My college loans are by far the best investment I've ever made. I went to a good in-state public school (Purdue), and lived very cheap. If they weren't at less than 3% interest they would have been paid off in one year from the extra money it earned me at work.
I don't understand the blanket hatred of college; it appears to come from people who spent >$100k/yr and are now drowning in that debt. If doe properly it's a very good thing; I learned a lot, made connections and grew as a person. I would say it's worth more to me than what I paid.
I found a list of the most expensive colleges (http://www.campusgrotto.com/most-expensive-colleges-for-2008...). I don't claim that this is an authoritative source but I've seen very similar lists elsewhere). There are three colleges in the US that break 50k per year for tuition, room, and board. There are quite a few more between 48k and 50k, though, and so with a standard tuition hike of a few percent they'll be over 50k next year.
My own institution is proud to be doing its own "lowest tuition hike in 41 years", at 3.8 percent. Thankfully I'm a PhD student and so I don't actually pay my own tuition.
Me too. I'd have found a way to make it cheaper. I'd already figure out how to network and how to leverage it to make it work for me and yet, I subsidized their game for longer because I wanted access to a school with small classes and personal relationships with profs.
All of that is pretty overrated, teaching quality on margin is worse and unless it's a Top 100 school, you're basically wasting time. And even if it is, you're still probably wasting a good deal of money.
Should've just left the military, gone to community college and taken a scholarship to keep as cheap as I could've. Oh well, now I know.
