W2R
Moderator Emeritus
So I was curious and looked at tuition locally. 20k/year for just tuition. Ugh!
I just looked up the in-state tuition at LSU, our flagship public university in Louisiana.
At LSU, if you live in Louisiana, have a 3.0 GPA, and got 1100 total on the SAT's, apparently you automatically get a full scholarship.
But let's assume that you are a Louisiana resident but have a worse GPA or worse SATs than that (I doubt many of us did). Anyway, in that case, instead of getting a full scholarship you pay $11,950 for an entire year. I assume they are ignoring summer school in which case the total would be $5,975 a semester.
Pulling up an inflation calculator, the equivalent (inflation adjusted amount) would have been $758/semester back in 1966 when I first started college. But then, I lived elsewhere and was working my way through school without any loans, so I stuck to lesser state universities and community colleges because they were cheaper. By doing that I got through while paying about half of that inflation adjusted amount. I would have gotten through undergrad at the present LSU tuition, adjusted for inflation, without loans, but I admit it could have taken me longer.
I never had to pay tuition past undergrad because no grad student who landed a teaching assistantship or research assistantship had to pay tuition. If I hadn't had the grades and GRE's to land an assistantship, I would have assumed that I wasn't grad school material and would have taken a different path in life. Since my area of interest was one of the STEM areas 100% of the grad students in my departmental section (17 out of 17) had assistantships. Getting an assistantship has got to be tougher for those not in STEM subjects, though.
Sorry for the rambling post! I guess the TL; DR is that one way to dodge high tuition costs is to be a Louisiana resident, get the full scholarship, and major in a STEM subject.