If you’re asking yourself: Should I go to public or private university, you are on the right track. Too many parents and students don’t think this choice through until it is too late.
Going to university today does not guarantee you gainful employment. If you cannot afford university, let alone private university, what you will be guaranteed is student loan debt. Yes, Joe Biden and other Democrats want to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt. But you can’t depend on government handouts forever.
If you go to an expensive private university, there’s a good chance you will end up doing what a public university graduate is doing. You may even go to Harvard and end up becoming a nobody! Please think through your university choice carefully.
Fears Of Going To An Expensive Private University
My parents were middle-class government employees. They were certainly not rich with their 10-year old Toyota Camry and our small townhouse. Here were some questions I had when asking whether I should go public or private:
“What if I graduate from private school and have to live at home with my parents because I can’t find a job?”
“What if I graduate from private school and end up back at McDonald’s?”
“What if I graduate from private school and end up getting the same job with the same pay as my public school friends?”
“What if I bleed my parents dry to the point they have to work many more years to afford retirement?”
“What if I drop out of private school halfway through, thereby wasting all that time and money?”
Not only were my parents not rich, I wasn’t smart enough to get large amounts of scholarship money from private schools. Therefore, I felt extra pressure to make the right choice.
The More Fear And Guilt You Have
My thesis is that the more fearful you are of failure and the more guilt you feel about spending money, the more you should consider going to public school.
If you are unaware that 870 million people in the world suffer from malnourishment every day, then what do you really care about wasting food on your plate or gorging yourself to oblivion?
If you know your wealthy parents will hook you up with a job at their company after graduation, does it really matter you spend $78,000 in tuition going to Boston University like AOC when U. Mass-Amherst costs $15,000 in tuition and provides just as good an education? Of course not.
In the end I decided there was no way in hell I was going to attend a private school that cost $25,000 a year in tuition back in the 1990s if it wasn’t in the top 10. All subjects are taught off the same text books anyway. Some of the intro courses are even taught by teacher assistants. Why pay a premium?
I was even considering going to community college for two years and then transferring over to a four year institution to save my parents more money. But thankfully William & Mary accepted me despite my average SAT score.
Virginia has some other great public schools including UVA, Virginia Tech, James Madison, and Mary Washington so it didn’t seem right to not take advantage of the public school system.
When I wrote “Average Inheritance By Country,” I was merely guessing at the $3,000 a year tuition my college charged back in 1995. After doing some digging online, it turns out my guesstimate was pretty spot on at $2,890 a year. The reason why I remember the cost 18 years later is because I was extremely sensitive to my family’s finances.
Should I Go To Public Or Private University?
I believe for the vast majority of middle class citizens, going to a public university is the optimal choice for the following reasons:
Benefits Of Going To A Public School
* High Rankings: Schools such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, Wisconsin, Michigan, UVA, William & Mary, and UNC Chapel Hill are regularly ranked amongst the top universities in the nation. There is no dearth of high ranking public schools who produce Nobel laureates and Rhodes Scholars. If you don’t go to a highly ranked public school, rest assured that your public state school provides a similar quality level of education.
* More Economical: If we simply compare tuition costs, private school tuition is regularly 4X more than public school tuition ($40,000 vs. $10,000). After factoring in need based scholarships, the difference is still at least 2X. But if your family falls in the amorphous middle class income level of $60,000 – $120,000 a year, it’s unlikely your family will get need based help. The average student loan debt is roughly $29,400 according to the annual Project on Student Debt / TICAS report study.
* Larger Alumni Base: Public schools are generally much larger than private schools. As a result, you’ve got a much larger alumni base to work with who might help get you employed.
* More Grounded. No matter how hard a private school tries to diversify its students’ economic backgrounds, they will never succeed in reflecting the economic reality of the country’s population. I attended private schools for over a decade when I was overseas, and public schools for 11 years in the US and there is a big difference.
* Less Stress. If your parents pay $170,000 in tuition alone for your private education you’re going to be mighty stressed to be somebody successful by the time you graduate. You’ll feel similar amounts of stress if you have to take out student loans. If you go to public school that costs $40,000 in tuition over four years, you can afford to breathe easier if you don’t find that money job after graduation.
Benefits Of Going To Private School
* Prestige. If prestige is your thing, private schools in America carry more prestige. The reverse is true overseas at the university level curiously enough. Just remember that prestige must be followed by a prestigious occupation, otherwise, what’s the point other than to waste money?
* Facilities. Oh, how I envied some private school athletic and academic facilities! Some schools feel like you’re walking around a private country club with a world class golf course, a indoor Olympic pool, magnificent library, and the best computers and electronic equipment money can buy. Public school bathrooms and dorms can be less than Ritz Carlton like.
