Thoughts on College and Rising Tuition?

[Secant]

What to spend money on besides college? Well, our retirement, my parents retirement (they aren’t fiscally responsible), save to help on weddings or seminary, save for emergencies (legal trouble, sickness, etc), and charity. Honestly, Xantippe, your requirements aren’t bad, but I prefer my method because I feel I appreciated my degree more for the work I put into it than I would have with my parents help/subsidy and I saw so many kids tricking their parents and not getting the degree. Not all, of course and I respect the decision, but to answer the original question, I feel that telling kids to work their way(with grades) gets them to college for cheap/free and helps them get good, financially sound degrees. If they can’t likely a trade school is more their style. I certainly will be encouraging any sons I might one day have for seminary first and college or trade schools second. My daughter will get similar encouragement, skipping the seminary of course.

 

[pensmama87]

Is there a point to filing the FAFSA if you know that, combined with academic scholarships and the savings you have, you will be able to cover college expenses? My in-laws knew they made too much money for my husband to qualify for a Pell grant, and they didn’t want him to take out student loans, so they just never did one. (My husband also got his MA paid for. I was not so smart, though I’m using my experience to try and insist to my sister that she get hers paid for if she goes that route - we’ll see if she listens or not.)

I got a small work-study award and loans as part of my “need-based aid.” I did get a lot of scholarships, but if I hadn’t needed the loans, I don’t understand why the FAFSA would have been necessary (I got hired as an RA so even the work-study thing didn’t apply after the first year.)

 

[Xantippe]

Is there a point to filing the FAFSA if you know that, combined with academic scholarships and the savings you have, you will be able to cover college expenses? My in-laws knew they made too much money for my husband to qualify for a Pell grant, and they didn’t want him to take out student loans, so they just never did one. (My husband also got his MA paid for. I was not so smart, though I’m using my experience to try and insist to my sister that she get hers paid for if she goes that route - we’ll see if she listens or not.)

I got a small work-study award and loans as part of my “need-based aid.” I did get a lot of scholarships, but if I hadn’t needed the loans, I don’t understand why the FAFSA would have been necessary (I got hired as an RA so even the work-study thing didn’t apply after the first year.)

It can’t hurt to do it.

A number of the top US universities are surprisingly generous with funds.

“In 2001, Princeton became the first university to offer every aid recipient a financial aid package that replaces loans with grant aid (scholarships) that students do not pay back.”

princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/

Harvard says that 20% of their students pay nothing and that 100% of their students can graduate debt free.

college.harvard.edu/financial-aid

 

[Xantippe]

What to spend money on besides college? Well, our retirement, my parents retirement (they aren’t fiscally responsible),

**Wait a sec–you’d penalize your hard-working kids in order to fund your irresponsible parents. ??? I would so not do that.
**

save to help on weddings or seminary, save for emergencies (legal trouble, sickness, etc), and charity.

**Prioritizing weddings over a daughter’s education sounds iffy to me.

Also, kids might be a little bitter about charitable giving if they see you giving lavishly to charity but not providing for their education. **

Honestly, Xantippe, your requirements aren’t bad, but I prefer my method because I feel I appreciated my degree more for the work I put into it than I would have with my parents help/subsidy and I saw so many kids tricking their parents and not getting the degree.

**I don’t think a 4.0 student turns into a 2.0 student overnight. Plus, what is so difficult about asking the kid for official transcripts of grades?

I had very good financial aid from a private college, lots of help from my parents in the last year, and also put my own summer paychecks into college expenses (I wrote a whopping big check out of my account the summer before my last year) and I appreciated my education plenty and kept up a strong grade point average in a double major. I personally didn’t see other kids partying and wasting their parents’ money because I didn’t spend any time partying and wasting my parents’ money. **

Not all, of course and I respect the decision, but to answer the original question, I feel that telling kids to work their way(with grades) gets them to college for cheap/free and helps them get good, financially sound degrees. If they can’t likely a trade school is more their style. I certainly will be encouraging any sons I might one day have for seminary first and college or trade schools second. My daughter will get similar encouragement, skipping the seminary of course.

