@compiler, Thank you for the clarification. Threads are difficult to follow on my phone because I can only see a few lines at a time. If you want to quote, try using this structure without the spaces:
[ quote ]Text to quote[ /quote ]
It will be easier to see, especially with our new format.
We aren’t paying, you are, so what we might do doesn’t really matter. Can you afford $30k/year per kid or would you have to borrow all of it? How would that ~$240k impact your life?
We did not require that our kids choose the least costly school from their list of acceptances…and neither did.
Like I said…we agreed on their application list BEFORE the applications were submitted…and that included agreeing on the funding. So…in the end, our kids were free to choose to matriculate at any of the colleges to which they were accepted.
So…yes…we did pay more. Our kids didn’t even apply to any of our instate public universities.
@oldfort. The important component is that you “think” that Cornell offered a better education than the LAC. It’s all conjecture. Unless you’ve been to both you have no real way to compare. And you don’t know if one of your sons would have been a Rhodes scholar or met the next Bill Gates there either. The path not taken is not necessarily an inferior path by your choice of another. And quite frankly if son x was more excited for school x why do you care to impose your will on them, it’d not like you would have applied to a LAC with no redeeming qualities, maybe it actually didn’t help them at all.
And the life of the mind crowd always seems to presuppose other schools are life of the Neanderthal or something. Geez Louise. It’s a myth. And it depends on the lower cost option. Are Williams and Cornell different opportunities the. Southeast Michigan state U. Surely. But there are plenty much closer to the top in the low cost category.
But if you can easily afford the elite option or have great fun aid. Go elite all day 99 percent of the time.
The question around big loans is a different animal and this of course has to veer off into confirmation bias and which schools are better - ad nauseam.
@TheGreyKing And who is paying the transportation cost to the Top School when the local college is closer? Who is giving them the $$ to keep up with their “peers” socially? Who is giving them wardrobe money? Who is filling their spot back home if they are already supporting their family (some are BTW)?
It’s incredibly common for lower income first gen students to feel very out of place in these schools. Some schools have taken note and try to do their best to assist with special help offered, but most students simply feel more at home - better fit - with more true “peers” around them and in most states, the state school could also be free or low cost. It’s not always a simple choice, though personally, I think a program like Questbridge is awesome if one can get accepted.
“College is primarily about ROI and getting the right credentials and internships. If someone wants an education, a library card will give them free access to more books than they can read in a lifetime.”
This comment makes me genuinely sad. College can be intellectually electrifying, interpersonally dynamic, concept-introducing, confidence-building, and genuinely life-changing. So much is lost if we send our children off to college thinking of it as only a means to credentials, connections, and textbooks.
It’s a luxury to be able to send our kids to college for “the life of the mind.” Most people can’t afford to do that.
@Creekland, I’ve known low income students whose colleges paid for them to attend conferences related to their fields. It sounds wonderful. They paid for hotel rooms, airfare, and ground transportatation, and reimbursed the students for food. Unfortunately, when students can’t pay more than a handful of dollars out of pocket for food per day, there’s not much to reimburse.
There’s no universally correct answer to this question, because every family’s situation is different. Here’re some rules that I think make sense. Please feel free to add or criticize.
Rule #1: If you’re qualified and lucky enough to get a full ride (or something close to it) at an elite college, it’s probably the best deal, even if you have to borrow to cover some residue expenses.
Rule #2: If you have to borrow a large amount of money (say in six figures) to attend a college, the college is NOT a good financial fit for you. The outcome is uncertain enough that borrowing such a large amount is not a good idea.
Rule #3: If you have to borrow a significant amount of money that exceeds the average potential annual salary of a new graduate in your major from your college, you should be really concerned. The college may not be a good financial fit. There’re plenty of students who have got into trouble with loans of that size.
Rule #4: If you don’t have to borrow significant amount of money, or no money at all, but your family has to dip significantly into their savings, then you need to look at the return on that money for your major from that more expensive college compared to the cheaper alternatives.
Rule #5: There’s no rule if your family can easily spare $300k. Pick the best school and do whatever you want.
@Creekland - Interesting questions. Your points seem very valid.
Yes, the need to support a family would not be addressed through any financial aid package, so that would indeed be something that might affect someone’s choice whether to go away to college. There are always kids who will face tough choices when considering their families’ situations. I know someone who chose a commuter public above a tippy-top to stay at home with his mom who was having health problems, after his dad died just before he had to choose a college, and his mom would have been alone. It did not sound like the OP was in a special situation like that, or a financially aided student living in poverty, though— it sounded like a choice between going full pay public or full pay private (?).
The only easy answer to your (Creekland’s) questions is transportation. That is part of the aid package. For many aided students, the college pays the transportation costs twice a semester (start and end of the semester). A lot of the kids go home with friends who live nearby for Thanksgiving and other shorter breaks, although the dorms and dining halls remain open.
