Tuition Cost – What You Need to Know

Posted on May 7, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Average Net Price – What Is It?

It is important that you fully understand tuition costs and pricing in higher education. All is not what it seems.

Few students pay the advertised tuition figure, known as the sticker price.  Net price is what you’ll actually pay for college, after subtracting scholarships and grants.

Buzz Today Source:  The Chronicle of Higher Education. A high sticker price can scare students away from a specific college even though it might be a good fit for them. Look at net price, not the sticker price.  A high sticker price can scare students away from a specific college even though it might be a good fit for them. Look at net price, not the sticker price.  Few students pay the advertised tuition figure, known as the sticker price. Net price is what you’ll actually pay for college, after subtracting scholarships and grants.

An education is an important thing to have these days.  Unfortunately higher education is less than fully transparent about what an education costs.  For those of you who may not be familiar with it, The Chronicle of Higher Education is the premiere publication of college and universities.  Professors and college administrators go to The Chronicle for the latest important news in American Colleges and Universities.

The BUZZ Today message is clear.  If you do not know that few students pay the full price, you well could end up spending more money for your education than you need to.  The good news is that there is excellent information on how many current students are getting financial help at a college or university that you are interested in. The source is COLLEGE Navigator

The challenge for you as a prospective student is to navigate the huge data base of college information in COLLEGE Navigator.  For help with the navigation see chapter Chapter 9 “How to Select the Right School” in the book “Your Future is Calling“.

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What You Study Matters

Posted on April 24, 2013 // Leave a Comment

In Your Future is Calling I talk about your choice of degrees, careers and colleges. You need to start these decisions with “who you are”. If your degree and career does not satisfy you, money will not compensate you for being miserable everyday. Doing what satisfies you trumps everything else. Given this bedrock starting point, your choice of college, career and major have a big impact on your future. Here we are exploring the major that you pick to study.

  Buzz Today Source: Salary.com College Degrees with Worst Return on Investment

Fine Arts

Artists are respected, revered and celebrated. Here are three jobs commonly held by workers with a fine arts degree:

MUSEUM RESEARCH WORKER
Median Salary: $48,401
30-Year Earnings: $2,854,689
ROI of Degree Earner Attending Public College: 75%
ROI of Degree Earner Attending Private College: 22%

GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Median Salary: $47,753
30-Year Earnings: $2,816,470
ROI of Degree Earner Attending Public College: 74%
ROI of Degree Earner Attending Private College: 22%

PAINTER/ILLUSTRATOR
Median Salary: $37,819
30-Year Earnings: $2,230,563
ROI of Degree Earner Attending Public College: 58%
ROI of Degree Earner Attending Private College: 17%

There are several important things that you need to take from the data in BUZZ Today. The first thing we want to look at is the headline:  “Degrees with the Worst Return on Investment”. The ROI question has to be examined relative to other investment alternatives. As Warren Buffett has stated, the best investment you can make is in yourself. He is right. The annual rate of return on 10 year US government bonds is less than 2% per year.

The thing to note in the BUZZ Today is that even these “worst” investment options represent a significantly higher return than government bonds. In addition, no one can take your education away from you. It is yours forever.

The other thing to note in BUZZ Today, is how sensitive the financial return is to the tuition paid to earn the degree. In the example, Salary.com uses private vs. public to make the point of the cost of the tuition. But your return is not merely about your decision to go to a public university rather than a private university. There are many additional factors that affect how much you end up actually paying to earn your degree. For detailed information on what those are and how you can impact them read Your Future is Calling.

Filed Under: Adult learning, Career, College degrees, Income, Money, Paying for your degree, Uncategorized // Tagged: , , ,

Confusion

Posted on April 15, 2013 // Leave a Comment

College Grads May Be Stuck in Low-Skill Jobs (from the Wall Street Journal)

It is little wonder that you may be confused about getting your degree.  Headlines like those above, combined with the continuous din about student loan debt, add confusion rather than clarity.   It doesn’t help that this particular piece appeared in the highly respected Wall Street Journal.   Buzz TodaySource:  The Wall Street Journal:  Better-educated workers still face far better job prospects than their less-educated counterparts. The unemployment rate for Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree was 3.8% in February (2013), compared with 7.9% for those with just a high school diploma. College-educated employees also tend to earn more and advance more quickly even when they are in fields that don’t require a degree. 

