There’s no way they’re underestimating the costs of books, though. You don’t even have to buy the books and you just sell them back at a small loss if for some reason you decide to get them. And it’s a 3-digit number. I just looked at the current calculations for IU where I went and they seem very plausible. I’m sure many students spend …
There’s no way they’re underestimating the costs of books, though. You don’t even have to buy the books and you just sell them back at a small loss if for some reason you decide to get them. And it’s a 3-digit number. I just looked at the current calculations for IU where I went and they seem very plausible. I’m sure many students spend more but I don’t really see how it’s the university’s fault if some students go out a lot.
For me, and maybe people disagree, it's fair to include in the real total cost of attendance. If you don't go to college and get a job you'll do some of those things, sure, but you'll also scale your activities to your income (at least in theory... consumer credit card usage may disagree). Many college kids are handing interest bearing loans and told "use this to support your life in college, pay it back when you've got the fancy job" and then go onto make terrible decisions.
The thing I really don't like about this is you're basically asking them, for every single purchasing decision to weigh it over some long time horizon. It's just not something people are good at doing, especially when combined with the assumption that most people have that they're going to graduate and walk straight into a cool job that pays well forever.
At the same time, we want them to do some of this stuff b/c it's hugely important in them actually learning/becoming useful (i.e. you'll learn more running a collegiate club as a senior than in a semester of classes).
If you live on campus, buy used books/acquire them offline, do no clubs, do no off campus activities, have parent provided healthcare where your parents cover all health expenses/co-pays, it's a good CoA model. The less this is true the more you're in for 20-30% more per year. Which I have an issue with b/c they're advertising "low" cost of attendance that doesn't represent what people are actually spending.
There’s no way they’re underestimating the costs of books, though. You don’t even have to buy the books and you just sell them back at a small loss if for some reason you decide to get them. And it’s a 3-digit number. I just looked at the current calculations for IU where I went and they seem very plausible. I’m sure many students spend more but I don’t really see how it’s the university’s fault if some students go out a lot.
For me, and maybe people disagree, it's fair to include in the real total cost of attendance. If you don't go to college and get a job you'll do some of those things, sure, but you'll also scale your activities to your income (at least in theory... consumer credit card usage may disagree). Many college kids are handing interest bearing loans and told "use this to support your life in college, pay it back when you've got the fancy job" and then go onto make terrible decisions.
The thing I really don't like about this is you're basically asking them, for every single purchasing decision to weigh it over some long time horizon. It's just not something people are good at doing, especially when combined with the assumption that most people have that they're going to graduate and walk straight into a cool job that pays well forever.
At the same time, we want them to do some of this stuff b/c it's hugely important in them actually learning/becoming useful (i.e. you'll learn more running a collegiate club as a senior than in a semester of classes).
If you live on campus, buy used books/acquire them offline, do no clubs, do no off campus activities, have parent provided healthcare where your parents cover all health expenses/co-pays, it's a good CoA model. The less this is true the more you're in for 20-30% more per year. Which I have an issue with b/c they're advertising "low" cost of attendance that doesn't represent what people are actually spending.