Submitted by Constant_Education_4 t3_zxrk5n in vermont
Over the last two years both of my kids have been admitted to UVM, but both went or are going elsewhere due to UVM's prohibitive costs. It will be considerably less expensive to send my daughter to a SUNY college as an out of state student. How can we expect our kids to stay here if the flagship university is out of reach for middle income Vermonters?
I hate the fact that you're right. A four-year degree is the new high school diploma. It's meaningless.
College has turned into a cash cow for admin rather than about building a prepared workforce.
You're both wrong, but wrong in the way that society wants you to be wrong. The trades are hiring faster than ever and often you can make more than someone with a graduate degree within a few years.
Society really wants everyone to believe they need a PhD, but in reality we need plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc.
Everyone I know in the trades has a lucrative career. The majority of people I know with graduate degrees struggle to make a decent living and usually make less than the tradesmen.
Hell, I have a bachelors in a science field and got a well paying job out of college and now make pretty close to $100k 7 years later. My sister had to give up on her PhD because it was too expensive and now can’t find a decent paying job with her masters.
In the end it’s much more about what you do than the letters after your name.
Am 34, tradesman since 16. You are not mentioning the long hours and sometimes travel times, hard labor on your body and an often awful work environment. I also advocate for the trades, but it’s not simply “the same or more pay but no degree needed”. There are pros and cons.
Totally, but the rhetoric that now a bachelor's is worthless is total bullshit propagated by academia and the finances driving education in our country unfortunately.
But you're right, my dad has been a mechanic all of his life. Unfortunately this is probably the worst paid trade especially for regular consumer vehicles. He makes pretty good money now but he was always useless on the weekends because he would be so sore and tired and he is at the point now where he HAS to change careers because his body can't do it anymore. He has also never had benefits or retirement. That being said, guys he worked with when he was 30 now make 6 figures doing the same thing other places. So again it's way more complex than "you NEED a graduate degree these days"
Also the rhetoric of “I know insert trade that make six figures” is kind of bogus too. Again, been in the trades my whole life. It’s extremely rare to make that before late career, not living somewhere like NYC, or without insane overtime. Still, a realistic 40k-60k about 3-6 years into a trade with no formal education or training required is NOTHING to sneeze at these days.
Again, career tradesman and have zero regrets. I found a cushy job at a university that pays well and couldn’t be happier. That being said, I have a daughter. She is going to college.
>I have a daughter. She is going to college
Hopefully at the school where you work lol. My dad tried for years to become a fleet mechanic at UVM so that my sister and I could get free tuition. Applied for and got the job shortly before my sister started applying for college but had second thoughts about leaving his old job since he was working for a friend. Sister said there was NO WAY she would every stay in state so my dad declined the job offer.
Guess who ended up going to school in state? Would have saved my parents, sister, and I about $150-$200k overall if he had taken the job!
Yeah, I work at UVM lol. So I ain’t going anywhere.
huge demand. Try finding a plumber or electrician or contractor to call you back!!
And when they do they can do the work in 6mo
True story
Right and wrong. I mean, yeah there’s tons of need for tradespeople and a lot of them make really good dough, but they cap out whereas people who know how to think critically end up having much higher total life earnings. They’ve done tons of studies on this.
The catch is that not everyone who goes to college actually learns how to think, and a lot come out no better off for having gone. Similarly, it’s not as though someone who doesn’t go can’t also achieve education. College is just the more straightforward path to ensuring it as a possibility.
The parallel is the tech industry. Lots of coders who just do boot camps and learn coding when young. They jump in and make 6 figures fast, but they cap out. Meanwhile college degree holders in subjects like anthropology or marketing join the same companies and work through the ranks, start off way lower but end up in leadership later in life making more like seven figures as they settle into the C-suite.
I stopped reading when you insinuated that tradespeople don’t need to know how to think critically. I can’t take anything else you say seriously after that my man.
Yes it’s true that a lot of trades cap out, but it’s also true that a lot of people with masters and PhDs never make more than 6 figures. At the end of the day critical thinking is not the deciding factor.
Since I didn’t say it and you felt I insinuated it then you’re displaying an inability to think critically. If you had read on I said nothing is stopping anyone from learning to think critically.
BTW there’s a difference between needing to and being able to. Plenty of my trades-person friends are the smartest people I know, and boy howdy do I have some dumb friends that made it through college. College is not insurance to greatness by any means. Heck one of the happiest people I know is a guy who has a PhD in biology and started a moving company. He’s fit as hell because he just hauls stuff all day. He’s his own boss so he can take off days whenever he wants. But I will also add that the reason he makes that work for him is the same reason he was capable of achieving a PhD…and just like college cam seem like a scam I think there’s an illusion that everyone skipping it can jump into a 6 figure trade, which also isn’t true.