In my kid’s entry (dorm group) alone, there was a tremendous range of wealth from very poor to crazy rich, and lots in the middle (working class to professional class), and close friendships cut across all these levels, so the diversity was experienced in real life and not just on paper.
Regardless of income, the kids pretty much all wore t-shirts and sweatshirts and jeans, although there were occasional semi-formal parties. My kid wore the same outfit to each of those, but he’s a boy, so maybe wardrobe is less of a thing for boys. A published interview with a financial aid officer noted that the college will buy you one suit for interviews if you are on aid. Most events on campus were free, and the financial aid plan is pointedly designed with typical college kid spending needs in mind (as per the financial aid office). For S’s friends, the college has paid for opportunities like studying abroad, overnight trips to major cities to look at different types of careers, music lessons, and skiing and snowboarding lessons. Colleges are always trying to be increasingly sensitive to the needs of lower income students. For example, Princeton increases financial aid for juniors and seniors so that they can afford to join an eating club just like their wealthier peers. I do think that colleges still have work to do in this area, but listening to the efforts that colleges are making to recruit and support low income students, I think it is a major priority for top colleges now.
A top college’s diversity is part of the educational experience. It is pretty cool to be surrounded by people from all around the nation and world, from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, races, interests, etc.
What you want the situation to be is different from what the situation actually is for most potential college students and their families. Cost and financial ROI are at the top of the list of considerations when choosing a college and major for most students, because of the high cost of college and competitiveness of the job market. Students from supportive high SES families do have the luxury of choosing college and major with greater concern for life of the mind, knowing that they will not feel heavy debt pressure and have significant advantages in parental support and connections when they need to find a job at graduation.
So, for those who want college to be more of life of the mind (versus just pre-professional preparation), what is the solution to reduce the cost and financial ROI pressure that most potential college students and their families face?
I don’t buy the idea: intellectually electrifying, whatever that means, requires you to sit in a brick and mortar classroom and have professors lecture to you fifteen hours a week. There are so many other ways to learn, when almost all human knowledge is on the Web or available at a library or Amazon. If you didn’t need the credentials, or career services, you don’t need a traditional undergrad college to experience the “life of the mind”, which in many ways is stuck in how education operated in the horse and buggy era.
@roethlisburger Your view is fine for you to hold, just don’t expect everyone to share your beliefs. The vast majority of kids I know who went to college loved their experience - far more than the academics and certainly not meaning parties. It’s why many parents want their kids to go, so they can have as meaningful of an experience.
My youngest lad was unsure about going - now loves that he did. His degree? Eh, yeah that too. My other two loved it from the anticipation prior to going. Neither one will actually use their degree except as a piece of paper or qualification to get a job (or into med school). We’re perfectly ok with that. All three are doing just fine in life post graduation. They may have done fine post graduation without college too, of course, but they’d have missed out on a lot - and the one wouldn’t be in med school now, of course.
I think most of us grew up with Consumer Reports. Many of us look at value in terms of not only the experience/product, but also in comparison to other experiences/products. Using our individual values, bias and history, we make a choice on whether the expense is worth it. Outcomes will vary.
Some will choose the expensive route, others won’t. Hopefully, we don’t judge each other harshly.
Things have changed since we went to college. Sharing personal anecdotes, especially recent ones, can help us understand trends and changes.
Oh and:
“I don’t buy the idea: intellectually electrifying, whatever that means, requires you to sit in a brick and mortar classroom and have professors lecture to you fifteen hours a week. There are so many other ways to learn, when almost all human knowledge is on the Web or available at a library or Amazon.”
Wow. Fortunately, college is about more than sitting in a classroom and being lectured! And, how sad to send a child to college with the message that its purpose is limited to simply gaining knowledge that can be found in books and online.
The actual lived experience of intercollegiate team competition (debate, robotics, sports, quiz bowl, whatever) can be unparalleled. Working on air or behind the scenes at the college television channel or radio station – you can’t “learn” that experience via the internet or at the library. Personally identifying a need and then founding a committee that fundamentally changes your institution and its students – such an experience is deeply, personally impactful. Joining clubs and attending poetry slams and taking weekend trips with friends (to their homes or elsewhere) and watching campus bands and talent shows and joining an outdoors recreation group, and, and! Getting the chance to better understand and appreciate others through years of mandatory group projects – and learning how to collaborate and stay on task despite the occasional disruptive or dysfunctional personality – critical skills like these can be learned in the low-stakes college environment or later, in the high-stakes employment world. Learning to balance tough academics and a campus job, finding incredible mentors and also dealing with frustrating and unfair professors or administrators… When many folks look back on college, the lectures and books are but a small part of their profound growth experience.
College is, ideally, about surviving and ultimately thriving in an environment filled with potential mentors and intellectual peers (often for the first time in one’s life.)
To approach college with the idea that it cannot be intellectually electrifying, interpersonally dynamic, concept-introducing, confidence-building, and genuinely life-changing would be a terrible mistake, and probably self-fulfilling.
