Student Debt Solution: Study Overseas?

[Pyropyro]

I remembered having a thread here about how hard it is for students to work with a lot of student debt. Perhaps aspiring students can study overseas instead of in their country of origin. I got this idea when I learned that some of the students here are going to study at England. Some of the pros that I can think of.

1. Humility - Most of the people that studied overseas seem to be more humble than their local counterparts. Heck even my former boss challenged me to study abroad to help me earn 'maturity' points. Perhaps it's because they were humbled when they faced people that equal or outclass them intellectually.

2. Culture exposure - I think people become more tolerant of others when they encounter different cultures on a regular basis.

3. Money - Specially for Westerners, I think they can get more bang for their buck when they study on countries that have a lower costs of living than their home country.

4. Prestige - This is actually one of the reasons why Koreans tend to study here in my country. It seems that studying abroad gives them prestige when they return home.

Any comments?

 

[Kuu]

I agree on most of your points, except that #3 is a very large caveat. Education costs, not just living costs, can vary widely over different countries. Many cheap/free good ones (particularly in Europe) have begun to seriously limit their admissions from international students, since economic belt-tightening and rising xenophobia. Cheap and bad ones are countless, but what's their use again?

Student Debt Solution is, depending on your preferences of socio-economic ideology:
Forsake the education accreditation race entirely and self educate or
Quality public education.

Or how about regulating banks from giving out student loans like candy?
Yeah, regulating banks, like that's going to happen...

 

[Pyropyro]

Many cheap/free good ones (particularly in Europe) have begun to seriously limit their admissions from international students, since economic belt-tightening and rising xenophobia.

That's kind of sad Research and Education should never be shortchanged.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

It is cheap in Germany.

 

[Pyropyro]

It is cheap in Germany.

German universities scrap all tuition fees

Time practice speaking in German

 

[Absurdity]

4. Prestige - This is actually one of the reasons why Koreans tend to study here in my country. It seems that studying abroad gives them prestige when they return home.

I think studying overseas as an American would have near the opposite effect. In the US the only foreign universities with any sort of lay prestige are Oxford and Cambridge. To a noticeably lesser extent, anything overtly and pompishly British will also carry a comparable air (London School of Economics, London Business School, etc.). But I think you would lose out on alumni networks and recruiting events at a foreign university, and most European universities are not that much cheaper than US ones if you are attending as an international student. You'll still be tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and I am not sure if you would be able to get loans subsidized by the US federal government if you went overseas.

Oxford, on the low end, is $23k per year in tuition. Add in living expenses, airfare, etc., and the weakness of the dollar relative to the pound and you are looking at something roughly comparable to a $50k per year private school in the US, with the only real advantage being that bachelors degrees in the UK are 3 year programs vs. the 4 year programs offered in the US. Of course, if you're capable of getting into Oxford, you're also probably capable of getting into a top US school, such as an Ivy, and these institutions have enormously deep pockets (Yale has a $20 billion endowment, Harvard's is $30 billion) and a vested interest in encouraging SES diversity among their student body. If you can get in, they'll make sure you can attend.

If you're in the US and looking to maximize affordability, and you can't get into an elite private school, the best bet is to attend community college for two years and then transfer to your flagship state school for your last two years. My community college tuition was only $500 per term, vs. $23k+ per term at the private school I transferred to. I was living at home for free, and figured out pretty quick that you didn't have to buy books since they were kept on reserve at the library (which no one took advantage of), so my yearly education cost was barely over $1k for my first two years of college (versus over $60k per year for the last two). Fortunately my parents had put aside money for a college fund for me, and I received some very generous aid from my school despite my family's income bracket, and managed to graduate with under $25k of debt at very reasonable interest rates from federal loans, less than 10% the sticker price of my alma mater.