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Originally Posted by Dadhawk
Maybe it varies by State, but what you describe is not the situation with a public (state) university in Georgia.
Below is the estimated cost for going to the University of Georgia on CollegeSimply.Com.
If you are an in-state Student from Georgia and have the appropriate GPA from high school, (3.0 or 3.3) it covers 80% to 90% of tuition as long as you maintain that GPA. I would argue that if your high school GPA is less than that, College is not a good choice for you. Keeping the GPA up in college is challenging but a 3.0 average isn't exactly knocking it out of the park these days.
That leaves the other charges. Most can be controlled and you can come well under the number shown, if you are willing to make the required sacrifices (living at home, rent books instead of buy, etc). Work part time during the school year, and full time+ in the summer and you can pay for the education out of pocket, even without your parents help. Go to Community College the first two years and cut the cost even lower.
Now, mind you, you won't be spending Spring Break in Tahiti, or even Ft. Lauderdale, and you won't be driving a late model car, but you won't be in debt either when you get out because you spent "student loans" on lifestyle.
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It seems you think that is a reasonable cost. I'd need to take a closer look at Georgia' program to evaluate it, but states in the south are generally not known for their forward thinking or generosity when it comes to education. Texas has similar sounding programs that, once you get through all the fine print, are remarkably narrow in scope.
When I started college a year's tuition and and fees were less than a thousand. Granted, that was a while back. But, even adjusted for inflation todays figures are substantially higher. My son graduated from UT Austin in 2016. His cost for five years was close to $150,000. That's not out of line with your "window" sticker. We and he borrowed probably 60% of that. That's a non-trivial amount of money. We managed it on two salaries and he works as a software engineer for MicroSoft so he is in fairly good shape. Many in the middle class are not so fortunate. They end up borrowing lots of money from (often) predatory lenders and graduate with degrees that offer only middling salary prospects. I had colleagues in their mid 40s who were borrowing money to send their kids to college while still paying off their own student loans.
The big fallacy I'm buying into there is that the primary function of education is job preparation. I would argue that nothing is further from the truth. The thing to remember is that when people complain about rise in the "cost" of education they don't realize that the cost of education has not grown, in Texas at least, even as fast as inflation. What has changed is who pays the cost. 40 years ago most folks thought that education future generations was an investment in the future of society. Today that consensus has evaporated. Our self interest is, in many cases, no longer enlightened.