[secabeen]

Yes, it is. See pg 18 here: https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/Trends%20Report%...

Actual tuition and fees paid have dropped in real dollars over the last 20 years. Nameplate tuition is meaningless as the average student pays less than $5,000 in tuition at 4-year public schools. The average student gets more than $8k in grants. Room and board remains high, but still nothing near 300k.

If you have citations supporting your 300k claim, I'd like to see it. Note that I'm looking for actual tuition net of grant-based financial aid for middle class families, not what out-of-state multi-millionaire families pay.

[devbent]

> Nameplate tuition is meaningless as the average student pays less than $5,000 in tuition at 4-year public schools.

The problem here is any parents capable of saving 30k a year for college are in an income bracket that instantly disqualifies their kids from getting any tuition assistance.

Heck back in 2002 I had a mom who drove a school bus and a dad retired on disability and they made enough money between them that I qualified for 0 assistance. We were very much "working class".

I just checked my local public university (University of Washington) and they list out of state costs as around 64k a year. 22k of that is non-tuition related expenses.

The university of Austin is 66k for 2 semesters. That will easily be 400k+ total for a bachelors in a other 18 years.

> Note that I'm looking for actual tuition net of grant-based financial aid for middle class families,

Not relevant to my situation. My wife and I make enough money that we cannot count on our son getting any assistance.

Also your entire premise is easily falsified by the number of students taking out large student loans. If the average tuition is only 5k, we wouldn't have a student loan problem in this country.

The same college board organization says students graduate with an average debt of 29,400.

Other sources (https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt) say students average over 33k of loans to graduate.

If college really only cost 5k a semester, that doesn't seem right. Baristas could literally pay their way through college with zero debt. Heck one good summer internship at a large company would pay for all of college.

[secabeen]

Tuition is not the only cost; room and board are significant, and go to those loans too. If you take the average loan balance, divide by 4, you get about $8k/yr, which is pretty close to rent for a single student in many college towns.

75% of students attend state schools. If astudent chooses to go to an out-of-state school for $64k a year when there is a state college in your state that runs 1/3 of that, is that on them? Why should the taxpayers of Washington state subsidize the educational costs of students from Indiana?

[devbent]

The University of Washington is an absurdly competitive school to get into for certain majors, so it is very reasonable to expect that even highly performing students might have to go to an out of state school if they want to go to a tier 1 public university.

It also depends on the major, as students may want to go to a university that is well regarded for what they want to learn.

None of which changes the fact that college tuition prices go up at an obscene rate, while at the same time colleges are getting rid of tenured professors and instead hiring adjunct professors who get paid barely livable wages.

[gnicholas]

The thing is, if you have a nest egg big enough to FIRE, colleges won’t consider you “middle class”. They’ll consider you loaded and expect you to pay full freight.

[HDThoreaun]

If you’re fired you probably have at least a million. These schools look at your assets, not just income. They’re not giving significant aid to kids whose parents are millionaires