 

[pensmama87]

It can’t hurt to do it.

A number of the top US universities are surprisingly generous with funds.

“In 2001, Princeton became the first university to offer every aid recipient a financial aid package that replaces loans with grant aid (scholarships) that students do not pay back.”

princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/

Harvard says that 20% of their students pay nothing and that 100% of their students can graduate debt free.

college.harvard.edu/financial-aid

Wow, that’s interesting.

Maybe I will have to ask my husband more about this. He and I got the same scholarship package (which was half our tuition) from the college, so IMO that’s pretty generous as far as it goes, but it wasn’t “need-based aid.”

It’d be interesting to see if that’s a trend that continues. Our school makes an effort to at least appear to care about rising costs, so I wonder what they might do in the future (we like the school well enough to at least hope that we could afford to send our kids there if they’d like to go, providing they could get the same scholarship help we got).

 

[Xantippe]

Wow, that’s interesting.

Maybe I will have to ask my husband more about this. He and I got the same scholarship package (which was half our tuition) from the college, so IMO that’s pretty generous as far as it goes, but it wasn’t “need-based aid.”

It’d be interesting to see if that’s a trend that continues. Our school makes an effort to at least appear to care about rising costs, so I wonder what they might do in the future (we like the school well enough to at least hope that we could afford to send our kids there if they’d like to go, providing they could get the same scholarship help we got).

Yeah–people who aren’t into this stuff think that the Ivy League is expensive, whereas in actuality, it’s one one of the cheapest ways to go for middle class families. It helps a lot that the elite schools have barrels of money. (Harvard has a $30 billion endowment. Yale has $21 billion.)

What makes it very difficult for parents and prospective students is that the colleges obfuscate their actual prices. It’s like buying a car or an airline ticket–everybody pays a different price.

 

[Allegra]

I went to college to become a teacher. I had scholarships that covered most of my tuition and I worked three jobs to pay my rest and living expenses. I took out less than $9000 in loans because my tuition rose over $1500 per semester while I was enrolled there and my scholarship no longer covered the whole amount. Nearly a decade later, I still have a minor monthly loan payment (>$100 per month) and I make a living wage for a single person with no children.

Meanwhile, my sister refused to even darken the doorstep of the community college. Why they even gave her a HS diploma, I have no idea. The high school hadn’t seen her a combined ten days after Christmas of her senior year. She “ran away” from home two days after her 18th birthday because my mom wouldn’t let her boyfriend spend the night. She got a job at a gas station. She is now the general manager of that gas station, has no loans, and with her bonuses, make almost twice my income.

So, take that for what it’s worth.

PS- I really love my job and I would not give it up to work in a gas station no matter how much more I got paid.

 

[CradleJourney]

What makes it very difficult for parents and prospective students is that the colleges obfuscate their actual prices. It’s like buying a car or an airline ticket–everybody pays a different price.

Very, very true.

What I tell parents who haven’t gone through the process yet is to completely disregard the “price”. Instead pick a mix of five to eight colleges that your student is willing to attend and will get them the degree in the field they need to do what they want to do. Apply to all of them, fill out the FAFSA (no matter what - you could qualify for state grant money that you lose out on if you don’t file by a certain date, as well as it can be used to qualify for work/study and aid from the school as well as the federal government), and wait for the aid packages to arrive. While waiting, take careful stock of your resources and determine what you / your student can afford out of pocket, and what can be earned over summer break. Then compare that number to what the final number is in the aid packages (make sure it includes all “fees” and clearly shows what is owed - not what they are covering with loans). The college (or if you’re lucky colleges) that has a final number at or below your number that you can pay is the winner. I know I was shocked with my oldest at how huge a difference those final numbers were - all based on the same FAFSA and same academic performance.