Don’t be confused. Student debt is a real issue. The federal government is the lender of the guaranteed student loans.  Interest rates on such loans are relatively high and those interest rates are potentially going to double this summer if Congress does not take action to hold the current rate.  In addition, federal student loans are virtually forever since they cannot be discharged under bankruptcy laws.

But we will examine student loans in detail on another day.  For now we need to look at the headline of the article and the data in that article as reported in the BUZZ Today here.

Under any scenario, what the data shows is that earning a degree gives you a far better shot at having a job, advancing more quickly and earning more over a lifetime career than not having a degree.

These results are critical to your decision about whether to get a degree or not get a degree.  From this basic decision, your challenge is to make wise choices about what to study, how your studies relate to specific careers, where to go to school, how to get the most favorable tuition, how to finance your education.  For the data on these important decisions you need an easy to understand road map about where to get that important data and how to use it.  For that, I recommend that you go directly to “Your Future is Calling”.

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Associate vs. Bachelor Degrees

Posted on April 9, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Associate Degrees vs Bachelor Degrees

Headline: Community college grads out-earn bachelor’s degree holders.

This is a rather powerful statement.  It is designed to get your attention. The reason it is so powerful is because it reinforces a common journalist theme today that the cost and debt required to earn a bachelor degree are not worth it.  Buzz Today Source: CNN Money:  “I have a buddy who got a four-year bachelor’s degree in accounting who’s making $10 an hour,” Berevan Omer (a recent community college graduate) says. “I’m making two and a-half times more than he is.” Omer, who is 24, is one of many newly minted graduates of community colleges defying history and stereotypes by proving that a bachelor’s degree is not, as widely believed, the only ticket to a middle-class income.

The use of sweeping generalizations often used around this issue of earning a degree of any kind does not contribute to better decision making.   Here we are talking about decision making that directly effects your future.

Let’s look at the BUZZ Today item more closely.  First of all, it is true that some associate degree holders make more money than some bachelor degree holders.  This is true for lots of situations.  Bill Gates does not have a degree of any kind and I have a Ph.D.  Bill Gates makes a heck of a lot more money than I do.  Does this mean that you are more likely to earn more money by not getting a degree?  Absolutely not.

The tricky part of the BUZZ Today article are the words slipped in to reinforce the popular theme that getting a degree is “not worth it”.  The high impact words are: defying history, stereotypes, proving, only and widely believed.  These are words meant to prove sweeping generalizations in support of the conclusion being advanced.   Especially suspect is the combination of the words “widely believed”.

Belief is like beauty.  It is in the eye of the beholder. There is no evidence in the BUZZ Today quote to support the claim that such beliefs are indeed widely held. It is true that these beliefs are being widely reported but this does not mean that they are widely held beyond the belief of the author doing the reporting.  The facts (in contrast to beliefs) are that since 1988, the number of jobs requiring bachelor degrees have grown 82% while the number of jobs requiring associate degrees have grown by 42%.   Jobs for those with only a high school education have actually declined 14%.  More detail on this data is available in the free Introduction to Your Future is Calling. The data also shows that over a lifetime, the average bachelor degree holder earns far more than the average associate degree holder.

In the end, the defensible conclusion is that some associate degree holders earn more than some bachelor degree holders.   The guidance for you here, is that you make your decision about your future based on hard data, sound reasoning and what fits “who you are”.  Stay away from the sensational sweeping generalizations based on beliefs.  To get important facts you might want to read Your Future is Calling.

Filed Under: Adult learning, Career, College degrees, Income, Money, Uncategorized // Tagged: , , , , , ,
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