>Since I didn’t say it and you felt I insinuated it then you’re displaying an inability to think critically.
You literally did say it..."trades people can make a lot of dough whereas people who know how to think critically"
You don't need much critical thinking or reading comprehension skills to understand what you meant by this. And just because you go on to say that a lot of college grads don't have critical thinking skills doesn't make your other comment ok/true. Honestly most of the people I know in the trades have better critical and practical thinking skills than most college grads that I know since most college grads can't think outside of what they've been taught/told.
Your last paragraph (really last line) here is all true, but it took you making some silly points to get there.
Nah man, the point I was 100% intending to make was that you don’t get rich by being a trades person, you get rich by being smart. I never implied college is the only way to get smart. But I did say it’s a much easier path to get smart than trying to do it when you’re tired from working all day at your trade, at least when you’re not already a bright bulb.
> At the end of the day critical thinking is not the deciding factor.
if that was the case the C-Suite would be doing my job...
You're misunderstanding. The folks in trades are doing just as much critical thinking as you CPU jockeys. So there's no difference in critical thinking ability or amount - just different things to think critically about.
Troubleshooting a very complex electrical or plumbing system is really not that far from troubleshooting a broken code or something along those lines, and often requires more peripheral knowledge and physical skill than coding does.
That sort of knowledge can be learned hands-on and with experience. I've built my career on experience alone. I have a lot of faith in folks to be more than the sum of their parts.
You'd be surprised how much you can learn on your own especially when it comes to small business accounting. QuickBooks and other software really help streamline the process of managing your own bookkeeping. Additionally you can hire things like a tax service or even a bookkeeper if need be. There are many services to help in this regard.
Good trades people is what you’re talking about. Know how many shit ones live in my town? Of course they’re the only ones with free space in their books, too. All the tools, none of the brains.
And yeah, the best plumbers and electricians in town are friggin’ wizards.
> Right and wrong. I mean, yeah there’s tons of need for tradespeople and a lot of them make really good dough, but they cap out
you only cap out if you don't keep learning more about your trade and pickup new skills outside of your trade. In this market - you can pretty much charge what you want because there is a 6 month or more lead to get work done, or even get a call back.
Yeah but whether you bill by hour or project there’s still only so much time in the day. To break the bubble you have to figure out how to scale, like by starting a company and hiring. And at that point you’re not a trades person anymore, you’re an entrepreneur.
> And at that point you’re not a trades person anymore, you’re an entrepreneur.
there's nothing wrong with that.
I myself owned a business before the pandemic hit doing IT services, and I had to eventually start bringing on part time help to get shit done. Made a good amount of paper here and there. Wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
Agree, nothing at all wrong with it. I’m just trying to point out that there’s a spectrum out there. One of my most successful trades oriented friends went this route and ended up going back to college to study accounting and finance anyway, because they needed to know that stuff to scale their landscaping business well.
The thread is about how college is a waste and while I get that perspective, I think it’s misrepresented. I might be sensitive as I have a kid about to go on this journey…
What I think IS wasteful is college with no purpose. It’s an incredible opportunity, and many kids benefit from not pursuing it right out of high school because the endeavor is lost on them…or going slower through it. It’s unfortunate that it has become so expensive, though.
I agree with your points. Frankly you are quite respectable and decent, which is a change from a lot of the folks that comment in these threads.
My belief is that we should be encouraging youth to explore many different trades and occupations before the conversation of college comes up. Some folks have talent in things they've never tried or had interest in - so giving these things a try might unlock some sort of latent potential in people.
I don't want to toot my own horn - but I come from an awful educational background, special ed til 5th grade, struggled with literacy, poor math abilities and I some how found computers made sense and it changed my life. I hope that for folks struggling out there that maybe there is something out there for them like computers are for me - an accidental hobby turned career with a most unlikely individual.
I’m all for finding the fit. I love the freedom we have in our culture but it also means that we’re free to run the wrong direction quite easily. As parents we can make it worse by telling our kids to pursue their dreams, even when they’re shit at it.
It’s super hard to find out what we’re good at and then hard work to invest in honing that talent. Many people never figure that out about themselves.
