How much longer will students be willing to go away to college?

Parents Forum
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I worked my way through school. In the 9 years it took to earn my degree I commuted to a cc, dormed at a private university, commuted to another private, them commuted to the public university where I got my degree. The best college experience I had was as a commuter because it cost less so I had more money and could afford to socialize. Living on campus isn’t much fun when everyone goes out Friday through Sunday and you either can’t afford it or you’re working.

The benefits to living on campus are that it’s easier to make friends and do spur of the moment things. But commuters who are proactive can have a full social life. My son commutes to our local SUNY. We offered to pay for a dorm the first year but he didn’t want it. Living at home is saving us ~$12k/year. He works part-time during the year for spending money instead of hustling to help cover room & board expenses. He has the time and money to travel, and he and his friends do a lot of it. Commuting is a different experience than dorming, but for kids from average income families it doesn’t have to be a lower quality one.

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^ Yep, and it also depends on whether you are in a big city with access to public transportation or not as well.

There is less benefit to living “on-campus” at a city uni like NYU, for instance.

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To be sure, the cost of tuition has really outpaced real income since I was in college. With that said, I attended the UW with a combination of Pell and State need grants, work study awards and a moderate amount of loans. I was, however, in-state, so that mattered. Then again, I was the son of a single mother working as an underpaid office worker. We honestly had next to zero, but she was able to help me some because she lived in a town with a very low cost of living.

I don’t dispute your response, and perhaps it’s because I live in Seattle, but I also don’t know many parents getting by on $57k. Even $75k would be the exception, if I could think of an example. It’s not just because I’m a professional; I live in a part of Seattle where there are a lot of Boeing workers (floor and staff engineers) who make a good, steady living, but are not approaching $200k either. My oldest daughter is 3 years out of college and works on the admin. side of a large accounting firm and makes $60K +.

Of the adults who live in my area, I would say, sure, they really tend to focus on in-state schools by and large, and if their kids want more, say a regional LAC or an OOS university, the kid I’m sure winds up absorbing part of the cost. In those cases, it’s not an “all or nothing” proposition, but rather a blended approach. I’ll also agree that those kids don’t tend to go out of state for just any school - it’s going to be a high-end school typically, and as you point out, those kids can leverage more financial help from the school.

My oldest daughter’s good friend attended NYU Tisch as a dancer. Her Dad is a cop and her mother a teacher. Not big earners. She was an IB kid, and I think had pretty good grades though lackluster test scores. I don’t pretend to know how they “figured it out”, but given that she didn’t knock the ACTs out of the park, was an A- IB diploma student (admittedly many schools fawn over IB kids) and NYU’s notoriously stingy financial aid practices, I am guessing that there are loans in that young woman’s life. I don’t know how burdensome they are, but I’m guessing she has them.

That is, though, one example of a family that figured it out … cop and teacher income is nothing special, and the cost of living in the Seattle area is nuts. They put a kid through NYU, and, as I suspect it is with many, I think they did it in a combination of ways.

I’m just saying that I don’t think it’s as cleanly “all or nothing” as going to the census would make it appear.

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For Seattle, it looks like police officers earn $90K and teachers earn $60k, assuming high levels of experience. Total of $150k, which is higher than the probable Seattle median of around $77k, or probably $94K for age 45-54.

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@WesmoreDad

Yes, but “figuring it out” might mean the parents committing financial suicide. Draining the retirement fund. Taking on Parent Plus Loans for the full COA regardless of ability to repay. Credit cards.

There are limits re: what an undergrad student can borrow without a cosigner. What is it? $5500, $6500, $7500, $7500 or $27K in total, for four years?

That’s why you will read over and over again on CC, parents telling students, “No, YOU cannot borrow the money”.

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Bothell city police officer, not Seattle. Not sure whether that makes a big or any difference.

What I’ve found people outside of this area don’t tend to realize is how much housing costs here. The recent jumps aren’t the whole story. It’s been expensive to own a home here for years.

The currently-quoted median home value in the Seattle metro area is $420,200, and to be honest, even those of us living up in the more blue-collar north King County/ south Snohomish county areas see that 420 number, laugh, and say, “where the hell can you buy a house that isn’t a complete tear-down even up here for $420?” And that’s not an exaggerated response. $420k in the true Seattle metro actually wouldn’t buy you a crack house. The property on which it sits would be more valuable than that. $420k would buy you a small and rundown house up where I live too.

Now, of course, these people with a D who graduated HS in 2010 bought their house a long time ago. But it wasn’t affordable then relative to real income either.

Using your model numbers, that couple, with two other kids mind you, did in fact send their D to NYU for four years. I’m assuming their FAFSA didn’t indicate need at $150k, but I don’t know that. She may be burdened with debt, but she isn’t doing anything for a living that would suggest she’s under a lot of debt pressure either. I think if they were here, they’d tell you she got through with a variety of sources. Maybe grandparents chipped in. Who knows?

At the end of the day, you’re right: nobody bringing in $57K is sending their kids anywhere, regardless of whether they live in Seattle or Olympia.

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@Midwest67 or it might not.

It might mean they contribute $25k / year, which in many cases would involve sacrifice, but maybe they saved $100k over several years between two incomes. It might mean grandparents and aunts or uncles made some contributions. It might mean the kid was told long ago that they would need to work summers and start saving. It might mean that the kid needs to do well enough to get some merit money based on local scholarships, of which there are many, even if they are not Ivy League caliber kids.

