[eropple]

Or, in my case, less than $25,000 for a piece of paper, some very valuable formal instruction that I draw on today (and, more importantly, knowledgeable people who at the time could put it into a context I could understand), some great contacts, some great work experience, an environment where I could take the time to build projects to improve what I know about my profession and my craft without worrying about making rent, and the ability to actually spell "piece". Pretty good trade.

If you spend $200,000 on undergrad, you're making a mistake. That does not make college a bad idea; it makes spending insane private-school money on college a bad idea.

[juiceandjuice]

Totally agree. I think there is this bias in these particular stories because of where these stories are originating. Most people aren't from the bay area, or went to Stanford, an Ivy or even a UC School. Most public/state schools will run $5k a year or so in tuition. An average person can finish in 5 years. In some states with lotteries, like New Mexico, you can go to college for free.

People get so wrapped up in their college's ranking in US News that they don't bother to find out which colleges are good enough. It's kind of a silly rule, but I usually tell people that, as long as their college has a basketball or football team (no matter how horrible they are), it's probably good enough.

[cube13]

>Or, in my case, less than $20,000 for a piece of paper, some very valuable formal instruction that I draw on today (and, more importantly, knowledgeable people who at the time could put it into a context I could understand), some great contacts, some great work experience, an environment where I could take the time to build projects to improve what I know about my profession and my craft without worrying about making rent, and the ability to actually spell "piece". Pretty good trade.

This is my experience as well. Admittedly, it was probably closer to $80,000 after everything, but it gave me exactly that environment.

I'm 4 years out of school, and I've made back the cost of my piece of paper.

[eropple]

I'll be out for one year in May. I've already made mine back, IMO.

[keiferski]

Even a public school education (at in-state rates) will run you 40-50k minimum these days.

[eropple]

Depends. Can you work? Can you hustle? There's a lot of free money there if you're willing to get it: I will have paid, all told, less than $25,000 for my education, excluding housing because I elected to spend more than really necessary, via scholarships.

A lot of the rest was paid for by working during school--I had the lame little jobs during school, but I also participated in Google Summer of Code and had a pretty healthy consulting company that I started and operated, employing friends of mine when I had more work than I could handle. Like I said--less than $25,000 for the whole kit and kaboodle, thanks to what really amounted to not a lot of work to make that happen. (It also had the nice side effect of giving me a really nice resume.)

[keiferski]

Well, to use my school as an example:

In-state tuition is about 14-15k. Room and board is 5-6k. That's easily 20k a year (I paid north of 22k my first year) leading to 80-100k over four years. Not exactly something you can work through on a <$10/hour job (of which I have had many).

[eropple]

Those numbers sound pretty much like mine. They're also pretty meaningless thanks to the incredible opportunities for scholarships at nearly any school you'll care to look at. After scholarships, between family and myself I'll pay around $33,000 at the end of the day (the discrepancy between the aforementioned $25K being the additional housing and other expenses I chose to incur over the most fiscally responsible decisions).

I left school with $9,800 in debt. Most of the amount paid off before graduation (at least 60%) was mine, the rest my parents'.

No, you can't work through it on a sub-$10/hour job. But I had those jobs, too: they were beer and social money. I set up my own consulting company and I did GSoC and made more than enough to put myself in a really good position coming out of school.

[keiferski]

Scholarships are pretty hard to come by for an above-average, white, middle class guy.

College isn't as affordable for most as it was for you.

[eropple]

I am a white, middle-class guy. I don't know if I'm above-average or not, but I busted my ass to get ahead.

[jff]

Ah, but if you weren't too cool for school back in your high school days, you ought to be able to go very cheaply. In HS, I applied myself enough to get a good GPA; yes, like many people here I found it dull, but rather than just skipping classes and not doing homework because I was such a goddamn badass hacker rebel, I did my homework in the 30 minutes before classes started each morning and got something like a 3.95.

The local state school where I grew up runs about $1600/quarter. When I applied as a backup, they offered to basically waive my tuition because my grades and SAT score were good. Bright but poor kids should at least be able to get into state school for extremely low tuition.

[keiferski]

As an above-average, middle class student, I got a couple thousand in grants. That's it.

Unless you're exceptionally bright, poor, or unique, it isn't affordable. The vast majority of kids (read: average, middle class folks) get stuck paying 85% of the bill.

[jff]

A couple thousand in grants would have paid half your yearly bill at CWU. Besides, if you get a decent job, it should not take that long to pay off $20k of student loans.

I ended up going to a private school with tuition of around $30k/year. I got $16k/year in merit-based scholarships based solely on my work in HS... as a white, middle-class male. So I got stuck with 50% of the bill; my parents were kind enough to help with half of that. School-mandated co-op jobs (total of 1 year of them, in my case) definitely helped with the rest--that's part of the trade-off. By going to a well-known but more expensive school, I probably had an easier time getting good internships, which in turn helped pay off the higher tuition.

I think university is entirely worth it if you can realistically afford it. I met amazing people, learned some very interesting things that I would not have been exposed to if I were self-taught (Mentor Graphics software licenses are not cheap), and yes, got a piece of paper that says I hung around a certain school long enough to be given a Masters degree. I've got about $30k in debt. It's doable.