As for exploration, agree wholeheartedly. As someone who did go to college, one of the aspects I valued more than any other was the emphasis on exactly that: exploration. The first two years are all about broadening the individual’s understanding of different areas and giving them a broad base, at least in major universities. They want you to know how to write and communicate clearly, but also to understand how science is performed, and to be able to understand symbolic logic (maths). Then you get to learn about political theory and world cultures, all before pursuing your major. It’s pretty cool. And yes, expensive.
Yeah, the old schtick about going to college to "learn how to learn and think critically." That's all bullshit. College isn't causing people to think critically or challenge ideas. At this point, it's about agreeing to what they want you to agree to.
You're also selecting the highest earners for college degrees, so the CEOs and what not? The 1%ers. Those critical thinker high-earners aren't restricted to college grads.
Edit: autocorrect messing up words.
Sure, but middle management in large consulting firms also make $500k-$1m. Individual contributors can easily make over $300K and more. Software engineers I interview are asking for $200-300 out of college.
I think college gives you a path to that much easier than that outside of college. The other thing they’ve researched is life outcomes from people of education. Just like thinking isn’t only achieved in college, education can be had outside of college, but how many people pursue education on their own? I applaud those that do, and similarly having it rammed down your throat in college also doesn’t mean you’ll absorb it. At the end of the day, though, educated people make better decisions for themselves about life and have better life outcomes.
Haha, ok $500-$1M for middle management.....and what percentage of college grads do you think are actually getting that? 1% of college grads, maybe and that's a pretty big maybe.
And asking for vs. getting are two different outcomes.
Both examples seem like some pulled out of ass numbers.
It’s not a direct correlation from college to middle management consulting jobs. I’m illustrating a point and there are a whole lot more of these jobs than you think.
There are also folks like my old boss with the PhD who started a moving company so he could kayak when the rivers were up. Or like the carpenter and ski patroller friend I know in Summit County.
You’re semi-wrong about the asking and getting. They’re not accepting my offers, lower than what they’re asking…and they’re ending up employed. The delta isn’t so great, either, to assume they’re not making stupid amounts of money for early-mid 20 year olds that can live anywhere they want.
You're illustrating a fake created point with no bearing on the outcome.
I'll also assume 99% of billionaires also have college degrees. That doesn't mean they are billionaires because of college.
I’d argue that they’re billionaires because they’re smart and educated. I’d also argue it’s much easier to obtain education when it’s your job to do so than a hobby in your spare time.
And a college degree has nothing to do with that.
I'd also argue when people attend college, that's their job and it's not just a hobby, no different than a billionaire
I hate it too. And I went to UVM. But I really think looking back it would have made for sense to save the money and go to a smaller less expensive community college. Yes the experience isn’t the same but you said it best. It really is the new high school diploma. And especially if you want a career that requires lots of years of school it’s the way to go.
> A four-year degree is the new high school diploma. It's meaningless.
agreed.
you can do quite well for yourself these days if you go into the trades or even opt for vocational tech during high school via BTC.
college is a scam. I'm making 80k a year with just a high school diploma, if I can do it - so can you.
I've hired more quality grads from Vermont Tech than UVM or Champlain. They're more motivated and have better practical experience through their programs than kids who spent 5x that to go to a larger school.
Ditto, VTC is a treasure trove of good employees.
Champlain is 1800 students.
Champlain is expensive as fuck
And a trash product
groovy uvy baby!
Spend 150,000 to get high and black out drunk!
This 100% depends on your major/program of study. There are lots of great undergrad majors that grad school doesn't make sense for and lots of selective grad programs that won't take students who went to community college only. But yeah, it's all overpriced in the us.
I disagree with the folks who say that an undergrad degree is meaningless. Those are some critical developmental years and there are some extremely important lessons to learn about life, academics, and career that really only universities offer.
Its just that none of those lessons are worth $70,000 a year.
Any affordable undergrad program will do, though some are better than others.
I graduated a Vermont high school, top ten, with two UVM alumni as parents, in 96. With a scholarship to deal with room/board, it was cheaper to go to a school in Texas. Without the finaid packages, it (edit) would not have (/edit) been cheaper to go to UVM for a semester than it was to go to the Texas school for a year.
That is all to say, UVM's tuition is not a new problem.
Same, but ‘95 and went out west to save money. Didn’t bother even applying at UVM because of costs. Now my kid can get 60% off out of state tuition at the same school. My family keeps suggesting he apply to UVM and we have no interest.
UVM is over 80% out of state students. They truly want the rich to pay
They got caught doing this in the early 90’s. They were accepting out of state students over in state with the same credentials to get the higher out of state tuition.
they need the rich to pay because we refuse to fund the school, and have refused for hundreds of years. In the 1800s we tried to give UVM to middlebury to get rid of it.
