In general, two-year and community colleges are a smart way to land some hefty college savings. According to the College Board, a student at a public two-year college pays, on average, approximately one-third in tuition and fees of what an in-state student at a public four-year school pays. While the vast majority of two-year students do pay substantially less than their four-year counterparts, there are exceptions. Using data from the Department of Education’s College Affordability and Transparency Center and updating it with more recent net price figures, we’ve determined that these two-year schools have the highest net prices.

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Earlier this week, an anonymous student at Boston College wrote a letter to interim Dean George Brown of Boston COllege Law School to request his two and a half years of tuition back. He was facing financial difficulty (pregnant wife, weak job prospects, and an even weaker desire to be saddled with massive student loans) and so offered up a deal – return his two and a half years of tuition and he’ll leave without his degree. In fairness, the school does get to bolster its image because it wouldn’t have to report his unemployment upon graduation to magazine rankings.

I’d like to propose a solution to this problem: I am willing to leave law school, without a degree, at the end of this semester. In return, I would like a full refund of the tuition I’ve paid over the last two and a half years.

It’s hard to say how serious the letter is (it’s probably not) but it’s a clever idea, even if it’s just to get some publicity. Sadly, it’ll never happen since you can’t “unlearn” two and a half years of study (nor can you recover the lost tuition, since the student did take up a spot in the classroom that would’ve gone to someone who could have finished) but it does stimulate the mind a little.

One of the big things I realized, with the help of articles I read online, is that part of the reason why higher education is so expensive has to do with the subsidies in the form of interest free loans and other grants. Regardless of how much tuition actually costs, subsidies increase the cost by spreading it out across multiple payers. If I go to school and the non-subsidized tuition should be $10,000 (which is an amount I’d be willing to pay, since I may not get grants or loans) and I can get $5,000 in grants, then I’m getting $10,000 of value for $5,000. Taxpayers subsidize the $5,000. Eventually schools wise up, increase tuition to $15,000 so that they can get $10,000 from the student (who is still paying the “right” amount) and $5,000 from taxpayers. It’s clearly not as simple as this but subsidies don’t help the problem, they make it worse.

Thoughts?

My wife started her first semester of classes this fall on her way towards a Ph.D. One of the best things about a Ph.D., besides the degree, is that candidates are paid to go to school. The salary isn’t something you can retire on but with the cost of education, anytime you can get college education for free (or less than free, in this case!), you jump on it.

With the start of classes comes the need for college textbooks. As I remembered years ago, college textbooks are not cheap. In fact, the prices seems exorbitant to me but that’s what happens when there’s a small market forced into buying a product. Fortunately, there are some techniques you can use to defray the costs.

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Earlier this year I finished writing an article in which I tried to find the salary breakeven point for private vs. public college graduates, a task that was impossible because I couldn’t find enough publicly available information at the time. I was trying to figure out whether college was “worth it” and if so, whether public or private college was a better value. Since I didn’t have enough data, I just took some “average student loan debt” figures and calculated the breakeven point.

In a recent Business Week article, they took a 2007 College Board analysis that showed college graduates earned 61% more than high school graduates over a 40 year career. Master’s degrees earn 93% more. It’s not the private college vs. public college debate but it’s certainly a good look at whether student loan debt, in general, is worth it.

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There’s a lot of discussion and talk about public versus private universities and how to get the most bang for your buck in the arena of college, but often overlooked is options for primary (ie. K-12) education. Some people believe in using the public schools while others believe in sending their kids to a private school, but there is lots of middle ground.

We spent a lot of time this year looking for that middle ground. My oldest child will be starting kindergarten this fall, and although I find a lot of positives in our school district as a whole, my particular local option falls short in our eyes. While our particular neighborhood local public option leaves a lot to be desired, yet we couldn’t fathom how we would be able to afford the private options in our area. We felt there had to be some compromise we could find, and we were right, we just had to know where to look.

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With the economic slowdown, a lot of people have been thinking about going back to school yet many of them, me and some of my friends included, aren’t aware of the available education tax credits. When I was in college, I was a dependent and my parents claimed the credits. Since graduating, I have been going to graduate school on my employer’s dime so I never had any qualified educational expenses to claim. But if I want to go back to school or take some special training, it definitely benefits me to brush up on the education tax credits.

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What do you think about paying your kids to get good grades? How’s fifty bones for an A sound? That’s right, fifty dollars seems to be the going rate for an A. B’s will cost you $35 and a C forces you to give up that portrait of Mr. Andrew Jackson in your wallet or purse.

Now, what do you think about the state or school district paying kids for good grades? A Chicago public schools pilot program is doing just that. And the pilot program has a clever name too – Green for Grade$:

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You should not sacrifice your retirement, your savings, or your future financial stability in order for your children to attend college. They are fully capable of supporting themselves, just as generations have before them.

The average cost of a year at a private four-year college institution in 2007-2008 was $23,712. The cost of a year at a public four-year college institution was $6,185. Both were increases of over 6% from the prior year and don’t even include room and board! [CollegeBoard.com]

Bottom line (a surprise to no one): College is expensive.

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