It may be that my income level has warped my view of what real middle class is. I am surrounded at home by people who could not blithely pay private college tuition without some help from somewhere. And yet kids from our HS attend Willamette, UPS, Whitman, Lewis & Clark, OOS schools like Cal Poly SLO and Pomona, various UCs, etc.

I don’t think all of those people are maxing credit cards or committing financial suicide. I think they’re figuring it out. Some or maybe many of those kids might be absorbing some debt.

It’s basically $26k per year to attend UW if you live on campus. That school is crawling with kids from all kinds of backgrounds and areas, including where I live, and the vast majority of them are living on campus. The simple stats would not support that reality. It’s about $50k OOS.

68

There’s been some discussion of parents just figuring it out. Honestly by the time your kids are in college, most parents are too old to do major course corrections financially. If people are draining their retirement fund to pay for their kid’s college or expecting they can just work until 65 or 70 at their same salary, then those people are idiots. Of course, there’s always exceptions such as if you have a defined benefit pension to fall back on.

69

^ So long as your pension doesn’t go broke.

70

Actually, that depends on the particular personality of the student concerned and his/her home neighborhood. Several HS classmates who attended the local NYC area colleges with dorms did avail themselves with parental encouragement for the following reasons:

  1. To ameliorate the effects of college becoming HS 2.0 by living with parents.
  2. To avoid local peers/older neighbors of similar/same ages were bad influences...whether they were slacking HS/college dropouts or running with local criminal element.
  3. To be in close frequent proximity with similar/same aged youths who were more likely to be positively motivated by attending college.
  4. Learning how to cope living away from parental supervision.

Incidentally, this last bit is a major concern of a client whose older D opted to attend one of our local public colleges precisely because she’s a bit of a homebody who loves her bedroom/home arrangement which concerns the client regarding learning how to be more independent from parental supervision and to learn to cope in living in less-than-optimal living situations(i.e. dorms/sharing apt with multiple roommates).

Incidentally, none of those kids attended NYU. Instead, they attended some of the other public/private colleges including Barnard/Columbia.

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Re #1 - that’s exactly why I joined a sorority. I wanted something that differentiated college from high school. I know Greek life is not for everybody but it was a great option for me.
Re #4 - It was my parents, my control-freak father in particular, who didn’t want to cope with me being away from their supervision.
And, at the end of the day, they wanted to save a few bucks, and sending my brother and me to Hometown U did it for them.

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Many people associate mainly with people of similar SES, so even incomes that are much higher than typical (but not at the level of worrying about the NIIT or purchasing politicians) do not seem to be that way. Indeed, someone earning $150,000 may seem “poor” in a peer group where most people earn $200,000.

Washington’s in-state financial aid is such that parental income in the range of $48k to $75k resulted in an average net price around $10k, according to https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=236948 .

73

Being the first of 6 kids in a blended family to go to college, money was tight and expectations weren’t exactly sky high. Colleges not within driving distance were not even on the radar screen for me. I spent 6 years living at home, working multiple jobs, and getting a degree (going to a local private, community, and then state school). School was a means to an end, not an environment for meeting lots of people and learning about a new part of the country or world. Because I was a commuter, I wasn’t forced to make school friends, and for the most part didn’t. The memories I have are mostly of what I did with my high school friends outside of the campus environment. I didn’t have any loyalty or connection to any of the schools I attended.

My husband spent his last two years on/near campus 3+ hours from home - completely different experience. We both agreed that “going away” to school was going to be part of the college picture for D. She is only 1 hour away, but it has made all the difference - making friends, feeling connected to the school and city, and getting a lot of “adulting” lessons that arise from not being under her parents’ roof a majority of the year. We have the financial means to make this happen (single child, in-state tuition at state school, within driving distance) and are grateful for that.

Having made college decisions from both sides of the economic spectrum, I can say that money (or the lack of it) truly colors your perception of what a college experience can be.

74

Yes anyone like @WesmoreDad who thinks all families have 150k+ incomes definitely lives in a bubble.

75

^ I think all families have 150k incomes? I didn’t know that. Thanks for clarifying.

76

I think every family has 150k income and live in a bubble? I do? I didn’t realize any of that. Thanks so much for clarifying. Do you always jump to conclusions? Or is that just for me?

8-|

Good post @Undercrackers … college was a means to an end for me, too, and though commuting wasn’t an option, I’m also glad it wasn’t. Somehow between the federal and state grants, work study, what little my mom could send me and working all summer and saving every penny I could, I made it work without too much debt. That was a long time ago though.

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^Well you did seem to think any family getting by on 75k was some rare exception.

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A generation ago, college costs and living expenses relative to what a high school graduate could earn by working were lower, so that it was more possible for someone back then to work his/her way through college without parental support (parental support includes continuing living at the parents’ place at no or minimal cost).

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I grew up in a university town and of those who went to college, many went to the local school and lived at home. I happened to live in the dorm one semester because my parents moved. Most of my town friends hung out at the school a lot, eating in the Student Union, playing foosball, attending events. Usually not as freshmen, but often as sophomores or later, they moved into apartments near campus so did have the ‘college experience.’ A few joined fraternities. I think everyone was pretty much a college student, not just a commuter.

One guy I knew (because he was in my older sister’s class) was involved in student government and president of a few clubs. Kids who went to other universities often took summer courses at the local school.

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I am a teacher with 25 years experience in NJ, and I make $90. My husband’s income is $140.Nj has a high COA, but we have been very frugal, live in a small house bought (luckily) before the prices skyrocketed in the 90s. We can just pull off college for out 3 children, will the help of merit grants. Our kids choose their match schools, not reach schools.