Your kids will have a better experience in NY anyway.
If you're from Vermont going to college in Vermont is not the move at all. Kids need to experience other places. The state is way too sheltered for their own good
Agreed. I went to UVM but grew up in Boston. Now I live in VT and I don’t want my kid to go to UVM. This is a time to branch out and live some place else and experience a new city/state.
Definitely. It's one of the few times in life you can live wherever you want.
you can thank our lawmakers and fellow citizens who've kept Vermont 50th for state support for higher education--even if half of Vermont students attend for free, tuition is prohibitively expensive for the rest due to our nearly non-existent state support. It's essentially a private school with a nominal state affiliation.
Yeah. Cause more state aid = cheaper tuition.
Keep drinking the Kool aid.
state funding is less than 5% of the budget compared to nearly 25% for states like Florida. There’s a clear and obvious reason tuition is high, but sure, pretend like there’s some magical way to get blood from a stone.
If you believe increased state funding is gonna reduce the price of college in VT you’re delusional.
Increase state funding by 20% and UVM tution will magically increase 22%.....in order to line pockets... keep up with inflation... to offer the absolute best education possible for their students!
Generally speaking, yes. States where funding has kept up over the years have lower tuitions. Probably too late now though, even if funding were increased it likely wouldn't affect in-state tuition very much now; tough to bring prices down after they've gone up.
This happened at the federal/national level with student loans, but since VT competes with other states, maybe not.
Same happened with my kids, SUNY schools offered them some money, UVM nothing. They ended up going to expensive private schools that gave them tons of merit money making it much less than instate UVM.
It ended up costing me less to go to an insanely expensive private liberal arts school than it did for my brother to go in-state to UVM; and this was back in the 90s.
Yep this was me and my brother too! My liberal arts school was 65,000 per year at the time and I came out of it with way less student loan debt than my twin who attended UVM. Since we’re the same age it was also a direct comparison for our respective schools looking at our family’s financial situation and determining aid.
Heck, it cost me less to go to Midd than it did for my brother to go to Castleton!
Same happened with my son. $65k sticker price for a private school, but a couple thousand less than UVM when the merit aid offer came in. The system is just bonkers.
Same. Even though I had little desire to go to UVM, I didn't expect my in-state merit offer to be so paltry despite my strong grades and test scores. I think the only way my offer would've improved is with a Green and Gold scholarship (full tuition), but that requires being HS valedictorian.
I’m from Brattleboro and I went to SUNY Oneonta and I am so happy I went there and graduated. I wouldn’t trade it to go to another school. Two semesters at Oneonta were about the same as one at UVM. Funny this was posted and I was talking about this same thing with my mum and a family friend yesterday.
Good ole Oneonta. Love that little town. I sure do miss Brooks BBQ.
Oh yeah! The BBQ Chicken and their sauce are so good. I'll be back in Oneonta this summer to live it up again on my way to Sugarbush.
What is the diner I’m remembering there, it was Poseidon or Neptune maybe? I didn’t go to college there, but use to drive through years ago.
It was called The Neptune. I always went there for late-night eats back in my college days. I believe it's gone now, sadly.
COLD CHEESE BABY!!!
I lived in Burlington the entire time I was a student at SUNY Plattsburgh. UVM tuition was way out of my range I was new to the area and was considered out of state there or UVM. The tuition was $12,000 or $30,000 respectively. The commute was more than worth the hassle and I received an amazing education in NY
Whoa wait a minute. Per year or per semester?
Per year. I'm sure those numbers have doubled at this point...at least.
Shit, I paid $6000/yr for my engineering degree in 2008. That was at a state college in Michigan.
Even in-state tuition at state universities can be as much as $30k/year now.
That's criminal
Ok this prompted me to look it up and actually it's rarely that bad for in state tuition alone, I lied my bad haha. But it's still not good.
It sounds like it is still an order of magnitude more than was I paid 15 years ago
Yes, baby boomers found another way to make money on future generations with no effort on their part. Housing being the other one.
Uvm really has lost its charm too. Burlington is kinda going downhill fast, the university is over enrolled and every aspect of the school is overcrowded which puts a huge strain on the housing market. The new administration seems to focus on maximum profit at the expense of student safety/services... not to mention department cuts with higher ups in the school getting pay raises. 30 year professors/researchers are getting payed 3x less than administrators in charge of mitigating lawsuits due to sweeping sexual assault under the carpet.
As someone who just left their position in UVM administration, pretty much can confirm. They intentionally keep the unions at a level of manageable ignorance of how their systems and policy work, there's no mechanism for pay raises, and they want people to quit versus argue or change. Good riddance.
