• The KillerFrogs

TCU 360: Tuition to exceed $50,000 moving forward

Zubaz

Member
Again - if you don't believe the cost is going up, then simply show me where all the extra money is going since they are just increasing tuition because they can...
I don't question costs are going up. I'm questioning why the costs are going up, whether we are getting a return on those increased costs that correlates to them, and who should be paying for those costs.

We're in 100% agreement that the TCU I went to from 2000-2004 is not the TCU of today. I think we disagree on whether or not that change has been for the better.
 

Eight

Member
Again - when she applied to TCU, did she apply for early decision or just general acceptance?

The percentage of students receiving merit scholarships and the size of those awards are largest during early acceptance (when you say you will come to TCU if they accept you).

If not, then she competed with about 18k students for about 800 remaining spots after those that commited to TCU were given their financial merit awards.

I can give you 100 examples of kids that went to TCU for less than UT because they applied for early decision.

early and what she was offered was a joke and we heard the same from two other families from church.

no other school of the five made her do the amount of work to get the offer that was made to her.

in the end it worked out very well for her as she liked abilene as place to live, got some great real world work experience, got her degree, go a job, and she isn't paying off debt like her brother.
 
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MinFrog

Active Member
I love TCU and am thankful for the degree and opportunity to play sports there.

But if I were betting, my son will not be attending based solely on the cost/benefit analysis alone. That is really unfortunate, but there is no reason to spend that sort of money for a small private school degree.
 

flyfishingfrog

Active Member
well to start - EVERY kid that gets a Chancellor scholarship, 80% that get a Dean's award about 60% that get a faculty (the few that only got a faculty from us and would have gotten the UT equivalent of a Dean's from UT would be able to go to UT for about $10k a year cheaper in tuition only), about 40% of those that TCU scholarship.

All of that is somewhat based on how far you are willing to live from UT. The closer you want to live to campus, rents in Austin get crazy quickly. It is not uncommon for students to spend as much as $30k/year in housing and other living expenses in Austin given the level of off campus housing required and that landlords in Austin require 12 month leases and large non-refundable deposits.

The truth is if you are looking for a bargain in education - your kid is not going to the P5 type school. Most are big schools with high costs of attendance in either tuition, living expenses or both.

The member of my family that attended Alabama lived off campus his junior and senior year - rent in Tuscaloosa is 2-3x tuition at Bama because of lack of housing off campus.
 

Eight

Member
address it by looking at how the budget is spent. colleges and cities never want to do that.

you can't undo what has already been built and you are paying off and maintaining

is the campus a much nicer place than many of us experienced while we attended tcu?

damn straight.......

would we have gotten a better education or a richer life experience though?
 
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Mean Purple

Active Member
guessing you were not an accounting major.

Where do you think any "excess" of revenue from tuition is being banked or stored in cash by TCU?

Just as a point of reference - the average cost of attendance at UT is over $70k/student - the difference is they have the land trust to literally subsidize about 70% of that cost for students thanks to the good people of the state of Texas' generosity.

We only have our own privately raised endowment to try and offset our own.
cost of attendance at UT
https://finaid.utexas.edu/costs/
 

Mean Purple

Active Member
here is a small hint - if you kids can actually get into UT without doing the ACC route - then they can apply to TCU for early decision and there is an 80% chance that if accepted, the merit scholarship would offset the tuition difference.

Unless you mean you were going to meet your kids that are going to Tx State in Austin on weekends.

But continue to complain without any understanding of the actual situation.
You work for TCU or something?
 

flyfishingfrog

Active Member
so you don't understand how the Land Trust endowment money works obviously....so this is a waste of time to explain to you.

That is the cost a student pays - not the cost to the school. That is what tuition is.

Here is a hint - it costs more than $50k/year per student to operate TCU.

It costs A LOT MORE than $10k/year per student to operate UT.

The Land Trust revenue is deducted from the total operational budget BEFORE tuition is determined for UT just like the earnings distribution from the endowment is deducted from TCU's operating budget before TCU tuition is calculated.

They just have a bigger number since the earnings from the land owned by the people of the state of Texas was gifted to them instead of being used to reduce our state's operating budget.
 

SnoSki

Full Member
Pretty much every important aspect of my life I can trace back to my decision to attend and graduate from TCU. That’s why I consider it and why I donate.
I can appreciate that rationale but I would almost guarantee I would've found just as great of a wife, just as good of friends and would've probably had the same career path had I gone to UT, OU or A&M. I'm thankful that my parents paid for my degree when it was 22.5k a year. Some of my friends weren't so lucky and are still paying off student debt 10+ years later. I can't help but wonder how much bigger of a hole they'd be in if they financed 50K a year.
 

froginmn

Full Member
Look, I see both sides of this, and I have a daughter who has applied to TCU among other schools. We've toured about five, and the costs of all of them have gone up substantially over the last few years.

We've visited private schools, and a couple of them have costs in the same neighborhood as TCU. Others, and I hope TCU, will give merit based aid to bring the costs closer to public school cost.

