I have a soon to be 8th grader. Will probably have low six figures in the 529 by the time college comes around. I figured he'd be in good shape for a state school, but oh my lord Rutgers is almost $40k /yr for in state when room and board is included! I suppose I'm just naive but this seems crazy expensive for public in state.
OT: Anyone else think Rutgers is absurdly expensive?
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Tuition and Fees | Undergraduate Admissions
is $34k almost $40k? Closer to $30k than $40k.
it’s for budgeting purposes only. RU does not charge a fee
Unfortunately it’s just what schools cost these days. The model is unsustainable in my opinion.
I have 2 kids currently at RU. (In state tuition). Junior off campus $10k per semester tuition and fees. Housing can vary depending on where they live. Freshman in a dorm was around $35k for the year. Including meal plan etc.
By comparison Uconn is around $40k+ in state and $60k+ OOS.
The Boston schools are much more. BU, BC, NE, etc.
If cost is the driving factor try to find a school they are over qualified for and hopefully get a scholarship. Or community college for 2 years and transfer in the final 2 years.
Southern schools have been giving good amount of scholarships to NJ and north eastern kids if they want to go south.
I have 2 kids currently at RU. (In state tuition). Junior off campus $10k per semester tuition and fees. Housing can vary depending on where they live. Freshman in a dorm was around $35k for the year. Including meal plan etc.
By comparison Uconn is around $40k+ in state and $60k+ OOS.
The Boston schools are much more. BU, BC, NE, etc.
If cost is the driving factor try to find a school they are over qualified for and hopefully get a scholarship. Or community college for 2 years and transfer in the final 2 years.
Southern schools have been giving good amount of scholarships to NJ and north eastern kids if they want to go south.
Was just having this convo with my neighbor this morning…it’s quite insane the costs of Universities. Not only that but these schools are making it even harder to get into also. His daughter got rejected from VTech with 1500 SATs
Not gonna lie, if I was a HS kid in Jersey and didnt get into RU-NB, I 100% would rather go somewhere like Bama or Tennessee or South Carolina than a meh 2nd or 3rd rate state school in NJ like Rowan or TCNJ or Montclair State. Nice weather with attractive coeds and SEC sports sounds fun. But I damn sure wouldnt stay down there past graduation lol.
It's 100x harder to get into college than it was 20 years ago lol. I dont think I wouldve had a prayer to get accepted into RU-NB today as opposed to the early 2000s when I applied and got in. Would've ended up going somewhere down south for college because I wouldve had zero interest in going to Rowan as a South Jersey kid who didnt get into RU-NB lol
Very true!! I would have wanted warmer weather, girls, and great sports
Let them learn a trade. They will make 50k at 19 years old, 100k by 25 and have their own company by 28.
Or they can go in the hole 100k, major in something useless, work a corporate job and complain in their 20s how hard life is.
Or they can go in the hole 100k, major in something useless, work a corporate job and complain in their 20s how hard life is.
Trades in the 2020s will be the "learn to code" in the 2010s. People will rush to do them, get weeded out because they physically cant hack the labor and the ones who stick around will see their jobs outsourced in a decade. I've seen this movie before.
The tuition in 1968 was $200 per semester
by the time I finished in 1973 it was closer to $400
The big thing was that I could work some during the,school year, and full time in the summers, and graduate without loans
The pay for jobs was close to 2.00/hr, for perspective, unless you got in a place with a real job with union style pay.
by the time I finished in 1973 it was closer to $400
The big thing was that I could work some during the,school year, and full time in the summers, and graduate without loans
The pay for jobs was close to 2.00/hr, for perspective, unless you got in a place with a real job with union style pay.
It's such a jolt seeing what college costs today. Back in the late Sixties-early Seventies when I was a Rutgers student...commuter as I lived nearby...tuition was $200 a semester, with $35 student fees. When my friends who have kids getting near high school graduation and thinking about college ask me what should they do in the face of this staggering cost I honestly don't know what to tell them. It seems like a scholarship or student loans are the only option for families that aren't rich. Income for the average family hasn't risen at the staggerig rate that the cost of a college education has since back in the good old days.
One of my friends actually claimed that all the trouble me and my buds caused back when we were in school during the Vietnam war caused the powers that be to decide that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to make a college education affordable for less than wealthy families. Unless the kid was really good at sports of course.
Big mistake IMO. The better educated the population is the better off the society is.
One of my friends actually claimed that all the trouble me and my buds caused back when we were in school during the Vietnam war caused the powers that be to decide that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to make a college education affordable for less than wealthy families. Unless the kid was really good at sports of course.
Big mistake IMO. The better educated the population is the better off the society is.
It's a combination inflation and bloated administration.
Correct. I was just giving examples. Most private schools are much more than public and most public’s are expensive
Correct. For my kids It was RU or out of state. TCNJ was the safety school.
Yeah the schools could easily shave costs down by eliminating a lot of these useless admin positions.
TCNJ and maybe NJIT are the only decent public options in state if you cant get into Rutgers. To me back in the 2000s Rowan was for the South Jersey kids who were not smart enough for a name school but didnt want to go to community college. I think that's NJ's biggest issue in terms of keeping kids home for college and not outsourcing them out of state. You look at states like VA and there are like 6 or 7 choices between UVA, W&M, VT, VCU, JMU, ODU, George Mason, etc. In NJ its Rutgers and TCNJ with maybe NJIT as a Plan B but then the academics take a quick dive off a cliff with Rowan, Montclair, Kean, FDU, Stockton, etc.
