Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy just about everything else. Money buys clothing, money buys food, money buys shelter, money buys safety -- we are run by money. After working for the summer and coming back to college, money has been a hot topic in my mind lately, and I wondered how much money I am really worth in total. You can google just about any celebrities net worth, but I wanted to figure out my own. So, after many long calculations I have come up with my number, but I want to outline the process because a lot of the numbers I found were shocking.
The average college tuition (including room and board) in the US is $30,000 a year. Given that a typical college school year is 30 weeks long (210 days) the cost of college per day is $143. For fun, if a student typically has 3 classes a day, the price per class meeting is roughly $65. Remember that the next time you are tempted to skip class.
Tuition is the big number everyone talks about, but there is still a lot that goes into being a college student that isn’t included in the $30,000 number. For example, travel to and from school for breaks and holidays costs on average $1,500.
Clothing and entertainment expenses racks up another $750, and all technology a student needs costs another $1,000.
Adding all of these numbers together, we get a combined total cost of $33,250. On average, a college student’s net worth is $33,250… a year. It takes US students an average of 5 years to graduate from an undergraduate college/university, meaning that the cost of a full college education is on average $166,250. No wonder student debt is one of the most pressing issues of voters between the age of 18-29.
All of these numbers are very startling numbers in their entirety, but they become even more astonishing when broken down into their more feasible time increments:
- Cost of college on average...
per year: $33,250
per month: $4,435
per week: $1,108
per day: $158
per hour $7
These numbers are not to shock or scare (even if they are both shocking and scary) but rather to make sure that when we college students are walking around on campus we understand the true investments we all are. So much time and effort from our families, friends, and professors goes into our education, so let’s make the most of every last one of our 850 or so days on campus.
