 College degrees are way too expensive. Let's go. What's happening guys, it's Shane. So on this channel, we've gone through some pretty crazy stuff. We've seen people that are $118,000 in debt for a useless college degree. We've gone over some of the most useless degrees imaginable. We've seen some of the secret ways that colleges screw you over. And of course we've seen you guys smash the like button so hard that you've gotten me to above 30,000 subscribers. But I think this one is gonna take the cake guys. Today, we are gonna talk about a college that costs almost $80,000 a year. No, not $80,000 for four years. $80,000 every single year. And so to graduate with a four year degree, it's $320,000. And not only am I gonna reveal what college that is to you, but we're also gonna go over some of their hilarious justifications for why that price is worth it. So you're probably wondering what college this is and I don't blame you for that. What college would have the gumption to make themselves the most expensive college in the United States of America? Is it Harvard? Is it Princeton? Is it Stanford? No, no and no. The school in question is actually going to be Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Now if you're aware of this school, you probably know that it has a huge emphasis on STEM degrees and its graduates are known to earn a lot of money. It's a small school of just under 900 students and it is the most expensive college in the United States of America. In fact, I do believe it is the most expensive college in the entire world, all things being equal. So for this last school year, 2019, 2020, the entire cost of attendance was, wait for it, $79,539 a year. That's like a Range Rover. You could buy a Range Rover for that amount of money. That's like a down payment on a really nice house. Now you might be wondering how they break this down. So it's just above $58,000 for tuition, around $10,000 for room, $8,445 for meals, $1,400 or so for personal expenses, $800 for books and supplies, and $300 to cover the student body fee. Now you might be wondering to yourself, how can Harvey Mudd justify this insane price tag? Well, PayScale, which is one of my favorite sites to do research on by the way, surveyed around 2,500 Harvey Mudd graduates and what they found was pretty interesting. Graduates reported earning $88,800 a year in their first five years after graduating, which is really good. They also reported earning over $158,000 a year mid-career pay, which is 10 years after graduating and on. That's pretty good considering the average college graduate earns around $48,400 a year in their first five years after graduating. Now another reason that you see these ridiculously high salaries is the fact that about 85% of the students that go to this school graduate with a STEM degree. So this school was really smart because they basically just focused on the degrees that are gonna end up earning their students the most money. And I always talk about how you should keep money in mind when it comes to choosing your degree. It's not the most important thing. It's not the only thing, but it is a very important aspect of it. You don't wanna just go for any STEM degree out there. There are some that are a lot better than others. Now on top of this, I think another reason why Harvey Mudd graduates earn so much money is because of the fact they live in a state where there's a very high cost of living. People in California tend to earn a lot of money and it's said that if you earn $100,000 in San Francisco, you're actually poor. So six figure salary is good most places in the United States, but in San Francisco or other really expensive cities in California, it's kinda just eh. Now additionally, Harvey Mudd does give many of their students financial aid, which does help them pay for college. So maybe this isn't such a bad deal after all, right? Not so fast. So according to the tuition tracker, which is a tool that you can use in order to see how much different colleges charge you, students whose families make more than $110,000 a year still end up paying $49,200 every single year to go to this college. So that's gonna be about $200,000 worth of debt by the time that you graduate. Now you might be thinking, okay, but that's only the rich students. Nobody cares about them. They can pay whatever they need to pay. Well, the problem here is the median annual income for all of the students that go to this university when it comes to their family is around $145,000 a year. So most of them are actually paying that. And even families in the very lowest income bracket, families that qualify as being poor are still paying around $23,800 a year. That's gonna be about $100,000 of debt after the four years. And when you count the interest, it's gonna be a lot higher than that. Now the average student in the United States is graduating with somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000 worth of debt. So that's much higher than average. Now, as we've seen when we're going over people who have a lot of debt, it can be very difficult for you to pay off the interest. In total interest paid on my loan, it's $48,379.75. That's most of all the money I've paid towards the loan has gone towards interest. So my principal isn't going down. My debt isn't going down. I'm literally just paying the interest. Now, as we've seen with people who have a lot of debt, it can be difficult for you to even pay off the interest, never mind the initial amount. Now I'm not gonna go too deep into the details when it comes to Harvey Mudd, but I think one of the main reasons why people that graduate from Harvey Mudd make so much money and specifically they emphasize certain types of STEM degrees such as technology, mathematics, and engineering. Our main programs are engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science and math. Now that's not the only reason they make more. I'm sure the connections that they get from graduating from Harvey Mudd help because it is a pretty prestigious college. But I think that accounts for the majority of the reason why they get paid so well and I just don't see it as a reason to justify going 100 to $320,000 into debt. So I guess the question here is the education that they get at this school much better. Well, I'm sure the education that they're gonna get is going to be relatively good overall. And I think when it comes to education, it is kind of what you make of