UC Irvine Considered a Bargain

Charles January 4, 2013 at 12:16 am

That figure has to include room and board. If a student lives at home, then he can get his degree for a lot less.
When I started Cal State Northridge in Fall 1979, it was about $500/semester for everything including books, parking, health fees and tuition. I think tuition was $350, engineering books were about $100 and everything els was about $50. I lived at home and had odd jobs for gas and beer money. What a bargain. The most for the least. The number one thing I would recommend is chose a worthwhile major like engineering, business, nursing, etc and not some "softology" major. An engineering degree or nursing degree from Cal State Nowhere will benefit you a lot more than some rinky dink major degree from an Ivy League school. Plus chances are, you'll end up in a lot less debt. I would recommend attending a JC for two years then transferring into an affordable state school and do whatever it takes to avoid debt. If you play your cards right, once you graduate, you can start investing rather than paying off student loans. You'll have a fat portfolio built before Ivy League Joe has his student loans paid off. As far as paying for college, besides using 529s and EIRAs, a parent can gift appreciated funds and stocks to his kids and the kid can cash them out at his tax bracket and use that cash to pay for college.

DVC January 4, 2013 at 01:33 am

Based upon the 2012 collegiate hiring compensation survey, the lowest paid majors from the Ivy's were making roughly 70% higher starting salaries than the Calif. State Univ. graduates---basically a sociology major from the Ivy's makes considerably more than Engineering or Finance majors at the State schools------with any warm body accepted at Calif. State Univ. campuses versus best case 1 out of 25 applicants at the Ivy's that tells it all.....as a hiring manager at a blue chip company we do anything to add Ivy league graduates there's a reason why----simply faster learners. more polished, and overall more aggressive employee's----simply put, the Ivy's are still the best in my opinion--------

JustUs January 4, 2013 at 03:19 am

Yeah, some 22 year old kid gets a BA or BS from UCI and accrues $70,000 in student debt to do it. And he can't even find a job paying $13/hr. HAH! What a great bargain, eh??? But the bankers and the university president who turned the poor kid into a debt slave come out smelling like a rose. The bankers collect interest on the $70 grand, the university president collected all the tuition and fees and if the kid defaults on his loan the taxpayers have to cover the loss. That's fair, eh??? Oh, and the kid can't even go bankrupt on student debt anymore. It follows him until he dies. So all bases are covered to protect the banks and the university president. See how it all works??? Did you learn something from me??? :)

Joel Peshkin January 5, 2013 at 08:30 am

That doesn't sound likely. (Unless the stats are somehow dominated by the kids who become VP of daddy's empire automatically upon graduation or by the math majors who become wall-street "quants"). My own experience on both coasts shows big differences based on what the employee studied, but little difference between top-tier universities (no Ivy-league bias). That is based on hiring mostly engineers in commercial corporations of course, If I were hiring professors in an academic setting, the situation could be different but there aren't a whole lot of those jobs.
Care to identify which of "the 2012 collegiate hiring compensation survey"s you are reading?