own. Kids that do their own cooking tend to buy a lot of their meals out, as well.
A friend and I were talking about this issue. Some of the expenses included in a year of college are expenses that would be incurred anyway, such as clothing, health care, entertainment. However, the room and board issue is more complex. If your student moves out, your housing expenses do not change much. Oh, you might pay a little less in utilities, but not much. Your mortgage, taxes, insurance etc are what they are no matter who is living there. So "room" certainly is a cost to figure in. Your grocery bill will probably not go down "too" much if your student moves out, but his/her costs will certainly go up, either with a meal plan or with cooking on his/her own. Kids that do their own cooking tend to buy a lot of their meals out, as well.
We noticed quite a bit of difference in utility bills and especially grocery bills. Our grocery bill was easily cut in half or more but also our dining out bills. It's a heck of a lot less expensive at a restaurant for 2 people vs 3 or 4 or 5+. Our water bill especially is minimal now. In our case, however, our kids' room and board is covered by scholarships and RA money so, their costs have gone down. Even without that, overall living expenses on their campus are pretty reasonable and if they were not in college, they would not be living at home anyway. They could not get an apartment, pay utilities (especially cable/internet) and feed themselves for what their room and board would cost them on campus.
We noticed quite a bit of difference in utility bills and especially grocery bills. Our grocery bill was easily cut in half or more but also our dining out bills. It's a heck of a lot less expensive at a restaurant for 2 people vs 3 or 4 or 5+. Our water bill especially is minimal now. In our case, however, our kids' room and board is covered by scholarships and RA money so, their costs have gone down. Even without that, overall living expenses on their campus are pretty reasonable and if they were not in college, they would not be living at home anyway. They could not get an apartment, pay utilities (especially cable/internet) and feed themselves for what their room and board would cost them on campus.
I'll get to what you said in a moment, but that is not what we were discussing. It was the cost of a year at a public university. randomparent quoted $25K/yr and missourah2006 asked if that was tuition only, or tuition, room and board. This morphed into a conversation about having to pay for R&B anyway and not considering it a college cost. I disagreed to a point. It is cheaper for a student to live "at home" than to R&B at college, be that in an apt or the dorms.
Now, we didn't track it that closely, but I don't think our utilities changed much when our kids went off to college. As for eating out, IME, college students do a lot of eating out of their own, so what is saved by mom and dad is spent and sometimes then some by the student. Groceries didn't change much for us, maybe because we have girls.
I agree that R&B in the dorms is generally a decent deal at college. I do think that if ours had not gone to college, but gotten jobs instead after HS, they probably would have lived at home, at least for a while to save up money, ironically, for the apartment first/last months' rent, furniture, etc. College students often feel that it's cheaper to live in an apt, but forget to budget for utilities (especially cable/internet), gas for the car to get to the grocery store (instead of walking to the caf), etc.
It cost me $30k over 4 years for my accounting degree and I was able to graduate with no debt by working my way through school. Got a nice job to boot. I'm sorry, but I don't get people who come out of college with crushing debt. When I think of someone graduating with $100k in debt, the person I have in mind is the art or theater type living in lala land who goes to the expensive, private "art school" for an ego trip. Then after graduating and reality hits that you are only qualified to work at McDonald's while trying to service a mountain of debt, the tears start running. I have no sympathy.
Should lenders make student loan decisions based on majors? Haven't really thought it out but perhaps it would push some majors out of the college environment into a different type of school.
I'll get to what you said in a moment, but that is not what we were discussing. It was the cost of a year at a public university. randomparent quoted $25K/yr and missourah2006 asked if that was tuition only, or tuition, room and board. This morphed into a conversation about having to pay for R&B anyway and not considering it a college cost. I disagreed to a point. It is cheaper for a student to live "at home" than to R&B at college, be that in an apt or the dorms.
Now, we didn't track it that closely, but I don't think our utilities changed much when our kids went off to college. As for eating out, IME, college students do a lot of eating out of their own, so what is saved by mom and dad is spent and sometimes then some by the student. Groceries didn't change much for us, maybe because we have girls.
I agree that R&B in the dorms is generally a decent deal at college. I do think that if ours had not gone to college, but gotten jobs instead after HS, they probably would have lived at home, at least for a while to save up money, ironically, for the apartment first/last months' rent, furniture, etc. College students often feel that it's cheaper to live in an apt, but forget to budget for utilities (especially cable/internet), gas for the car to get to the grocery store (instead of walking to the caf), etc.
The room and board thing depends on the students situation to determine which route is the cheapest. For me my parents house was 15 miles from my school Georgia State in downtown Atlanta. Since I only recieved the states Georgia hope scholarship that paid for my tuition in full but I had no scholarships or grants to help me on the R&B so I stayed at home and since my parents didn't have any money saved for my college they allowed me to stay at home rent free and I only had to give them $200 a month to help them out with groceries.
Of course this is not an option for someone who lives 100+ miles from the school as they have to live on campus. Unlike QWERTY's children, I didn't have a full ride scholarship so it was cheaper for me to stay at home and I find that QWERTY finds every moment to brag about her kids. Okay, your kids are rock stars!
The only expenses I had in college was Money for groceries, my car note, and car insurance which was a little bit cheaper than living on campus and I managed to graduate with no student loans due to my part time job I worked during school.
According to college board, room and board costs $10,728 a year versus $4,095 living at home. My car note plus car insurance cost me $6,000 a year and I didn't have to worry about not having a car on campus. Gas cost me additional $1,800 a year which makes my grand total of $7,800 which I paid for with my part time job in school.
Living at home is a little bit cheaper than staying on campus if you have that option.
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