it. But for what it's worth, US News ranked them number 83 in terms of best value schools. But that's okay because they're actually ranked number 23 among liberal arts colleges. Okay, that's just a subjective ranking though, right? What about the college experience because after all, college is for fun. Colleges are basically for fun. All right, so let's jump into this. Let's do some research and let's check out what the college is really like. Hi, I'm Vruin Singh. I'm a freshman at Harvey Mudd College. I'm from Tampa, Florida. And I'm thinking of studying either engineering or computer science. All right, good for you, Vruin. You're a smart man. But what is the schooling like at a college like this? Very, very intense. So there have been late nights where I'm up working on problem sets or on an essay that's due the next day. And a lot of upperclassmen, there's a lot of academic pressure just to be able to pass a class with like a B is a lot of work. And we're always taking several classes. So typical float here is like four to five classes. And freshmen, we're taking like six classes a semester. And so there's a lot of homework constantly given. There's a lot of time spent in class. And there's huge pressure just to be able to get through all the academic work that's assigned. Okay, so as you guys can see, this guy is a really smart dude, but he honestly does look like he's a little bit dead inside. Trust me, I've been there before. They're obviously working him really hard at this college. You can tell just by the way he's talking. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think you should be challenged. But what about the college experience? What is this guy doing for fun? I mean, most engineers know this, but let's be real here. There's not that many girls in engineering classes, not saying that there shouldn't be. There probably should be more. Same with computer science and a bunch of the other technology related degrees. So I'm curious to see what this guy does for fun when he's not studying. Tell me a little bit about it. Who's it made up of? What do you guys play? So I'm part of the Claremont Concert Orchestra. So it's not just Harvey Mudd. It's gonna be Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Claremont McKenna and Pitzer. So we all have this thing called joint music program. Okay, okay, now I see. So it wasn't clear here, but my man Varun just explained something really important. So he's basically doing orchestra with a joint school. So Harvey Mudd is basically just the STEM college and their sister schools that are non-STEM. I'm guessing there's like maybe a music school and like a fine arts school and all that sort of thing. So I think you see what I'm getting at here. My dude Varun is surrounded by a bunch of other dudes. So what did he do? He put himself in a position to succeed. Smart man. He's clearly a big brain individual. He's a man of focus. They're here. Anyways, all joking aside, Varun is clearly a really talented kid and maybe he could make a good YouTuber someday because he's obviously mastered the art of begging for likes. If you liked this video and you wanna learn more about top colleges, like and subscribe down below. So what can we learn from this whole situation? Well, I've talked about this a lot on the channel, but when it comes to going to an elite, really expensive school, like maybe Stanford or Princeton or Harvard, it can be worth it in very specific situations. So for instance, if you are a business major and you somehow manage to get into the Wharton School of Business, you should probably take that just because Wharton is the number one business school in the entire world. And that's just gonna open a lot of doors for you and it's just a good opportunity overall. Even though it's probably ridiculously expensive, it will likely lead to you just having a lot of opportunities down the line. But depending on which major it is and a bunch of other factors, I would say that almost all people, the majority of people would be better off just going to a community college for the first two years and then transferring to an in-state school for the last two years to get their degree. I've broken this down in other videos, why exactly that is. It's so much cheaper to do it this way. It can literally be the difference between, you know, spending like $20,000 on school and spending over $100,000. And at the end of the day, hiring managers don't care all that much what school you go to, as long as it's accredited and as long as it's not one of those scammy online schools. There are very rare circumstances where they actually will care which school you go to. So if your school has a really good alumni network, that might be something that you should look into. And then again, very rarely, if you go to a school that's like the number one business school or the number one school for this or that, then it can sometimes be worth it. But for most people, it's not gonna be worth it. I've also talked a lot on this channel about other ways that you can minimize the cost of college overall. Depending on what major you're going for, if it's one of the easier majors, you can usually do it in three years, sometimes even less than three. And so that's a lot better because you won't have to pay for that fourth year. You should always check out sites like the college scorecard as well as the tuition tracker because these will give you a lot of very important information. For one, the sticker price of a college, which is the price that they put on their website, a lot of the time it's not accurate at all. There's a bunch of additional little fees that they don't add in there. They don't even tell you about it. And then before you know it, you have to end up paying a lot more than you thought you were. On top of that, some schools have a lot more assistance than other schools. They'll offer scholarships, grants, et cetera, that will help you out tremendously. So it's a really good idea to check out the college scorecard as well as the tuition tracker because these things will help you figure out which schools are actually a good value and which ones aren't. Check out my videos right here. I made them just for you. Go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the little notification bell, and then comment down below any ideas, thoughts, comments, et cetera, that you have on this video. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.