About one-third of 4-year college students attend private colleges. Average cost of tuition is now over $56,000 per year. Add about $20,000 more for housing and food. The highest priced private colleges now cost almost $100,000 per year, for 4 years – not including adding costs for study abroad and other functions.
Source: Here’s how to make key college decisions amid FAFSA delays
I just looked up a reporter’s bio on LinkedIn. She’s a writer for USA Today. At current prices, her undergrad degree from a well-known U.S. private university is priced at $91,000/year. She also did a study abroad in France. Then she attended The London School of Economics and Political Science for an MSc in Gender Studies – that’s another $100,000 or so. All told, at non-subsidized prices that is a $460,000 education for working in a field that the BLS says pays, on average, about $52,000 per year.
The ROI on that investment does not seem to make sense – but this is surprisingly common among writers, who attend expensive, elite university programs.
I am guessing they had family wealth or funding sources that enabled them to pursue a degree in relatively low compensation fields (versus having to focus on being self-supporting as soon as possible) and to attend elite university programs.
I worked from age 10 onward, was required to save at least 50% of my earnings for future college education (I often saved about 90%), left high school one year early, lived at home to attend the local public college for the first 2 years, then transferred to another public state university which had the major I wished to pursue (computer science). I paid 100% of own college tuition, textbooks and fees – and had some help from my parents on housing costs, only. Later in life, I returned to school, earning an MBA at age 41, and an MS in software engineering at age 54; I paid 100% of the costs of those too. (I am aware that there is seldom a positive ROI for MS degrees over age 30 to 35. At every job I held, one or more people said I could not work on a project or take on a new job responsibility because I lacked a graduate degree. I was determined to put an end to those claims.)
As an undergrad, I could have double majored (BS in computer science, BS in math) if I could have taken just one more quarter to graduate (I needed just 3 math courses), but being self-funded, I did not have that option and needed to be employed ASAP.
As I note above, I’m guessing many of those today who pursue degrees in low paying fields, but attend extremely expensive universities and study abroad programs, did not have the same motivations and need to earn a good income as soon as possible.
