Sorry but your scenario is fallacious. Just because you got a scholarship does not mean it is possible for everyone to get a scholarship. There are only so many scholarships to go around and universities can only reduce their tuition by so much.
Additionally you did not list living costs, books, or any other additional charges you get hit with when going to school. Unfortunately the system depends on the majority of students paying the full price for tuition and housing. Don't try to pass off what happened to you as something that can happen to everyone if they pull up on their bootstraps hard enough.
How so? Taking the scholarship out of the question for a moment, how does that change my central argument? That still puts my degree around 15K (a reasonable sum).
Community College => State school BA. I bet most people could do this for under 20-25K depending on the school. Going to an expensive private school for all 4 years is absurd unless you have a decent amount of grant/scholarships etc.
I did 2 years of California Community College too (UCB wouldn't take me as a transfer student though), but be aware that California Community College was very inexpensive a few years ago (< $20/unit); and is still pretty inexpensive at $46/unit compared to similar systems in other states. For example, Wisconsin community college about $215/credit but if you pay for 12 credits, you can take up to 18 (at 19 they start charging you again). Yes, it's still less expensive than going to a state 4 year school, but it may still be too expensive to avoid financing.
I went to New Mexico Tech. It's a pretty good school for CS, EE and Physics. Yearly cost was about $8K in-state. They cut that down to $4K if you kept a 3.0 or above, $6K if you kept 2.75+, etc. These were essentially automatic scholarships. A good friend of mine showed up from Rochester and became in-state in a year. It's not hard to work off the other $4-6K assuming you're not too picky about your campus job. So we're talking about 10% of the cost of a brand name school. Depending on what you're up to, the brand name value may be worth paying 10x for, but if you're aiming for engineering or industry it's probably not worth it.
I don't think NMT is exceptional in this. There are lots of schools you haven't heard of that would love to have you, and some of them are probably decent at what you'd like to study.
Loads of people do the CC -> UC route in California. The last two years has seen something like 25,000 students transferring from a CC to a UC per semester.
Look, I did CC -> State University as well and it served me okay. But you are ignoring the fact that the university could not exist if all students went that route. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody HAS to pay the full price or the University system could not continue to exist in its current form.
Sure, but I was not arguing against that. The tone of your comment made it sound like the OP was an extraordinary case, when in reality tens of thousands of students save money in the same way. (including yourself!)
If I'm not mistaken, UC gets only 13% of it's budget from tuition [1]. I believe this is up from previous years. The CC -> UC route is a very good one - and should be taken guilt free if one decides to go that route.
Many top and higher mid range universities make the majority of their money from things that aren't tuition. My university was making more money from real estate than it was making from domestic tuition fees.
I did the same. I spent 3 years at a local CC and then one year at a state university to get my BS. Total cost was about $9k. I worked while I went to school and have no student loans.
EDIT: I should also add that I didn't do so well during my first semester at CC, right after high school. I did finish the semester, but I took a break while I worked my way up in an IT department. Eventually maturity caught up with me and I went back to school and completed in about four years, going part time in the evenings. Going to university right out of high school isn't for everyone and I'd even say that I'm glad I waited. Taking classes while working in a professional environment made those classes MUCH more relevant to my daily life. I ended up graduating with a 3.90. That's not meant as a brag, just an example that waiting to get your degree can make the experience more meaningful and improve your chances of success.
Agreed. I worked all four years doing odd jobs and some research assistantships. Working 20 hours a week while taking 18-21 semester units. End result was zero debt and adept time management skills.
In 2004. Tuition alone has doubled since then, housing prices have gone up by 30-40%. Scholarships are far more competitive now because more and more people can't afford college.
The statistics for young people across the US show that the OP's situation is more "normal" than yours. Most people don't end up with $40k of debt but they still have a lot more than you spent: $27k. Considering that's an average there are probably a lot of dropouts with not much debt and a lot of graduates with much more. Friends of mine went to a shitty tech university (because they were young & didn't know better & as with the OP's family, their families pushed them), and they have nearly $60k in debt each.
Without somebody advising you "This will be one giant expensive fuckup if you're not careful," and with everyone around you saying, "You HAVE to do this," this is what happens.
Sorry, not amongst myself and all my friends. 44K/year is an absurd amount of money.
I just posted on how I got a BA degree in 2004 from UC Berkeley for 11K total.
See here: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154095]
I think your title should be: "Going to an expensive college with no game-plan nor interest in working hard is the biggest mistake."