What makes college so expensive

The average student today will be taking out over $30,000 in loans. This is a bit frightening since the average single person household makes only $26,000 in a year. However, this doesn't need to be such a high cost. There are numerous good options for cutting school costs, that literally anybody can do.

Many students fall into the trap of feeling like if they don't go to an out of state school, or a huge university and live in dorms they're missing out. I've never lived on campus and I don't plan to. I like having my own space, and I enjoy being able to get away from the college scene when needed, but I am not everyone. When I realized that nearly half the cost of these huge universities was just the cost of the tiny cramped dorms, my mind was blown. Many students are paying upwards of $15,000 just to share a dorm room with another student. By living at home and commuting to school you're saving a significant chunk of money, or even if you HAVE to go away, finding a roommate and renting your own place would still likely save you a ton.

Obviously the regular advice of applying for scholarships and grants still applies, but realistically I know that most students don't end up winning one, because out of every couple hundred students who apply, only a couple will win anything, and at that it's usually less then a thousand.

I'm in the unfortunate situation of not qualifying for aid, but being stuck paying for college all out of my own pocket. To help you visualize this I'm going to break up the expenses. I go to a community college where the full time tuition is $2,250 for one semester. On top of the tuition is $616 worth of additional fees such as technology and activities fees. This brings my total out of pocket expense for my classes to be $2866. I'll add in that since I'm only taking 5 classes my amount of books is probably lower then the average students, but my books (by renting all used ones) came out to just over $200. So my base cost would be about $3066 a semester or $6132 a year. My Associates degree will cost me under $13,000, which I will have payed for with no loans.

By working a minimum wage job part of full time throughout college you can earn the amount of money to comfortably pay for community college by yourself. In fact each month if you budget well enough you can probably even save some money. By switching to full time over the breaks, and going to a state school to finish your bachelors, you could likely graduate with less then $10-15 K in debt.