That chart is for public universities (of which America has many excellent ones). Americans with tons of college debt are likely to have attended an overpriced private institution, and financed their room and board and books as well. That can add up to over $60k/year at prestigious private colleges and universities.

I guess comparing a country with a lot of private universities with a country with essentially no private universities doesn't give quite the whole story!

Why leave out private universities I wonder?

> Why leave out private universities I wonder?

Because it's not really a well thought out article. It looks more geared towards low value / low effort content that can be shared easily to make controversial (and therefore spread more) social media posts.

Leaving out the private universities in a country that has (too) many would distort the sample.

The prestigious colleges offer generous subsidies so most that cannot afford $60k effectively have much lower tuition.

The non prestigious private universities whose lack of value is not yet known among its customers are the ones that cause problems for kids getting stuck with $60k+ per year annual costs.

The average student loan debt for a US undergraduate degree is ~$37k, which lines up with that $9k/year.

When people talk about tons of student loan debt, they are invariably including graduate students getting professional degrees, like law and medicine. The average student loan debt after medical school is ~266k. But compared to the earning potential of a doctor (starting salaries between $200k and $500k), that isn't some unrecoverable debt load. The only people really screwed are the ones who decide they don't want to be a doctor a couple years in.

https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt#by-educa...

Right - so in the UK the $12k a year also covers medicine etc.

Right but the structure of professional education for things like medicine and law is completely different in the UK from the US so an apples-to-apples comparison isn't easily possible.

I'm guessing they have lots of regular state universities with reasonable instate tuition to average out the very expensive ones. In the UK 100% of universities decided to charge the highest allowed amount and there are no scholarships or discounts.

Scholarships absolutely exist, it’s just often more expedient to give them as cash and allow the student to pay the loan down if they wish, given living expenses are often more of a barrier and the loan is on very generous terms.

They get cheap money to pay their tuition fees so private universities raise their prices.

If the bar to get that money was as high as the one to get a mortgage from the bank, universities couldn't simply raise the fees because most students wouldn't be able to pay.

Mortgage rates in the US have been dirt cheap the past few years. They are currently between 2-3%. I don't think student loan rates are that low.

But if you declare bankruptcy you can clear your debts but not the tuition one. You're stuck with it for life (or until you pay).

This times a million.

In the United States you can get a 4-year bachelor’s degree for less than $5000.

In New York City, public university tuition is $0.

You can earn ACE accredited college credits online very cheaply. I’ve know people who earned 60 credits (a 4-year bachelors in 120 credits) in a year for $150 in total. Saylor.org is $25 per 3-credit course. Sophia.org is $80 per month. Study.com is $200 month and offers thousands of courses. You don’t even need a high school diploma to get started.

My advice to smart kids around the world: Learn English, get your GED, take IELTS/TOEFL, earn 60-90 ACE credits online, and complete your bachelor’s degree in 1-2 years. The earlier the better.

Also, take CLEP tests. I'm not sure what the current price is, but I'm guessing it's in the neighborhood of $100. You can usually get 3 credits for passing the test.

Mostly because the media discussion around tuition fees in the US is completely toxic and focuses on cases like students who have self-funded taught masters programs at elite-level private institutions.

you're only hearing about extreme examples of people getting worthless degrees from private universities fully financed.

a degree is fairly affordable in the US. you can do first 2 years at a community college for no more than $2k/year and then can do the last two at a state university for 9-20k/yr.

if you can get a degree that actually returns you money through an enhanced wage then you can pay that off no problem.

> you can do first 2 years at a community college for no more than $2k/year

I'm not sure which community colleges you are going to. When my wife went to CUNY BMCC it was on the order of ~$2400/semester, so roughly $4800/year. Still not too unreasonable, but more than twice what you were saying.

Granted, this is NYC, not known for being super cheap, but I didn't think that CUNY was considered absurdly expensive either. Upon checking, the local community college where I grew up (the Orlando area) is about $1500/semester, so about $3000 a year, assuming you take summers off [2].

[1] https://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/students/bursar/tuition-and-fees/

[2] https://net1.valenciacollege.edu/future-students/financial-a...

In Dallas we pay around $1000 / semester.

https://www.dallascollege.edu/paying-for-college/cost-tuitio...

Even twice what I was saying is a pretty low amount compared to a private university at 60k/year.

Fair enough...maybe I should have done school when I lived in Dallas!

I don't disagree with your thesis, regardless. If you do something with the CUNY system, you're still on the hook for <$10/year (at least for tuition, rent+food is a different story). A total investment of ~$50-60k total cost is definitely worth it from an economic perspective. With the exception of eccentrics like me, generally speaking the high-paying jobs are gatekept behind academia, meaning that the tuition would pay for itself within 2-3 years, easily.

Will that get you into a faang? Just curious!

I got a job at Apple as a dropout with, at the time, only some credits from Florida State University and Valencia Community College. I've also had interviews with Facebook and Google and Amazon. I'm not going to say that the school you go to doesn't matter, but I think that having good experience tends to matter more than anything else.

It's not like I'm some hypergenius or anything (far from it), I'm just somewhat of a self-learner and tend to do alright in whiteboard interviews.

Yes, although I was a bit slower. Three years at community college, three years at UC. First job out of college was at Google as a software dev.

I know people with no degree at FAANG. Best time to break in is after a few years in industry when you have some work accomplishments you can point to that indicate you are a high performer.

