I just started my first semester at a community college and (though I fully realize this is ridiculously cheap for a college), ended up paying about $2000 for tuition/lab fees and $240 for books (this is for a semester, not a year). My most expensive book cost $120. (I'm taking seven classes/20 credits.) My older sister is starting her second year at an art school in Seattle, and she's taking five classes/seventeen credits and paying about $10,000 a semester. I've been homeschooled all my life and this is all new to me, but I would like to know why we students are expected to put up so much money to further our education. Is my Algebra textbook really worth more than a hundred dollars, even if it came wrapped up in that fancy shrinkwrapped package?? Are we paying the saleries of our instructors, or for the upkeep of the school? Or has someone simply decided that knowledge is power, hence is shall be painfully spendy? I mean, most students I know are not yet twenty, sharing a small apartment with multiple roommates, paying rent and car payments and working after and around school to make ends meet. (I'm a lucky one still living with her family.) So... why??

I don't know why it's so expensive, but I do know that it can be done cheaper. In the Netherlands the yearly tuition fee is € 1500 for all universities and colleges in the country. Books tend to be quite expensive here as well, partly because we use a lot of English textbooks that have to be imported. Cars are rare amongst Dutch students - everyone has bikes - so the money saved on that could be used for books I guess.

Here in Jersey our young have to go to the UK for college where they are treated as overseas students (which technically they are) and charged accordingly. Different courses are charged at different rates, science subjects are more costly than non-lab such as law or English.

The government here pay towards the costs but it is means-tested. Those with families on lower incomes will have all fees, plus a maintenance grant and travel expenses paid in full. The higher the family income the less the government provide, the parents are expected to contribute. Those with high incomes or substantial wealth will still get assistance but will be expected to contribute up to £10,000 per year. If a student is studying medicine in London the annual cost including maintenance will exceed £20,000 per year so our government are contributing a great deal.

State schools in America are actually subsidized by tax dollars. So our tuition (and I'm currently in a State university myself and sharing books with my broke friends), doesn't even make a dent in what they're really paying.
A community college in the States is getting local money as my tax bill actually states the college district. It provides an essential service to the country though, giving vocational degrees in two years, and also, educational benefits to people who are already working or who have worked for years, and also, those students who cannot afford to go to a four year institution can try their chances after two years at a two year.

I just paid seventy dollars for a poorly printed paperback for one of my courses, and realized that the profs must assign a text book, because of standards, however, they are forced into this. If a prof tried to teach without one, his course would not be approved.

I feel the textbook companies keep on issuing new issues and it becomes a nightmare trying to keep up.
I also have seen as an instructor at that level, the way they put everything but the kitchen sink and at one point you must ask yourself, is there any room for the teaching style of the person using this text?

Woah! Thanks for all the quick responses!

Here you can get a grant which you use to pay for college fees, accomdation or whatever else, you are assessed by your father's/parents income to decide how much you qualify for. I can't get a grant as my father makes more than the maximum income noted for a person to be able to apply for a grant which isn't fair for me but still, nothing I can do about it.

I wish it wasn't so expensive, I'm starting college (Institute of Technology) next week, It's a bit cheaper than other courses in other colleges as it's funded by the European Union, I had to pay 775 euro for the first year for the examination fees, I don't know if I have to pay any other money yet or what it is for the years after that, don't want to ask either, I don't know what books I'll need until next week but I'm dreading finding out (they'll probably be the dearest ones in the bookstore). I've to pay for transport as I live far away from the college - it's 130 euro for a monthly ticket for the train and I still have to walk 40 minutes after I get off the train as no buses (or any other modes of transport)can go up pedestrianised streets and not too sure about bus charges but sometimes they are cheaper for students. So between travel, college, food, books, lockers and everything else it's way too expensive. I didn't realise how much it's going to cost until now,wow.

You guys are depressing me...it's just a couple of years until I'll have one, and then hopefully 2 kids in university.

I feel very fortunate that I did my degree during a window of about 15 years when we had free higher education in Australia. Because there were no tuition fees my parents were able to afford for me to go to university in Sydney, which was a far more enriching experience than if I'd stayed at home.

Fees of a couple of hundred dollars were introduced in my final year. Now I gather most students are graduating with thousands of dollars of HECS(tuition fees) debt.

I'm going to university next year and the fees are so worrying. It really is unfair and I wish the Government would do something to make it better, not worse like increasing the darn fees ...

I suspect that college and university text books are so expensive because of the limited printing; they are used only by one class for one semester and then either discarded or resold to the student bookstore. The following semester's students may have to buy new books because the previous semester's books are outdated!
One day, books won't be used at all. Everything needed will be on-line and every student will be issued a lap-top computer.

I was referring to Ireland, I was wondering too if you could take the bike on a train but you are not allowed to, pity really. I've only ever seen one fold up bike in my life and that was at least 5 or 6 years ago. I'm not used to so many roads coming out of everywhere I live in the countryside (middle of nowhere - you know one or two roads in and two roads out)but in Dublin (city) where the college is there's roads everywhere, I went up the other day to walk the route and was thinking, what the hell, if I rode a bike around there I'd end up dead, severely times - if that's possible.

