$160,000…
Plan on spending somewhere in that ballpark in tuition at any “premier” four-year university. If you attend in-state the number may be closer to $100,000, but after factoring in room and board, transportation, and other miscellaneous costs, the number may be closer to $120,000.
Don’t get me wrong, the right education is priceless.
Our current notion of higher education stems from Classical Greece. Philosophers asked questions with other philosophers who in turn asked more questions, creating a discourse that challenged the common-held pagan beliefs of the day. Did Zeus really hurl lightning bolts?
The dark ages brought war, religion, and papal states, a milieu more conducive to fear and torture than learning. The Renaissance and subsequent de-secularization gave way to the modern university, a center for learning, and 450 years later unemployed college graduates in their mid-twenties are grappling for ways to pay off student debt and forge a career.
The problem is not in the birth of the modern University, but rather where the discourse gave way to a one-sided lecture-and-listen teaching method, which fosters boredom more than anything else. “How can I stay awake for an entire class period” becomes more imperative than numbers and figures. Every moment awake versus being asleep amounts to a significant amount of money when a single credit in a three credit course can be upwards of $2,000.
Top-tier Universities have preyed on the insecurities of middle and high-income baby boomers who think that success is a university degree. They have turned what started as an educational discourse among equals into a voracious business that is fed from young money debt and old money ignorance.
Universities should incorporate more skepticism into their mission statements and less “excellence.”
*original post on LinkedIn url
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140709234045-232319042-the-real-cost-of-higher-education
The Bird's Song 