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More bloated than the football coaching staff
You're way off.
Two thirds of guys in the trades are over 40.
If you can frame a house you are getting paid $300 a day. I literally had 18-22 year old kids framing a 10,000 sqft building I just built and 22 and 26 year old kids digging the foundation of it making $500 a day. The 26 year old owned the excavation company.
A lot of jobs in corporate America are useless and that was before AI came around.
You guys bitching about college costs think you're too good for blue collar work and those people laugh all the way to the bank. I see it all the time. Yes some of them are idiots, that's like any other profession.
This:
The federal government officially took over the origination of new student loans on
July 1, 2010, under the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. This legislation mandated that all federal student loans be made directly through the Department of Education rather than private banks.
Yes, research indicates that college tuition has increased following expansions in federal student loans, a trend often described by the "
Bennett Hypothesis." Studies suggest that for every dollar of increased federal aid, colleges and universities may raise tuition by as much as 60 cents, capturing a significant portion of the available loans.
The federal government officially took over the origination of new student loans on
July 1, 2010, under the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. This legislation mandated that all federal student loans be made directly through the Department of Education rather than private banks.
Yes, research indicates that college tuition has increased following expansions in federal student loans, a trend often described by the "
Bennett Hypothesis." Studies suggest that for every dollar of increased federal aid, colleges and universities may raise tuition by as much as 60 cents, capturing a significant portion of the available loans.
You dont think robotics will put said blue collar kids out of work in the 2030s? Id be willing to bet that happens. Plus these Gen Z kids are soft. They cant hack physical labor. I know this because I was in warehousing before moving up to international logistics. A lot of these kids today are candy asses.
Wonder what would happen if 20% of the risk of loss on those loans was bourn by the college or university
Are you joking? To replace plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc? Not a chance
Warehousing? There is very little skill in warehouse work. Even hi-lo operators or forklift operators are not considered skilled labor. Try replacing pipe fitters, line men,plumbers, electricians, hvac, etc… There will always be work for tradesmen. Especially highly skilled and trained craftsmen.
The Gen Z kids can't handle anything. Again its not silo'd to one profession and no I think we will have skilled labor for a long time.
And maybe NJIT? I'm pretty sure they're a damn good school.
bloated admins
Gov't in the loan business
zero risk borne by the universities
terrible parental advice on majors and direction
way too many kids chasing the same seat when trade options are more valid often
Gov't in the loan business
zero risk borne by the universities
terrible parental advice on majors and direction
way too many kids chasing the same seat when trade options are more valid often
And that is why I dont think trades are gonna work for Zoomers. Like I said, trades are physical labor and the last thing in the world they want to do is anything physical. Those kids would be weeded out fast.
100% agree. Where I work these engineers coming out of all these BIG schools, likely mired in debt are only making about $50k to start. Granted they are getting a pension and 5 weeks vacation but it’s gonna take awhile to pay that loan off. Like yourself I know a few guys in the trades who own their own businesses and are killing it in their low 30s
This^^^. If loans were hard to get colleges would have to keep the costs low because most people couldn’t afford it. The government became the loan shark for colleges.
Non-college grad checking in, in my mid 30s.
I'm in a niche trade, and very thankful things didn't work out for me in college. It's remarkable to me how much people are willing to pay to learn something from someone who's essentially just punching a clock every day.
If the plan is to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer etc. then sure, go to college and get a professional degree. Vast majority of people aren't doing that.
Why spend hundreds of thousands on a photography degree when I can learn all of the same things on YouTube for free? You're essentially paying money for "an experience," while entry level people in the same field are getting actual experience.
I'm now building out my own company, and it's been really exciting, but prior to doing so I worked for a corporation in my field and ran circles around people with college degrees. Funny enough, most of them were either number crunchers in the finance department, or customer care level people.
Why put yourself in hundreds of thousands of debt just to be an individual contributor?
I'm in a niche trade, and very thankful things didn't work out for me in college. It's remarkable to me how much people are willing to pay to learn something from someone who's essentially just punching a clock every day.
If the plan is to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer etc. then sure, go to college and get a professional degree. Vast majority of people aren't doing that.
Why spend hundreds of thousands on a photography degree when I can learn all of the same things on YouTube for free? You're essentially paying money for "an experience," while entry level people in the same field are getting actual experience.
I'm now building out my own company, and it's been really exciting, but prior to doing so I worked for a corporation in my field and ran circles around people with college degrees. Funny enough, most of them were either number crunchers in the finance department, or customer care level people.
Why put yourself in hundreds of thousands of debt just to be an individual contributor?
I use my daughter’s friend group as an example, 29-30 years old,and I don’t see what you see. Of their core group of about 10-15 probably 60% went to college and the rest went into trades, one even opened up a little restaurant They all work hard and are doing great
Government a loan shark? A loan shark tries to collect on deficiencies.
Maybe I'm cynical but I just see things in cycles. Supply and demand. 10 years from now things could be vastly different and the pendulum always swings in the opposite direction. Technology and outsourcing wreaked havoc on manufacturing, AI is displacing lower end white collar positions, 10 years from now we may very well see self driving trucks and cargo planes in transportation. I just think a decade from now the rug is gonna get pulled someway for the trade folks. Would like to be proven wrong since I consider myself purple collar (hybrid half blue collar/half white collar).
good luck with your business, few things as rewarding and challenging
$50K is a pittance. That's pathetic. Granted it was software, but my kid started at $120K 2 years ago
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Didn't you spend some time as a Rutgers student ? This is your USC game pal.