Folding bikes should count as regular luggage, because they're not bigger than the average suitcase. But if you'd get killed before you got to college, then I guess there's no point in biking.

In the US, if you live in a dorm, do you pay rent or is it included in the tuition fee?

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Are we paying the saleries of our instructors, or for the upkeep of the school? Or has someone simply decided that knowledge is power, hence is shall be painfully spendy?

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Usually a college's income from fees isn't earmarked for anything specific. It usually goes into a general fund from which the various things that you mention are paid. Income from other sources, such as from taxes and some endowments, would generally go into the same fund. In addition to the salaries of your instructors and the 'upkeep of the school' there are many other expenses that a college has to pay - including the cost of runnning laboratories and libraries. In addition to paying salaries the college probably pays part or all of the pension contributions of those employees (at all levels) who are entitled to pensions. There are also things like furniture that have to be replaced from time to time ... The list is almost endless.

As for the question of pricing knowledge that gives power, you're probably better placed to get a feel for the politics of college education than someone guessing from thousands of miles away. You might consider the high fees charged to overseas students by the British universities before drawing any conclusions. (See Sue's post. One British pound is somewhat above US$1.80 - middle rate).

I went to both a state university (for my BA) and a private university (for my MA) in the US.

The state university was about $2,000 a semester for an in-state student. If you weren't a resident of the state, you paid more money. I was lucky that I had a scholarship that covered about half the tuition. Of the $2,000 a semester, $600 was for a 'technology fee', the largest fee of ANY of the state schools. It was absurdly exorbitant as we could buy a kick-butt computer every single year we attended for that amount, yet there were always lines to use the computers in the computer labs. However, they kept adding 'really good' computers for the grad school computer students to use, but the normal students weren't allowed to use them, these super-computers were just put behind a glass window in the most-traveled hallway at school for the rest of us to get bitter about where our money went.

Also, for about a year there was a buying-freeze for the library because there wasn't enough money and for the departments such as political science and English, a hiring freeze (as in, when professors left, new ones wouldn't be hired to replace them). But the athletics department had more money than ever and went up a division in sports (meaning it could compete against better schools) while I was there. But we had to tally upgrade the stadium to do that. Mind you, the stadium was good enough for the World University Games (the step below the Olympics), but not enough for the Division 1-A football?

Books cost about $300 a semester total, depending on what classes you took. If you had English or theatre, it was generally a lot of little books that you could get from half.com very cheap. The other classes generally had obscure textbooks that you couldn't find as easily, but if you looked hard enough (and once you broke the habit of getting *everything* from the school's bookstore) you could save a lot of money. However, once in a while a teacher would save money by photocopying parts of books (not enough to make copyrights kick in) and essays and then quickly bind them, those would be for sale at the copy store for between $30-$80, depending on the class. The only downside to those was you couldn't go shop around for a price, but at least you didn't have to buy 3 or 4 books for that class - the bound thing of readings was generally the entire thing for the class.

For the private school, I went to one in DC, so it was a more expensive place in the US to begin with. Tuition was about $30,000 a year, but the student fees were a lot less because we were grad students and not living on campus (there were no grad student dorms) so it wasn't like the undergrad students who were assumed to be spending all their time on campus. Books cost about the same as my other school, and I did the same thing - I shopped online for the best prices of books, and for a couple classes, just went to the library because we'd only have to read the book for a week or two. (I did that for a couple of my theatre classes as an undergrad as well.)

However, it's been a little over a year since I graduated and I've already gotten a return on my education. I work for the federal government, and because I have my MA, I started as a GS9 instead of a GS7 (that's a few thousand dollars a year more in salary). In addition, when I started, I got a sign-on bonus that was equal to a proportion of your salary. So my friends who are at the GS7 level got about $3,000 less than I did. I don't even think I would have been hired had I not had my MA - I'm just out of school and the others who only have their BA have experience in this field, whereas I only have about 10 months working at a police union. Also, I was eligible for a student loan repayment program and got that for for the next 3 years (although after taxes that will come to about $5.

So all the money I spent on my education has already paid off big time, and I only graduated 15 months ago. The big part is GETTING the money FOR the education. For my undergrad, I was lucky enough to have a scholarship, a part-time job (I paid for books) and the rest my parents covered (about $1,000 a semester). I financed all of my MA and living expenses through student loans and had a part-time job on campus for the misc. things and to be able to pay down a little bit of the loans while still in college. But I never really looked at all the scholarships available, which I guess I really should have, but never really applied myself and did.