* Connections. The rich have gotten much richer than the rest of us over the past several decades. Attending private school puts you in contact with a much wealthier pool of students who likely have better connections to get you what you want. Your academics can only get you so far in this incestuous world. (Read: How The Rich And Powerful Become More Rich And Powerful)
* Target Schools. Many of the top employers in the world will specifically target a handful of schools for recruiting purposes. Many of these schools are private schools. Therefore it is even that much more important that if you do spend the big bucks attending a private school, that your school be on the recruiting list of employers you’d like to join.
Obviously if you are smart enough to get a scholarship from a private school that equals the cost of a state university, then attending a private school is also a great choice. Just know that not all private and public universities are created equal. And of course if your family is rich, then feel free to do whatever you want!
You Can Always Go To Private School Later
Hopefully nobody is foolish enough to want to go to private school just because it’s a private school. It’s important to do a cost benefit analysis on the university based on reputation, lifestyle, academics, sports, learning, alumni network, arts, music, and the ability to get a job upon graduation.
More than 22 years later, William & Mary still only charges a reasonable $17,434 a year for tuition and fees. As an alumni, investor, and personal finance buff, there’s no way I would spend $50,000+ a year for ANY private university over William & Mary. My kid would have to get at least a $25,000 a year scholarship from a top 10 school for me to even consider.
See: Would You Accept $1 Million To Go To Public School Instead? Hell Yeah!
Expectations To Be Somebody Goes Way Up If You Go To Private School
For folks considering blitzing their parent’s retirement savings or going into major debt by going to a private university, know that you might feel like a total failure if you graduate with a job that doesn’t match the cost and reputation of your university. You might even join protestors who rail against the government and your private university for not doing enough even though you consciously decided to attend!
Education is becoming commoditized with free online courses from MIT and other leading universities for example. You can even read blogs like this one to learn about personal finance for free and still throw peanuts at me in the comments section.
If you have your heart set on private university, I suggest going to public university first to see how things go. If you’re financially responsible and still have an itch to go to private school, then go ahead and spend a ton of your own money on graduate school.
In this day and age where education is now free thanks to the internet, spending big bucks to go to college is no longer a great economical move.
Loading ... Loading ...Related: How To Get Into A Great Preschool Or Private Grade School
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Public or Private University is a FS original post.
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I like how you said that private school put you in a pool of wealthy people. I think this is a great way to help your kids make connections. the right connections can mean they are successful in the future.
Current high school senior here. Thank you so much for this post, and I’d honestly like your advice for my college decision if you’re willing. I have a lot of the same questions and hesitations about choosing a private university over a public university. I’ll give you a run down of my current situation: it would cost $20-25k per year to go to UChicago, Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins, or Rice, but it wouldn’t cost anything for my family to send me to UT Dallas. From the financially logical point of view, my instinct says I should go to UTD, but I know there’s other factors at play. I have thought about attending one of the private schools, but I would have the financial guilt you are talking about and some pressure to do well there and after graduation to make my family’s investment worthwhile. I’m worried that if I go to UTD, I’d lose out substantially on opportunities by not going to one of these more prestigious, well-known private universities. Mainly, what I’m internally debating over is the ROI and whether or not it is worth it to spent at least $80k over four years at one of these private universities when I could get a college degree for almost nothing. I know I’d likely lose out on some opportunity because these schools have a lot of clout and connections, but I’m not sure if its significant enough to pay all that money for it. This has all been going through my head for a while, but now there’s a whole new COVID financial uncertainty angle to consider. What are your thoughts?
Hindsight, I think I just posted this in desperation for someone to tell me what my gut already knew I should do. Even rereading this, it’s clear what I’d decide. The cost, in every sense of the word, was too much to justify. I chose public university and am confident that it really was the best choice for me. Thank you for your articles, they offered a very helpful perspective on this and I’m sure they will continue to help others too.
Full disclosure-I’m a Chicago alum. I also took on no debt to do so and it was not a burden to my family, so I never did a cost-benefit analysis when applying to college, so I was never really in your shoes. I also went to a Johns Hopkins grad program, same story.
You took a look at the situation and decided that a degree from UChicago, JHU, Notre Dame, or Rice, was not worth 80k-100k at ~3%ish (or whatever interest rate you would get) over 10 years (or 30 if you do PSLF) compared to UT-Dallas. For what it’s worth, I disagree with your assessment-I can tell you from experience that graduating from Chicago grants you open doors, of whose existence you could not be aware, and immediate credibility, deserved or not, without the nasty resentment and jealousy that peer schools may get. I personally think it’s worth more than the 100k, especially given that in your case it could give you access to connections that you not be able to replicate at UT-Dallas.
