Oh, yay, I would have got a few percent off the list price that I was 70% away from affording.
They could have given me that money up-front, right? Only that would have been too honest. The fact that they called a loan a "scholarship" is all you need to know about how much respect they had for kids' understanding. They rely on kids not knowing what it's like to pay off loans. Or on kids wanting to cash in on their degree after college, which I had no desire to do.
I don't get it. Unless the total cost of college was more than you're planning to make over your entire career (which I doubt) then how are you 70% away from affording it?
Being able to pay for something eventually is not a reasonable way to decide what you can afford. Try a mortgage calculator and see how much you can "afford" by that definition. It's insane. Nobody should dedicate half their life to paying off college unless the whole purpose of college for them is to land a high-paying job afterwards. $120k (fifteen years ago) might be a reasonable fee for meeting a bunch of rich people and getting insane management or banking job offers afterwards, but I wasn't interested in that.
That's the wrong calculation. What you need to compare is the total cost of college + any expected premium from that attendance, with the opportunity cost - the next best thing you could be doing with that time.
In software, especially in the US, the calculation is not obviously in favour of college attendance for motivated autodidacts: the cost of attending is very high compared with the subsidized rates in other countries, while you can get experience cheaply by building things others use, and leverage that into a startup or job offers. Meanwhile, one of the key advantages for having a degree in a software-related discipline outside the US is that it makes getting a US visa far easier. But if you're already in the US (legally etc.), that doesn't apply.
They could have given me that money up-front, right? Only that would have been too honest. The fact that they called a loan a "scholarship" is all you need to know about how much respect they had for kids' understanding. They rely on kids not knowing what it's like to pay off loans. Or on kids wanting to cash in on their degree after college, which I had no desire to do.