Brent P
$18k if you finish in three years. I think mine cost a little less than $3.5k-yr.
Because it's cheap debt. And because you're always right near clbuttes, and the chow gets fixed for you so you don't have to screw around with that stuff. And, by getting done with school early, you have a whole year of earnings that your clbuttmates don't. IIRC, the first year I was working, I paid back all of my college room and board in a little over 5 months. (Gross income.)
Yeah, you have to put up with dorm life for three years. Some people do it by *choice*! LOL.
AND as long as tuition rises at a rate greater than loan rates, you're smarter taking the loans so you can be done sooner, if you plan on being done sooner.
Car insurance for me in those days would have been somewhere near $1200-yr, due to being young, male and unmarried, and being in school in the town I was in. That drops room and board down to about $250-mo. A damn good deal, even then - you couldn't get a room in a house for under $200 then, and food and utilities and gas would have been way more than $50-month.
I priced it both ways. Living in the dorms without a car and getting done sooner was way cheaper, even with student loans and the interest, than trying to pay-as-you-go. And I wouldn't have found a part-time job to make enough to pay the full cost of school.
E.P.
