[ajross]

Not really relevant to Huang's speech per se, but the article engages in IMHO one of the most infuriatingly wrong misconceptions in education journalism:

> [Stanford] is one of the most selective in the United States [...] and the few students who get picked to study there are charged $62,484 in tuition fees for the premium, compared to the average $26,027 per annum cost. But, unfortunately for those saddled with student debt, [...]

Stanford students, and students of elite institutions more generally, are simply not taking on more debt than "typical" college students (for various values of "typical", from large state schools down to community colleges). Most debt loads are regulated and capped, it's extremely hard to get a personal loan beyond that. And to the extent that's not true, it's actually the wealthier students, and ones attending smaller niche schools outside the normal finanancial aid world, that bear the highest loads.

A quick google turned up this list, which roughly matches my understanding:

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/average-student...

Sort by highest debt load per student, and note (1) how many of the schools at the top of the list are ones you've never heard of, (2) that literally none of the top-10/elite/whatever schools appear on the first page of the list, and (3) how heavily modal the graph is anyway: basically graduating students take on about $38-40k of debt in the US, no matter where they go.

Please be very suspicious of this kind of class warfare screed. It's just wrong, and it finds its way into the public conciousness by throwaway lines like the one I quoted.

[beezlebroxxxxxx]

A lot of "top-10/elite/whatever schools" can reduce or cover the tuition for the vast majority of their students mostly because their endowments are enormous. It's dirt cheap for them and is good PR. All Ivy-league schools can effectively offer free education to their students for generations off of the interest they earn on their endowments alone. It's partly what leads to the crazy inequality in offerings, quality, and funding, between higher-ed schools in the US. Addressing the cost of higher-ed is a worthwhile goal, but in my opinion addressing the crazy inequality between schools is much more worthwhile.

[ajross]

Most research university revenue, be it tuition-, donation- or grant-based, isn't really involved in the education of undergraduates anyway. All that extra money Stanford brings in that CSU Chico does not goes to building labs and hiring graduate students. Freshman Computer Science costs the same no matter where you are.

[indoordin0saur]

I know many people who have attended ivy league schools and $100k+ debt is not unusual among them.

[ajross]

Not statistically it isn't. I invite you to cite data. Again, you can't get a bank to write you loans of that size without collateral of some kind. Banks will write loans for the subsidized amount (currently capped at $31k per student federally), plus some from other guarantee sources like state programs, and throw in a little on the expectation of future salary. The only people getting $100k loan balances as undergraduates are people whose parents are co-signing (or who otherwise have something that looks like collateral to a bank).

Note that's not true of post-graduate schools. In particular banks are willing to tolerate a much higher debt load for med school students. But the discussion here is about "Does Stanford require more debt than other schools". And it does not.

[indoordin0saur]

Maybe Stanford is better. My reference would be attendees of Princeton and Columbia.