The school has changed greatly, for the better, but it's true that some of it seems out of hand. The dorms are unreal, the facilities are unreal, and athletics have gone from below average to way above in the last 25 years.

We've been fortunate so I can technically afford it regardless of the price, but I hope she'll get aid that brings it to a more reasonable number, if in fact that is where she wants to go.

There are always cheaper options but it depends on what you're OK with, whether you have parents helping with cost, and what you want to do in life. College in general is getting to be more of a question (my son got an auto body collision degree and is already making money two years out of HS with no debt).

But you also have to consider what it provides relative to other options, factor in that it is an experience beyond an education, and know that in some fields it does matter to have a degree from a top notch school.

Tough situation though and I assume we'll reach a point where demand ebbs and things adjust.
 

Peacefrog

Degenerate
I can appreciate that rationale but I would almost guarantee I would've found just as great of a wife, just as good of friends and would've probably had the same career path had I gone to UT, OU or A&M. I'm thankful that my parents paid for my degree when it was 22.5k a year. Some of my friends weren't so lucky and are still paying off student debt 10+ years later.
Or your life could’ve turned out terrible. You do know how this life worked out. I turned down a top 10 undergrad university and chose TCU. Would life have been better if I chose the other? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t do regrets. I know what I have and life is good. It started with that decision.

To be fair, it doesn’t mean I will push my kids toward TCU. My daughter wants to teach. Paying $300k to become a teacher is a bad value proposition. They can make their own decisions like I did. I will support them as much as possible. Where I can’t support them they will have to make up for it themselves.
 

flyfishingfrog

Active Member
May be an issue of what it is spent on, and by how much.
100% of the debate really - do we need all the stuff that TCU has now or should we just focus on competing academically and really athletically with the SFA, University of North Texas, DBU, ACU's of the world instead of the Baylor, SMU, Rice, Vandy and Wake Forests.

Lots of people think VBo went overboard in some areas or we need to reduce the degrees we offer to reduce faculty or we should increase the student:faculty ratio, etc.

but the cost of TCU is not out of line with the other private schools that are in our sphere of competition - that doesn't mean those are the schools we should be competing against for students or overall experience.
 

Eight

Member
Look, I see both sides of this, and I have a daughter who has applied to TCU among other schools. We've toured about five, and the costs of all of them have gone up substantially over the last few years.

We've visited private schools, and a couple of them have costs in the same neighborhood as TCU. Others, and I hope TCU, will give merit based aid to bring the costs closer to public school cost.

The school has changed greatly, for the better, but it's true that some of it seems out of hand. The dorms are unreal, the facilities are unreal, and athletics have gone from below average to way above in the last 25 years.

We've been fortunate so I can technically afford it regardless of the price, but I hope she'll get aid that brings it to a more reasonable number, if in fact that is where she wants to go.

There are always cheaper options but it depends on what you're OK with, whether you have parents helping with cost, and what you want to do in life. College in general is getting to be more of a question (my son got an auto body collision degree and is already making money two years out of HS with no debt).

But you also have to consider what it provides relative to other options, factor in that it is an experience beyond an education, and know that in some fields it does matter to have a degree from a top notch school.

Tough situation though and I assume we'll reach a point where demand ebbs and things adjust.

i buy the logic that you spend money on the faculty to improve the quality of the education.

i buy the logic on class size etc...but what i don't buy is the new dorms or the campus environment that in no way replicates the real world.

the only logic to me is that to sell the price tag you need the bright and shiny campus which seems contrary to the message of selling the value of the education
 

Mean Purple

Active Member
so you don't understand how the Land Trust endowment money works obviously....so this is a waste of time to explain to you.

That is the cost a student pays - not the cost to the school. That is what tuition is.

Here is a hint - it costs more than $50k/year per student to operate TCU.

It costs A LOT MORE than $10k/year per student to operate UT.

The Land Trust revenue is deducted from the total operational budget BEFORE tuition is determined for UT just like the earnings distribution from the endowment is deducted from TCU's operating budget before TCU tuition is calculated.

They just have a bigger number since the earnings from the land owned by the people of the state of Texas was gifted to them instead of being used to reduce our state's operating budget.
dude, just stop. you drug in average cost of UT. that link shows their cost of attendance. and it broke it down beyond tuition. And I know how endowments work.
Fact is, with an investment, should come a judgement of ROI.
 

Froggish

Active Member
This really just the higher education equivalent of the manufacturer suggested retail price.... with grants and scholarships very few people wil actually pay 50k
 

SnoSki

Full Member
There are always cheaper options but it depends on what you're OK with, whether you have parents helping with cost, and what you want to do in life. College in general is getting to be more of a question (my son got an auto body collision degree and is already making money two years out of HS with no debt).

But you also have to consider what it provides relative to other options, factor in that it is an experience beyond an education, and know that in some fields it does matter to have a degree from a top notch school.

Tough situation though and I assume we'll reach a point where demand ebbs and things adjust.

Good points here. A bachelor's degree isn't necessary for a lot of people. "Go to college, get a degree" is not really the universal key to a good life that it was 30 years ago.
 
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