One thing that I've yet to see any poster comment on is the drastic diminishing of hours spent in the class-room by professors. The average number of classes and preparations handled by the profs (at least in the USA)at both private and state universities has been drastically slashed while sabatticals are at an all-time high. I'm not just talking about the old "bait and switch" of some poor grad student-assistant handling presentations, etc for a prof which still is omnipresent.I'm talking actual class load handled in any capacity by college teachers The resultant cost of increased faculty members and their salaries and benefit packages that this necessitates cost the tuition payers (be it parent, taxpayer, and/or ambitious student) dearly as an indisputable element in the tuition hike.

Several posters have mentioned textbook costs, which, as they noted, have spiralled. Not a few of these are dreadful, unreadable and edited and written by..the very prof teaching the course!

Here in china,the tuition fees are expensive too though the income of ordinary people is very very low.The tuition fees for one year is four or five times of a family's annual income.

In Sweden you only pay for the books.

hi all
i would like to add (first quoting with much approval ladymacb29--"
However, it's been a little over a year since I graduated and I've already gotten a return on my education. I work for the federal government, and because I have my MA, I started as a GS9 instead of a GS7 (that's a few thousand dollars a year more in salary). In addition, when I started, I got a sign-on bonus that was equal to a proportion of your salary. So my friends who are at the GS7 level got about $3,000 less than I did. I don't even think I would have been hired had I not had my MA - I'm just out of school and the others who only have their BA have experience in this field, whereas I only have about 10 months working at a police union. Also, I was eligible for a student loan repayment program and got that for for the next 3 years (although after taxes that will come to about $5.

So all the money I spent on my education has already paid off big time, and I only graduated 15 months ago."

which bears on the point i would mention that the price of not having a college education is even higher, MUCH higher. i don't now recall the difference in an income that one receives with various degrees vs. NO degrees but it is staggering different.

and as several people immediately above this post point out, you may wish to consider the possibilities of an overseas education? i didn't do this so i have no direct knowledge of the possibilities for a non-native of that country but the chances might be good. anyone able to discuss this from personal knowledge?

As an academic, I have to object to certain claims in this thread. In the first place, I attended two Ivy League schools -- one as an undergraduate and one for graduate study -- and I received extraordinarily generous financial aid. My father was a journalist, and my mother was a part-time educator at the time. They did not have the money to pay for an Ivy League education.

What they knew, however, is that the most expensive schools are also the best-endowed. If you can get into them, your costs will be covered, as mine were. These days, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are doing away with loans (to reduce debt burden on newly-graduated students), and they are no longer counting the value of the family home in aid calculations, so that parents do not feel the need to take out second mortgages in order to send bright children to college.

In other words, if your kid is smart and qualified, he or she should never avoid applying to the top universities in the U.S. for reasons of expense. It can actually be less expensive to attend Penn or Brown or Cornell (or Williams, Amherst, Wellesley, and similar schools) than your local state school, which isn't likely to have much aid available. Reach for the stars: you might be surprised.

And, as a former teaching assistant, I object to the view that TAs are somehow incompetent and lesser beings. The TA you have today may be tomorrow's brilliant and lauded scholar -- you might someday be proud to claim that you were such-and-such a person's student when that person was still a doctoral student. Moreover, the claim that professors do not spend much time in classroom is based on a misunderstanding of preparation time. I have found that every hour of classroom time requires a good 5 hours of preparation, and that doesn't include administrative work, student advising, and the hours of research and writing for publication that are required of scholars and on which their jobs and promotions depend. I had full access to my professors at the universities I attended, and I appreciated the time and attention they gave me, even as they were under the gun for tenure decisions, editorial deadlines, and tedious committee meetings.

Sorry, but I will forever be grateful to my universities, my professors, and my financial-aid offices. I try, now, not to forget them.

Bravo drbobwill and lanfranco.

I also have condiderable experience within the academy and I am in total agreement with both of you.

Before saying that college is 'expensive' it's useful to look at the fees charged by independent secondary schools. Here in the U.K. their fees are often extremely high, indeed staggering.

The expense of college wouldn't be such a big problem if there were abundant good jobs you could get without college. Unfortunately at least in my neck of the woods that's no longer the case. Manufacturing jobs keep going south or overseas, and automatization has eroded many jobs in the resource sector.

At the same time employers and other groups keep pushing the envelope. When I trained as an RN in Germany it was a three-year hospital based course. Here in Canada it was a three-year college course, and now the entry level requirement is a four-year degree. Frankly, I learned more about some topics in the "inferior" hospital training than I did in college, but I had to go through the expense and investment of my time to be able to work in Canada.

The same is true for many other fields of work. If you've got to go to college and get a Building Maintenance Worker certificate to be able to work as a janitor there's something wrong with the picture.

Bloomsby, the fees charged by independent secondary schools in the U.S. are also staggering. I attended such a school -- again on substantial financial aid -- and I've been knocked flat by the fees that are currently being asked. Some of my classmates, who actually came from what were considered very affluent families when I was a student, have told me bluntly that they cannot afford the costs for their own children.

But elite university costs in the U.S. are genuinely easier to handle. A good 50% of the students at top U.S. universities are on financial aid.