Costs of College

Tue, 7 Oct 2025 07:39:00 -0500

I went to a meeting with the school's college admission councilors, and I learned a lot about what colleges are charging.

I went to a meeting at Ko's school about the financial ins and outs of having a kid at college. It's unreal that my youngest is to an age where we need to think about that stuff.

I went in person. It was at the school, first thing in the morning, so I was there for dropoff anyway. I got myself in there early so I would get my share of the coffee, and I would have time to poo before the presentation started. The bathroom in their Alumni house -- which houses offices and meeting space rather than classrooms -- were pretty nice. I need to let Ko know to go there in case he's in need of an emergency daytime bowl movement.

Future scholar, pictured in 2018.
His school is full of brilliant people, and the ones who were with us from the college counciling office were clearly no exceptions. But one guy did address the people on Zoom, asking them, "Let me know if you can't hear me talking." See the logic gap there?

And I'm hoping the laptop was a general presentation one. Because if I see that you still have Edge and that Microsoft shopping bag thing on your start bar, I lose respect.

The main thing that I learned is that the prices that private colleges quote for their tuition are bullshit. And the more elite the college, the more their prices are bullshit. The average cost for a University of Chicago economics student being taught by Nobel Prize winners is roughly the same as an in-state LSU student without a scholarship of any kind.

My guess is that's for the children of rich dickheads. They can let those kids in at full fare and have those less academically qualified rich kids subsidize the cost for the kids whose academics earned their way in.

Future Brother Bluto, pictured in 2012.
Now I'm not under the illusion that Ko is headed to some elite university at a steep discount, but it will be fun to see what type of school he gets interested in. I think he'd fit best at one of those small, smart-kid colleges that you've never heard of. But I'm not going to be horribly shocked if he ends up being brother Bluto at a huge state school either.

By the way, both of the pictures used to illustrate this post are from recent posts by theskinnyonbenny's BlueSkyBot. Check it out from time to time for things that made me laugh in past decades.