[sntax]

I really feel like the underlying problem is we expect people to be adverse to purchases that will be a net loss. Unfortunately, "shopping" for higher education is extremely confusing and to make matters worse your lender is guaranteed to be paid. So we have created an environment where people who are the most vulnerable are being taken advantage of. We need to find a way to better protect people from making terrible six-figure investments, whether that is through legislation or education something has to change. Even if there was a website that scraped data from LinkedIn to show where people from higher education institutions get hired and what positions they get would massively help consumers not make bad investments. I would have never paid the money for my degree knowing what I know now.

[alistairSH]

"shopping" for higher education is extremely confusing

I'm interested in hearing more of your take on this statement.

From my personal experience, as a first generation immigrant (though of Western European background), it wasn't overwhelmingly confusing. Sure, there were lots of options - R1 state schools, Ivies and other top-notch private schools, secondary state schools, etc. But, once I figured out which category of schools best suited my talents (in my case, R1 state school, because I was smart but no clue what I wanted to study), the set of choices was narrowed substantially.

After that, it was really just a matter of looking at the costs, as in my limited experience at the time, all the big state schools were mostly interchangeable, or at least had enough to offer that I didn't fear not finding something to study and hobbies to pursue.

Staying in state, at the time, was something like $16k/year (UVA, mid-90s). Leaving the state was roughly double. Pretty much a no-brainer to go to UVA, VT, or W&M. I ended up at UVA mostly because of ego - at the time, it had the better all-around reputation. Hind-sight being what it is, I might have thrived better at W&M, but I hardly failed to thrive (just wasted my first year partying too hard and not taking academic seriously).

[sntax]

It is not the fact of choosing between UVA, Virginia Tech, and William and Mary. Anyone of those schools is highly likely to give you a return on investment even if you get a non-stem degree. Why is this? They all have strong brand recognition. They are very selective; even the least selective of those three (VT) has an average GPA acceptance of 3.92. [1] It gets confusing for people who are not the best and the brightest. if you have a 3.0 GPA and 1000 SAT (median scores for high school) you might think it is a good idea to go to a school like Radford University. [2] Both cost about the same but one will vastly decrease your chances of making a return on investment. Now it might not be a bad idea to attend Radford if you plan on staying in southwest VA and you got a marketable skill. However, there is a large number of people who go to Radford get a history degree and move back to Richmond Virginia. Now your six-figure investment is worth about the same as the paper it is printed on. My parents always told me "It doesn't really matter where you go to school or what degree you get, you just have to make sure you get a degree!". This might have been the case at one point, but it is nowhere near the case anymore.

[1]https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmp... [2]https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmp...

[chaosbutters]

I agree with you more than OP. In-state for me was significantly cheaper than out of state so I applied to both in/out to see offers. I got my dream school with no support (would've been like $50k/yr) but also a good school offered me a huge scholarship that reduced it to lower than my in-state or their in-state so I went there.

I basically said I got into these 5 good schools and there isn't likely a big difference to employers, so, who is giving me the most money?