A college education in the United States costs even more than we thought it did, Byrd Pinkerton posits in a recent article for nprEd.
The Wisconsin HOPE Lab at University of Wisconsin broke the numbers down by interviewing students and examining figures from several colleges along Federal cost-of-living data.
The key conclusions:
- Financial Aid is not as effective as it could be.
- The “sticker price” advertised by colleges for the first year is not necessarily transparent in reflecting all the costs, and rarely holds true from the second year onward.
- Cost-of-living estimates aside from tuition are lower than reality.
- Living at home is not necessarily a savings for many families.
- Figures don’t take into account that some majors are more expensive than others, for example if a requirement is to study abroad, if the textbooks are higher than average etc.
- Financial aid calculators overestimate what parents can contribute.
To read the full article and get more detail from the actual report, click here.
