Answer? simple. $150K/4 = $37.5K/year, an average tuition of a liberal arts collect. I went to Lake Forest College, 1hr north of Chicago, and this was their tuition 5 years ago. Did I pay the full-price? No. I got a half-off scholarship for getting a SAT score above 1,200. Simple. I only paid ~ 16K/year (room & board included) for 4 years. But there were people paying the full price. I hope they make good money to pay all that debts.
4 years went by really fast, and before you know it, you're in great debt. I don't think that people are totally irresponsible. Here in the US you were taught to at a very young age to "follow your dream" and the rest would come. For a 18 year old girl or guy, being so young and naive but having no clues about finance and the real cost of money (your life!), of course she/he would make a decision of following their dream. However, undergrad debts are understandable. If you make a wrong decision and can't get a job with a high enough salary to pay back the debt, at least it's early in your life so you can recover. But if you're 25 and want to further defer the real hard life by getting a master degree of something you want (but probably don't need to), and along the way get in tons of debt, then you're financially irresponsible.
Higher education should not be this big of a financial burden for students, but it's pretty profitable and the US education system is still the best in the world, so there's a huge premium to go study here. From my own experience, foreign students make really good and conscious choice about where to go and how to get a scholarship. A lot of my international student friends got full scholarship to top schools, but this may not be the case for every one. But they and their parents really come prepared to pay every dime for a good education that can help hem make the most out of their professional life after graduation. I was too an international student.
My point of view in life is: time is money, debt is negative money, thus you're subtracting time from you life to pay for debts. And that's the real cost of debt.
4 years went by really fast, and before you know it, you're in great debt. I don't think that people are totally irresponsible. Here in the US you were taught to at a very young age to "follow your dream" and the rest would come. For a 18 year old girl or guy, being so young and naive but having no clues about finance and the real cost of money (your life!), of course she/he would make a decision of following their dream. However, undergrad debts are understandable. If you make a wrong decision and can't get a job with a high enough salary to pay back the debt, at least it's early in your life so you can recover. But if you're 25 and want to further defer the real hard life by getting a master degree of something you want (but probably don't need to), and along the way get in tons of debt, then you're financially irresponsible.
Higher education should not be this big of a financial burden for students, but it's pretty profitable and the US education system is still the best in the world, so there's a huge premium to go study here. From my own experience, foreign students make really good and conscious choice about where to go and how to get a scholarship. A lot of my international student friends got full scholarship to top schools, but this may not be the case for every one. But they and their parents really come prepared to pay every dime for a good education that can help hem make the most out of their professional life after graduation. I was too an international student.
My point of view in life is: time is money, debt is negative money, thus you're subtracting time from you life to pay for debts. And that's the real cost of debt.