Never understood families that have their kid pick out a college and they get all gung-ho about that one school before they get their aid package - or worse, only apply / get accepted to that one school and then have to figure out how to pay for it once the bill arrives. Just like I’ve never understood families that insist that public school is so much cheaper than private school. (My oldest two attend /attended private colleges that on paper were ridiculously expensive - but in both situations, the actual cost ended up coming in thousands of dollars less than the public schools. And tens of thousands less than the ‘sticker price’ by the time all the scholarships, grants, and work/study were put in.)

 

[Xantippe]

Never understood families that have their kid pick out a college and they get all gung-ho about that one school before they get their aid package - or worse, only apply / get accepted to that one school and then have to figure out how to pay for it once the bill arrives. Just like I’ve never understood families that insist that public school is so much cheaper than private school. (My oldest two attend /attended private colleges that on paper were ridiculously expensive - but in both situations, the actual cost ended up coming in thousands of dollars less than the public schools. And tens of thousands less than the ‘sticker price’ by the time all the scholarships, grants, and work/study were put in.)

Public school might be less expensive if your family is well-off enough not to get any financial aid at a private school.

Complicated!

 

[Cricket2]

I went to college to become a teacher. I had scholarships that covered most of my tuition and I worked three jobs to pay my rest and living expenses. I took out less than $9000 in loans because my tuition rose over $1500 per semester while I was enrolled there and my scholarship no longer covered the whole amount. Nearly a decade later, I still have a minor monthly loan payment (>$100 per month) and I make a living wage for a single person with no children.

Meanwhile, my sister refused to even darken the doorstep of the community college. Why they even gave her a HS diploma, I have no idea. The high school hadn’t seen her a combined ten days after Christmas of her senior year. She “ran away” from home two days after her 18th birthday because my mom wouldn’t let her boyfriend spend the night. She got a job at a gas station. She is now the general manager of that gas station, has no loans, and with her bonuses, make almost twice my income.

So, take that for what it’s worth.

PS- I really love my job and I would not give it up to work in a gas station no matter how much more I got paid.

This is a reality folks are going to have to wake up too. My sister left home early and spent her entire life waiting tables and working on ranches. She always made more than I did with my degree. My brother got his HS Diploma and earned more than me and was promoted more often. He took a demotion because he couldn’t stand the politics related to being a manager. He still continues to make a decent living.

None of us are rich, my sister is now disabled, and I take care of her. If I had it to do over I would not go to college. I would rather head for a trade school or certificate program. Degrees do not generally result in high wages. Only 2% of the populace make 250K or more a year. The rest of us, degree or not, make an average of 40K. If you are trying to raise a family that is not a lot of money.

Add paying off 4 - 6 years of loans and it really boils down to very little at all. We need to rethink our educational practices and priorities in this country. It has turned into a business versus true learning, and it helps very few of us really get ahead. Most of what I learned, including my Bachelors and Masters Degree, I could have taught myself. Higher Ed has become a farce in many ways and that should never be true.

 

[Xantippe]

None of us are rich, my sister is now disabled, and I take care of her. If I had it to do over I would not go to college. I would rather head for a trade school or certificate program. Degrees do not generally result in high wages. Only 2% of the populace make 250K or more a year. The rest of us, degree or not, make an average of 40K. If you are trying to raise a family that is not a lot of money.

$250k is setting the bar a bit high for success, I think. People making half that do OK, to put it mildly (at least outside the NE).

I like the ratio I mentioned upthread of borrowing no more for undergraduate than 1/2 of your expected starting annual income. So, if you expect to make $40k, $20k would be the limit. I think I might go to 1X annual income for doctors, because they have such good job security, but not much more than that. (I have a relative who borrowed $60+K for medical school and then bailed on medical school before graduating–oh, the pain.)

I remember hearing a case on the Dave Ramsey show a few years back where a social worker had borrowed $80k to obtain a $40k a year job. That was a bad one.

 

[CradleJourney]

Public school might be less expensive if your family is well-off enough not to get any financial aid at a private school.

Complicated!

They could be - or not. A private schools may offer more in academic and activity scholarships than a public school, which do not take family income into consideration. I’m just saying that no one should shut out either option but be open to the possibility of either (assuming they offer comparable education results).