However, I didn’t do your analysis and I fundamentally don’t know what you know about yourself, what you’re interested in, and what you’d like to do. Admittedly, if your ambition is just to be like a doctor and be in private practice or something where the most important thing is your certification, then it doesn’t really matter. My sister went to Columbia for undergrad and thinks it was a waste for her because she went into private practice, so she thinks she would have been better off going to a state school for much cheaper. Columbia didn’t really do much for her intellectual development, so I tend to agree with her.
Leaving aside a debate over the merits of a College of William and Mary education vs. the other options, he severely undersells the value of a high prestige private university (I’m with him on places under the top tier like Boston College or NYU or lower. In those cases, going to one of the better state flagships like Michigan or Berkeley is a much better choice). The “target school” thing is very real, and much more important than he states.
In an environment where public openings at a good job are flooded with applicants, school quality is oftentimes a filter, as well as campus recruiting. And the names on resumes can determine who gets a phone call and who doesn’t. Sam knows it, given that he worked in finance in NYC and SF, but he’s not bringing it out here enough for some reason. It’s also more important, if anything, if you want to do something besides make money with your degree, like me. How do you evaluate people if there’s no profit and loss to look at?
Thanks for catching my typo error on the W&M tuition. It was missing a “1”. And $17,500 a year in tuition is still dirt cheap compared to $50,000+ for private schools. Then again, I did first write this post around 2010, so may I just forgot to update this particular part.
LinkedIn says you work at Upwork. That’s great, but did you need a Chicago degree to work at Upwork? What kind of doors has being a Chicago alumni opened for you? Where you graduate matters more for where you want to live. In SF, I don’t think Chicago does much. Chances are, your Berkeley PhD helped you much more.
I don’t think working in finance is all that at all, from someone who worked in finance.
I was just talking to someone the other day about our dear alma mater. :) They thought it was private and were sort of talking about expensive private schools, and so I schooled them on how affordable ol’ Bill and Mary really is, esp for in-staters.
Also I thought about you when I read this article yesterday and was going to send it to you – for no other reason than knowing you worked on Wall Street and was curious about your thoughts: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html?smid=fb-share
I went to a private college and graduated in ’97. I believe it was about 25K/year and I didn’t have any loans or scholarships. I don’t necessarily think that I got a better education or even a leg up having gone to a private school. However, I do know my first boss lived in the same city as the school and knew of tough academic standards – science and engineering school. He did make a comment that if I could handle that academic pressure then he was confident in my ability to do the job.
It’s amazing to me how the academic world has changed so dramatically in the past 50 years. My costs for everything (room, board, tuition, etc) at Duke U (class 1960) was $2000 a year, The most remarkable part of it was that I worked three jobs during the summer to cover all of the costs. Today, that same school costs about $50,000 a year.
My granddaughter, who is highly skilled in languages, is studying at a university in Venice, Italy for $7000 a year for everything. She now speaks Italian fluently after a year there as a Rotary exchange student. Her major is Mandarin (Chinese) and she plans to work at a factory setting in China for a term as part of her language and cultural learning. Her parents were delighted with her selection since it was even less than her local university costs at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I mention this because there are unlimited ways to get a college education these days. Studying and working overseas offers many opportunities not available in the USA.
For my undergraduate degree I went to a pretty expensive school, but by the time the need-based financial aid and scholarship kicked in, it was only $2-4k more per year than my state school (Rutgers), which I absolutely despise. What kind of state university tells its potential applicants it doesnt give ANY preference to in-state students?? Then why in the world did my parents state taxes go toward funding the school.
If I had gotten into The College of NJ, I may have changed my tune, but I would say my time at my particular private university helped me greatly with connections and even though it is ranked about the same as Rutgers, I was very happy with my decision.
Didn’t realize Rutgers isn’t at least cheaper for in-state students. Shocker!
I should clarify, it is a bit cheaper for in-state students at least at the time I was applying, but not by much. I actually could have gone to Florida State as an out of state student for less than what Rutgers was charging me in-state. Needless to say that school leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Yeah, seems like your state school choices were limited. Virginia had a plethora of good quality state schools so I thought it was a waste not to go to at least on one of then. W&M and UVA are beautiful!
I went to public school in Mexico, I paid about 500 bucks in total for 4.5 years of an engineering degree in electronics that I combined with working part time and sometimes full time.
I live in Canada now, well paid job (well above 6 figures), while many of my peers in Canada are still paying off their degrees, not even making 70k / yr. I tend to think that while private education may have its advantages as you’ve pointed out, it’s a luxury rather than a true investment.
While I benefited from moving to a richer economy, even when I worked in Mexico I did just as good or better than peers studying at private university.
As other’s have mentioned, perhaps private education prestige works better for certain careers such as medicine, law etc, but in other areas such as computer science I don’t think it helps that much.