(no subject)

[doyle]

I'm looking around Stanford's website for a Connor fic. Clicky clicky onto the law school and I read:

Local transportation, clothing, recreation, and the like are more variable items, but most single students will find that they need to budget a total of at least $50,000 for the school year. For a married student, the minimum budget will be about $60,000. Tuition is due at registration in September and January.

...holy *shit*. $50,000? That's £27,000! Or, to put it another way, more than ten times what the last university year cost me, including 12 months rent.

The £16,000 ($30,000) student loan debt I'll have when I graduate suddenly doesn't seem quite so bad.

ETA: Also, the jvtl_project (Jossverse timeline project) makes my canon-geek heart go squee.

And in my head Stanford!Connor is studying anthropological science.

Comments

[quinn222.livejournal.com]

My cousin's tuition is $45,000 a year. It's frightening.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

Aren't you lucky with the tuition. ;) I go to a small, private college, not as prestigious as Standford, but mine's still $30,000 a year.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

The maximum tuition a student in the UK pays is currently £1100/$2000. What each student actually pays is means-tested according to their parents' income - last year I paid something like £300/$550. There are huge protests here over fees because it's only recently that people have been charged anything at all to go to university - my cousins all got their degrees in the fabled golden age of your when students got maintenance grants.

I'm boggled at these skeery prices.

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's entirely insane. People in the UK (and pretty much everywhere not the US) are so, so lucky. Which is why I was sympathetic about the top-up fees thing last year but definitely not outraged like everyone else. (I'm currently paying twice as much as a UK student for my degree and approximately a quarter of what I'd pay for it in the US.)

[kimera.livejournal.com]

Sheez. And I had a hard time coming up with $10,000 last year.

[elz.livejournal.com]

Yep, my undergrad tuition was over $30,000, and that was a couple of years ago. I think law school tuitions are a little higher, but when you add in books (which can run into the thousands of dollars on their own) and food and regular cost-of-living stuff, it's still pretty mind-boggling.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Was that a year? Because it still astounds me that that's four years' worth of student loans for me.

[elz.livejournal.com]

Was that a year?

Yeah. And I could afford to pay about ten percent of that, so even with grants and scholarships, I've pretty much mortgaged my soul. It's scary, but as long as there are some people in the country who can afford to pay the full amount, the colleges will just keep raising the rates.

[slackerace.livejournal.com]

An ivy league US education will run you $150,000 for four years. A public state uni can start at about $4,000 a year for tuition. If you're from out of state, then you pay more. Sometimes much more.

[octopedingenue]

My parents and I pay about $20,000 a year for my college tuition (NOT counting the $14,000 a year scholarship I get from the school itself). Meh.

[octopedingenue]

sorry, just snuck a peek at the bill for this year--they've upped their tuition rates (but not their scholarships with 'em, natch). We now pay over $25,000 a year.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

There's no way in hell I'd ever be able to attend a US college. Makes me grateful for the UK education system *g*

[octopedingenue]

It's not like we're rich enough to afford it, really; my family's squarely middle-middle-class, so we take out student loans and pray.

[septembergrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what she said: a lot of it is done through student loans, and there are many scholarships.

I went to a state school, and I think my education cost around $40K, including room and board.

[makd.livejournal.com]

My daughter went to a public, State college. It cost ~$15,000/year for tuition, room & board, books, etc. Friends of ours sent their daughter to a private college (Hofstra University. It drove them into near-bankruptcy. Hofstra, while a good college, is NOT Stanford, yet costs the same. After four years, the parents owed something like $250,000.

Higher education is not considered a necessity in the U.S.; it's considered a privilege, and folks pay through the nose....

[owl]

That's odd, considering that a lot of Americans seem to go to college compared to here. And your high school education isn't as good as ours *pats in sympathy*

[nwhepcat.livejournal.com]

Yipe.

But I mainly came in to say: I am stupid. My first thought was, "Why would a Connor fic be on the Stanford website?" I am very very very tired.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Hee! *g*

[naeara.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's insane! I'm in Canada and my uni tuition was about $1200 CAD per year. Add in books and it was still probably only about $2000. Everyone always bitches about how expensive it is too.

[thefakeheadline.livejournal.com]

Yep, sounds about right. :/ I went to a private college for two years on a full-tuition scholarship, and my family still had to pay nearly $10,000/year just for room and board. After I lost the scholarship it was either go into debt $50,000 for my two remaining years' tuition, or else transfer to a state school. I come from a cheap, cheap family, so you can probably guess which I chose. *g*

But, yes. It's a *crazy* system, definitely. Makes me wonder what our politicians think would be so bad about bringing in a bit of socialism...

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Given these shocking facts, it is absolutely no surprise that so many Americans are in huge debt and declare bankruptcy.

See, the student loans have fairly low interest (2%-3%), so even though one can rack up $200,000 of student loan debt, one might pay it off some day.

But most normal students also have no actual cash (due to very low pay from those wordk-study jobs), so they get credit cards (and those evil credit card companies set up tables on the first day of college to lure in naive students). If one also builds up, say, $50,000 in credit card debt (whichh average 13% to 28% interest), what you end with is a ton of students, millions, who will either be in debt for the rest of their lives or will have to declare bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, all the stupid rich kids from famous and/or wealthy families have their wealthy daddies pay all the tuition (think, George W. going to Yale and his rich daddy the other George easily paying the tuition).

[jedi-penguin.livejournal.com]

It's worse than that. Credit card companies actively pursue college students and encourage them to get into debt. My sister did not go to college, and she had a helluva time getting a credit card. I did go, and got three to five application forms a week. Since the applications stopped coming after I paid off the last of my college loans, I can only assume that the loan companies sell names to the credit card companies.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Yes -- the pursuit begins on the very first day of school. The students walk down the street in a strange new town on the way to the Bookstore, outside of which are multiple tables set up with credit card company reps behind them waiting to snag the students.

[makd.livejournal.com]

college professor here, so I know whereof I speak: the COLLEGES sell the names and addresses! Sometimes, the high schools sell the names and addresses.

and the credit cards for students? usually at 21.5% interest, whereas, if you hunt around, you can get a credit card for 8-9% interest.

I've had students graduating from the State U where I teach owing about $75k...just from tuition, etc., because they swiped the card rather than borrow from a bank.

Irony? the usual interest rate for student loans here is ~8% - so the students owing $$ have really overpaid if they've borrowed with a credit card rather than a loan.

[cicer.livejournal.com]

*winces* Yeah, colleges in the US are insanely expensive. I'm currently doing two years of community college, looking to transfer to a four-year university and the price range seems to be $20,000 to $35,000 a year. Ouch. And the Ivy League schools can easily cost $40,000 to $50,000.

Another great example of the fantastic American education system.