State schools should be free for residents of that state. Full stop.
Gotta give us native some sort of advantage.
Going to SUNY Potsdam as an out of state student was cheaper than UVM’s instate tuition…. Potsdam gave me extra scholarships for both under grand AND my masters just for being from out of state. The price, location above the ADK’s, and the fact that my degree program was actually better at Potsdam sealed the deal for me
SUNY Potsdam did the same for me for my undergrad! I left there after 4 years with minimal student debt compared to some of my friends that went elsewhere.
Not sure if the SUNYs give more but I got a scholarship from NY state for being an out of state student at Clarkson.
Daughter goes there and has a merit scholarship which makes it affordable compared to some oft the other schools she was looking at, but still a lot of outbid pocket money.
Everything in VT is going up except the pay
A while back, I read that UVM ranked last for state university funding. If Vermonters want UVM to be more accessible to Vermonters, the legislature needs to pony up some funding and set some grounds for in-state enrollment percentage.
How much is a full-time semester at UVM now? I am really out of touch.
Tuition by itself is about 19k a year for instate. When you include room/board food and other expenses UVM estimates it costs an instate student 32k a year to attend UVM and an out of state student 57k a year.
There are ways to get it down like merit scholarships for instate students which can knock up to 10k off eaxh year, but it's still crazy expensive.
If they can continue to live at home and get a merit scholarship it's fine, but otherwise they're going to need to apply for every possible scholarship, do ROTC, get an athletic scholarship, or use family money to abvoid going into a shit ton of debt.
That is so depressing. Can't imagine what it will be like for my toddler someday.
The solution is simple. All you have to do is open a 529 savings account for your kid and put all of your money into that instead of paying for food and diapers.
:(
Invest in trades or other skills. College is not the only way to making good money.
Oh I totally agree
They don’t want Vermonters to go to uvm. They never have. Rather get an extra 20-25 k a head from the out of state tuition
I was accepted to UVM and it ended up being cheaper for me to go to a private college in NJ than go to UVM
UVM's tuition has exceeded the value of the education they provide for quite a while. Couldn't in good conscience send anyone there.
It's been several years, but I remember haggling to get more scholarship funds for my kid when she went to Champlain. UVM ended up being more expensive, plus they insisted on making her live on campus, even though it was a half-hour commute. Even Champlain kept trying to push the on-campus life saying she'd miss out if she wasn't living in a dorm, but I fought back. It was absurd. It came down to Portland, Maine, or Champlain having equal tuition rates, and when I pointed out that she could easily leave the state, Champlain came up with extra grants.
Sometimes being willing to haggle pays off. Not that it should be that way, but it's what it takes.
Honestly, I feel like college is a joke in general. I use nothing I learned from college for my career. Everything is thanks to Google. We live in a world where most information is free if you are willing to put in the time. If I could go back, I'd tell myself to skip college. 4 years wasted not pulling in income while putting myself in debt. May not be a popular opinion but it's how I feel.
It's really just a way to one-up your peers. I did this hard thing, so hire me.
Uvm has made some progress with “the uvm promise program” that allows in state families with an AgI lower than 60k to attend the university tuition free. According to their website this has helped nearly half of Vermont families attend the university tuition free.
It's not for Vermonters. UVM is a state university of New Jersey, not VT. St Mike's is the same except its Massachusetts, but at least St Mike's is private.
I imagine they would leave anyhow unless they land remote jobs. Pennsylvania subsidized my education, but I'm never going back there. Better to have NY subsidize your kids' educations than VT
My eldest applied last year but received more aid to attend a state university in another state. Crazy in that she graduated in the top 10 in her class and never received less than an A. Plus she took AP and college courses as a junior and senior.
It’s been this way for everyone except, “checks notes” your generation. Wake up
I went to uvm and made tons of rich friends who all live in Thailand now great place unemployed living here still great school really cares
UVM and their endowment is 750 million! And they need more money from out of state? Where's Bernie in this?! Oh wait he's sending money to Ukraine, sounds like UVM giving to out of staters instead of hl their own people
I think the richest country with the largest military in the world can manage to send equipment to a western country in a fight for its sheer existence.
What a win for the city it’ll be the day that place closes for good.
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Less-Bodybuilder3537 t1_j21w779 wrote
Tbh college is overpriced. Undergrad doesn’t really matter as much as graduate programs. My advice for anyone is to go to a cheaper school or community college for undergrad and save the $ for grad school programs at a “better” school since no one cares about a B.S anyway 🤷🏻♀️