The Cost of Graduation

The Observer reports that University is becoming ever more expensive, and that China is beginning to muscle in...

Graduates will have to work well into their thirties before they can reap the financial benefits of getting a degree, according to new research that will make many parents and teenagers question the value of university.

The spiralling costs of university education in England and Wales mean that it is only when graduates with a three-year degree turn 33 - after 12 years of full-time work - that their earnings overtake those of someone who began work at 18.

Five years ago, graduates reached that break-even point at 28.

This dramatic change is likely to make more and more A-level students ask about alternatives to university, said the author of the research, Peter Brown, director of Gabbitas Educational Consultants.

[...]

The research was issued as the Director of Admissions at Cambridge University admitted that students from abroad were turning down places there to go to less prestigious US universities with larger support packages.

Geoff Parks said: 'The market has become more and more competitive and an increasing number of those we make offers to outside the EU decline them.

We are losing some to the US universities, but now we are seeing Chinese universities [are also] more financially attractive.'

Link: The Observer | UK News | The true cost of a college education.