this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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I won’t touch your statement that someone can house, feed, and transport themselves while being near a university for $833/mo because it’s so patently absurd and out of touch that I don’t even know where to start.
But addressing the costs, you also forgot that tuition is not the only cost of education. The “mandatory fees” part of the calculator you provided is using weasel words and I guarantee there are more fees than the quote. Every class will have an additional lab fee, or computer access fee, or materials fee or some such that is supposedly specific to the class (but really it’s so the administration can hide the fees through complexity). You can expect to pay about $300-800/class/semester for required access to the website you use to turn your homework in (yes, this is a thing now). You can’t buy used textbooks the way you used to be able to because the edition shuffling shenanigans are 100x more intense than they were when you were in school. Also you can expect to pay hundreds per month for a parking pass because anything near transit is out of your housing budget.
I don't see how it's patently absurd. A single room is about $400-500, less in the summer at universities because students tend to leave, so landlords give a special deal. When I went to school in the early 2010s, I paid ~$250 during the semester and <$100 in the summer. Tuition and rent have approximately doubled since then, so that tracks with what I'm seeing in actual classified ads here, and I spent like 30s looking in the middle of a semester. Oh, and this is the most expensive public school in the state, in the biggest city in the state (with perhaps the most expensive rent in the state), whereas the starting wages were for my area, which is way cheaper.
If we instead look at UVU, which is also a fine school, tuition is about $1k cheaper per semester, and it's about 45 min from UoU by train (and it has it's own commuter rail stop). That's $250/month cheaper.
I didn't go to UoU, but at least in my major (CS), fees were pretty rare. So maybe an extra $100-200 total, if anything, and the teachers were generally pretty good about providing the homework questions so you could save a bit buying used books. I generally spent <$300/semester on books, and many of those I could resell at the end to get $100-150 back. Even if I had to buy new books, that's still about $500/semester.
I have never heard about paying for access to a website. My university had a unified website for all school related stuff, so you'd either use that, the teacher's web page, or their email (usually a TA email for homework and whatnot). Paying anything extra was extremely rare, and probably against university policy.
Transit is free for students, and parking at any transit stop is also free. So as long as you live close to any transit line, you can get to school. A parking pass isn't ever necessary.
UVU has a commuter line stop right next to it, and UoU has a light rail line right next to it, with connections to the commuter line. Many students just live at home, but having a shared room is also pretty affordable (I had 5 roommates until I got married).
Things have certainly changed, but I think so many people just assume you have to get loans. That was true when I went to school too, and many of those who took crazy loans also spent a ton on housing, parking passes, etc. If you look hard enough for solutions, you'll usually find them.