New grads are pretty undifferentiated except for university prestige so that's a rough time to compete if you're from a less prestigious school or no school.

Yeah no problem. I can't speak to every state school but I went to one that was easy to get into and had a highly rated computer science program with a lot of extra curricular clubs that made it easy to distinguish oneself.

Would you name it?

Do they offer a class focused on the interview like Stanford? No. Can you still cram interview problems until your eyes bleed? Yes.

Aren't all the top legal jobs in the US taken by graduates of quite expensive private schools?

Yes, being a lawyer is an extreme example where you need both top grades and a top 20 rated school. I wouldn't recommend that career if your parents can't pay your way as the risk of not making it into a top legal firm even if you meet those requirements is still high.

"Getting a job as a lawyer" != "getting a job at a top firm", though. And lawyers tend to get paid fairly well, even if not at a top firm.

Yes! I can think of several examples of people I know at the state university I attended.

I could easily see someone racking up that much debt. It’s almost encouraged, as part of the whole “going to college experience”.

You take out loans so you can pay for school, pay for room and board, and have enough money to buy toiletries and what not.

if we take a look a few pretty common public colleges that people from my class went to:

BGSU [1] - ~$28,500/year x 4 years = $115,000

Kent [2] - ~$30,000/year x 4 years = $120,000

In all fairness there’s financial aid, and scholarships, and plenty of ways to decrease costs (living off campus, or even living with your parents and commuting, if you live close enough and have/can afford a car). Or attending a 2 year college and transferring.

Now imagine if you went to a private college (rumored to be a “better” education). An example near me:

Case Western Reserve [3] - ~75,000/ year x 4 years = $300,000

Now on top of all that, remember that student loans are still loans, and as such have interest. So while you can defer payments on the loans while you’re still in school, interest still accrues on those loans for 4 years.

And that’s just for an undergraduate degree. Someone with a masters has an additional two years of schooling, and more for a doctorate.

[1] https://www.bgsu.edu/financial-aid/about-aid/cost-of-attenda...

[2] https://www.kent.edu/financialaid/tuition-and-other-costs

[3] https://case.edu/financialaid/undergraduates/cost-undergradu...

And this doesn’t even take into account “in state” vs “out of state” tuition rates.

They averaged the entire us University system, and only covered in state tuition at public university. In-state varies greatly, from $16,070 in NH, $14,440 in PA to $5,220 in WY. Out of state tuition is 2 to 4 times as expensive. I think 6 figure debt is often from private or advanced degrees.

https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...

Edit: I also wonder what the living costs in other countries is. Do students in Germany pay for all their expenses too? Books, housing, food? Because your costs for a year are going to be another 15k or more, unless you can live and eat at home and walk to school.

Can only speak from personal experience (and friends and people I studied with, of course) but yes, it used to be pretty common (I graduated in 2010) to simply study in the town you grew up and live at home until you're done. Even with 5 year degrees, so until 25. Of course with a little financial support you could also get a small apartment or share one. And a lot of universities have dorms, even when they're not campus universities, then you might be living 5-15 km away from most of your classes.

Government lends you up to ~880€ a month interest free if your parents earn less than 35k€ and gradually less until 75k€ parent household income. After university you have 5 years time until loan payments starts. Total payback is capped at 10k even if you have received more than that. If you can pay it back in full with one payment you only pay ~7.3k.

With that money people are usually able to get an apartment or at least a room in a shared apartment and pay for food and books.

> Books

I've never understood this - don't universities in the US have libraries? Why does everyone need to buy their own books?

I think that highly depends on your subject. I know people that said it was expected to have your own copy of X,Y,Z because you needed it all the time and not just to look something up once a semester. Biology for example. For me with CS it also wouldn't have made sense to use the ones I bought in a library, because everyone would've needed them at the same time. But I can't complain, the cost was negligible, maybe 5-7 books under 100€ each, over the whole timespan.

> because you needed it all the time

At my university they had one copy of every required or recommended text book per student in the library, so you could all check them out for the duration of your course. Why don't they do that in the US?

> negligible, maybe 5-7 books under 100€ each

That's... $700!!!

See, in our library they had maybe 5-10 copies for 100 students, so I never heard of something like this. Also some of those books I've been referencing again even after finishing my studies so I'm glad I have them.

And yes, what's wrong with about 100$ per year? (my degree was 9 semesters)

Part of the US tuition fees being so high varies. Is it a public or private school in a LCOL, MCOL, or HCOL area? A public school like NYU(~$55k) is going to cost way more than UW- Madison (~$19k) even though they're both public colleges and have some prestige associated with attending there. A private college in my state is similar to NYU. Columbia University is $33k/semester. So yeah a 4-5 year degree is basically a mortgage in some places.

This is a common misunderstanding, but NYU is not a public school.

Public universities in NYC are effectively free.

Here is an example: https://drexel.edu/drexelcentral/cost/tuition/undergraduate/

18k a quarter for tuition alone.

First of all, tuition is only one thing you need to pay for alongside many other things.

Second, $9k is the average for an in-state public college. It is much higher for out of state public, or private institutions.

I studied in Quebec, where my tuition fees were around 4000 CAD a year. However, I also had to pay for rent, food, and a basic standard of living. That added up to around 20,000 CAD a year at the time.