Hard to say I'm sure some pay that price, because that is the sticker price. However, most Americans are getting scholarsips of some sort. There's one college near me that automatically gives every student a 40% scholarship before they even look at what others you're eligible for.

That is the sticker price of college is a competition to be who is the most elite. There's also a scholarship competition, so if you have a higher sticker price, and then you give a scholarship, you can advertise you give the most scholarship money to your students.

Sticker prices are usually designed for specific cases (eg wealthy international students). However, the fact that there's no clear price is a huge problem, much like the American medical industry.

There are a lot of dumb people that pay ridiculous amounts for college. I went to a state school and they paid ME to go there. My job prospects have been just as good as anyone elses. I learned the same material they did. I had all the same experiences.

A fool and his money are easily parted.

That is very much a real sum of money people pay. The UC system is (I believe) 30k per year tuition if you’re in state. Add rent and you’re probably looking at 45k per year. Out of state is higher. And many systems are more expensive as well

45k/year is excellent! If you believe business insider, U of Chicago’ll run you 100k / year. https://www.businessinsider.com/most-expensive-colleges-tuit...

Traditionally the story was that almost no one paid the sticker price, but still that’s an eye watering sum even discounted.

I’m sure in the next few years we’ll have stories of people 500k in debt or more for their schooling.

The UC system is an outlier in both price and quality for public education in the United States.

The California State system, which costs $7-9 thousand per year, is far more representative.

The UC system has about 300k students, CSU has about 475k. So more representative, yes, but I wouldn’t say far more so.

Truly torturing the data to index on student body size as the relevant metric

The discussion is about what the average person pays.... surely student body size _is_ the relevant metric? What else would you propose?

If you look at the annual tuition rates for public schools in the United States, you will find the UC system to be an outlier. I gave a system in the same state that is closer to the national median. How much simpler can this be communicated?

1. If you looked up the average tuition in the US and found the UC system is an outlier, then quoting CSU prices is a red herring — just tell us the average tuition and perhaps the standard deviation.

2. The question that started this thread was “does anyone really pay 250k for college?” Even as an outlier, the UC system price is relevant. It is an existence proof that many people _do_ pay close to that sum for undergrad.

You call it overhead but it's more like value extraction.

In my rural located college it was 9k per year for undergrad tuition if you lived in-state, add 5k or more if you aren't from the state, but you also needed food and a place to live and books and computer. I would expect atleast 12k per year for a decent college if you don't do anything but eat ramen. Maybe take 1-2k off for a community college, tuition makes it look like a bigger savings but there are a lot of extras you lose by not going to a campus university.

Of course you might need others things too like a car if you aren't on a larger more urban (and thus more expensive) campus. But that obviously varies.

The "good" univeristy in my state would be more like 20k for tuition in-state and like 35k for out of staters.

People pay this for college like people pay $40k for a handbag. I.e. not really anyone with a brain does this but you can find outliers.