In 1980, the average four-year private college charged just $3,225 per academic year and four-year public college charged just $738 on average (in today’s dollars). The cost of college has risen nearly tenfold since then (2011). The average private four-year college now charges $27,293; the average public charges $7,605. The good news is LCB’s tuition for undergraduate course is $90 per class and $225 for per graduate course.
Let’s Discuss Debt
Who are you going to be when you graduate from college?
The magnificent freedom of a college education will allow you to decide that for yourself. When you take out student loans, you are agreeing to make a monthly payment for the next 10 or 20 years after you graduate from college-anywhere from $50 to $1,000 per month or more.
There’s no two ways about it: Taking out a student loan means agreeing to a monthly payment that begins right after you graduate. Student loans are not free and not something to discard. They are a real and serious obligation that, if unmet could ruin a decade of your life or more. Do not be disabled by the cost of your education; borrowing is supposed to help you, not hurt you.
A life indentured to enormous student loan payment means that at best, you will spend your 20s bored out of your mind at a bill-paying snooze fest. At worst, you will be living under an assumed name, working cash-only jobs, and running from bill collectors. Become instead the educated person who seizes all the joy, adventure, and success-however you might define it.
Why you might be thinking, “Why? Why does it matter how much I pay for college matter? College is an investment; I will be able to pay it back if I get a good job. And the better the college I go to, the better the job I will be able to get.”
Unfortunately, that’s not always true. But it’s incredibly difficult to understand why that’s not true; you’re never given the opportunity to question it. Going to college and where you go to college, is a choice. The reason that is it a choice-and not mandatory – is because college is not free. It must be paid for. And because it must be paid form, you are a consumer, the same as someone selecting a new pair of jeans.
- The more selective a college is, the better the college.
- The more expensive the college is, the better the college
The two things are not necessarily true. You have to question both of these assumptions. You’re a consumer of education; you have the right to choose how you spend your money. You might think that they are successful because of where they went to school and that may be partially true. Going to school, –any school –is important. A great education is extremely helpful in life, not in the least because it opens up your mind to all the possibilities of the world. But successful people are generally successful for two main reasons:
- They don’t give up. Even when they fail, they pick themselves up and try something new. They are dogged and determined and have thick skins like elephants.
- They are good at getting other people to trust them.
Those are not qualities that one can purchase; those are personal to trust that one earns, you might say, through a lifetime of hurling yourself into experiences. But again, college is not free: colleges are businesses that need to charge you for our services. LCB has excellent dedicated educators.