@privatebanker “The path not taken is not necessarily an inferior path by your choice of another.”
Exactly, there is no way of knowing if a particular choice was the better or the best, it is as you say the confirmation bias working. There about 30-40 unconscious biases we have and confirmation is maybe one of the larger ones. That is why parents always that their choice worked out, because that’s their confirmation bias, and so without even knowing it they will say great things about the college they chose (this applies of course to things beyond college). But the good thing about the confirmation bias is that it prevents revisiting of decisions, which is one of the ways the mind works to move on.
“College is, ideally, about surviving and ultimately thriving in an environment filled with potential mentors and intellectual peers (often for the first time in one’s life.)”
But that’s an ideal that’s held by very few people, in terms of percentages. People go to college for different reasons, that’s a fact, and most go for career reasons, not for any life-changing moment. In his book “Excellent Sheep”, William Deresiewicz (professor of English at Yale) said students went through the motions and only learned how to get a job on Wall Street.
"It is pretty cool to be surrounded by people from all around the nation and world, from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, races, interests, etc. "
It may be cool but only if you can afford it, most people that choose colleges do not cite diversity as a main reason to attend, in fact it’s not even in the top-10. Even if you can afford it, it’s not in the top-10. Academic reputation, career opportunities, grad school placement are far more important than diversity.
@88jm19 so does that include choosing your college student’s major?
Folks who have been around for a while know my story. One of my kids was a music performance major (bachelors and masters). The other was an engineering major.
Guess which one is self supporting in their undergrad field of study? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not the engineering major.
The engineering major finished the degree, but decided that engineering wasn’t her cup of tea. She is heading in a different direction.
The music major never changed his mind. He knew he wanted to major in music when he was 10 years old…and he worked hard to get there. He is a freelance musician, and is self supporting. He does lots of different music related things. Some folks here would say he isn’t successful or doesn’t have a ROI that matches his costs to attend college. Some folks wouldn’t pay for a student to major in music at an expensive private university.
@CardinalBobcat - Love post #132!
Yes, it can be!
As a parent, I thrill to the calls from college when my kid is overflowing with enthusiasm about an idea he discussed in class or with a professor or friends out of class, or as we listen as he works his way through arguments for different positions on different issues, etc. I hope college will continue to be a time of studying and talking about all types of subjects, just because they are interesting to ponder.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” One never knows when something you once studied in history or political science or economics or biology will help you interpret a current situation and make good choices about it, to the benefit of the world.
Moreover, a world that becomes so utilitarian and outcomes-oriented that no one thinks there is value to music, art, poetry, philosophy, abstract mathematics or physics, etc., etc., is a world not worth living in.
@TheGreyKing Ditto. I think my favorite call came from my lad who wasn’t sure he wanted to attend college, right after he had a class taught by Elie Wiesel. He had read, Night, in high school and found it thought provoking, but having the class opened his mind to more than reading a book ever could. I think it helps students realize the world is small and one person can make a huge difference.
It wasn’t the first time my lad had seen someone of that stature IRL. We had taken him to see Paul Rusesabagina (Hotel Rwanda) in his young youth when PR spoke at the high school where I worked, but there’s still something different about being out on your own and choosing something yourself - then pondering how to let that affect your life. Since he was in college, it was still easy to let it affect the direction of his life more than just his thoughts. It also wasn’t the “only” time he called to share something similar. There were quite a few moments my lads called to share - still are with my med school boy.
Most (all?) colleges have various events students can choose to engage in. If they solely go for the degree they are missing out on a ton right at their fingertips and usually free or low cost.
No, of course not.
What it means is that we talked with our children about expectations. We expected our children to make choices and apply themselves (major/school/spending and work habits) with the goal of being able to pay their own way post-graduation. We talked with them a lot. We talked about being able to live at home for a limited time rent-free, but the expectation was they would be working and helping out around the house. There would be curfews and if they abused the arrangement, we would charge them rent. If you knew my kids, you would think we didn’t need to communicate these expectations, but I tend to be an over-communicator. Lol.
We talked extensively about careers and work/life balance and choices. My husband and I retired early so we have spent more time with our kids than most parents…our story is kind of interesting and unusual. But regardless, the point is we tried to provide guidance. We shared our experiences. We talked about extended family choices. We listened to what our kids want. They were free to make choices within reason. (By that we gave them a free ride up to the cost of U of I. They could go and major in anything they wanted up to that amount. Things were negotiable, but it would have to be discussed…no blank check, so to speak.)
I believe in asking a young adult to make choices adult choices.
@thumper1 I have to run, but will try to finish my response to you when I have time.
Here’s an idea if you have the money. Tell your kids you will pay a maximum of $X dollars for undergrad. If they graduate at a school that costs less than that, after aid, they get the difference back as a college graduation gift. Let them make the adult decisions about whether the more expensive school is worth the extra expense to them. That should be confidence-building.