Exactly. Don’t underestimate the power of starting off with no student debt. My in-laws paid for my spouse’s schooling and my parents paid for mine. Through grad school for both. They also helped each of us with first down payment. That allowed us to sell our first place, still no debt. And then buy a place by 30 that we otherwise would never have afforded. If they hadn’t paid for our schooling, we’d still be paying our student debt and wouldn’t be in position of being able to pay for our kids. There is no obligation, but to me, it’s what my parents set me up for and what I work for.
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If you want grandchildren…
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In some states, but unfortunately not in all.
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“I’ll pay for a good enough school"
But what does this mean? Does it mean:
A) That the parents won’t pay for any college, unless it is “good enough”?
B) The parents won’t pay more than $X (which is enough for some colleges, such as the state flagship) unless they get into a “good enough” school, in which case they will pay more.
I have a major problem with A, and really no problem with B.
As a volunteer college coach, I see many families in category B. The parents are often first generation immigrants who emphasize education but haven’t saved up the roughly $400K that will be required for some private colleges. But if their child gets into a top-N college, they will make the sacrifices needed to pay for that college. In the healthy families, the children understand that their parents love remains the same regardless of where they are admitted.
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These days 4 years of college at many privates or top public (OOS) cost more than we paid for a house with 30 years mortgage…
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My take on it was the parents were saying they would only pay if the kid got into a school at some level they thought was good enough , that implies something like a highly competitive/elite schools.
Sometimes an elite school can make sense, if a kid is really, really bright and driven in science or tech, it might make sense to go to a school like MIT or CalTech because it might be a good fit for the kid, where they fit in and feel comfortable. The thing about the elite schools is there are advantages to going there, when getting that first job it can help (it shouldn’t, but there are people out there enamored of the name schools) and when you go to those places there still are the old school ties, or if you want to do certain things like work for Goldman Sachs or the like, it can be a perquisite of getting in there as an investment banker (or was, even old Goldman has changed a bit). People with parents who came from certain countries/cultures will have the view of the need to get into a top school because in their home country, where you go to college is huge in terms of your future track there.
My take? That is a ridiculous notion. For most things it won’t matter where you go if the school is accredited and is teaching what are pretty much standard curricula, then it will be largely a function of what the kid does. Things like fit are important, too, IMO. Once in the job world it won’t matter (if hiring managers are looking at where someone went to school when they have been working 5, 10 years, they shouldn’t be a hiring manager).If kids want to get into academia, the differentiation there is in grad school usually, so you can go to let’s say a state school, get your UG degree doing well, then apply to let’s say PHd program in a strong program in their field.
And yes, parents need to be realistic with their kids. There is nothing wrong with applying to schools to see if you get in, you never know how financial aid will go, it could be it ends up affordable and though it shouldn’t, the kid may take some pride in that, that they were good enough to get into X, it is a kind of measuring post.
This comes up in the music major forum and it is always a tough one. If a kid has their heart set into becoming a member of a major orchestra or become a soloist, the level of competition is so high that to be blunt, they need to be playing at the level that one of the top conservatories would require. That said, those schools outside one that is free and another that is tuition free are really expensive and generally aren’t that great with aid IME. But if the kid auditions and can get into a major program, there are music performance programs at other schools that have good teachers and where likely it would be affordable (taking out massive loans to go to college makes me cringe in general; doing it with music school is downright suicidal, given how hard it is to establish a career in music, no matter what school you go to. ) and that is what I advise, see if they are good enough to get into a top program but be wise with cost and such and find one that is good enough in terms of teaching.
Me, I am of the school of thought that while it is important that parents be realistic about how much they can pay and should stick to that, by the time they are ready to go to college the kid should be determining their future, deciding where they want to go, to me parents role is to give advice if asked, to help the kid work through their feelings but let them do the figuring. A school we might want them to go to might not be a fit for them and yes, red flags can come up if it is a school where it seems like they want to go there because it’s let’s say a party school and parents still have rights there; it is of course a delicate balance.
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There’s also no law that says kids have to choose the college path at all. It rarely gets discussed on here (given the nature of this community) that there are many lucrative career paths that don’t require a college degree. Electricians, plumbers, linemen/women, carpenters, drywall installers, mechanics, landscapers. All of these jobs are in high demand in most places. People who can do these jobs well can name their price (and they do). A landscaper friend that works with my husband just built his second million-dollar+ beach home. He didn’t go to college but started out working for his dad’s landscaping business and eventually took over.
We also don’t talk about how skilled professionals who can do these jobs are dying out because the mindset over the past few decades has switched to “college or bust”. High schools promote colleges but few steer kids towards these careers. There are many stories of floundering kids who are forced into 4-year colleges by their parents, and they continue to struggle. Maybe some of these kids would thrive on a different career path, had it been offered to them as an option.
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I think what’s missing is 99% of the time here that it is often cheaper. Over and over and over again the high income, don’t want to pay posters shill the same 5 schools. But if you are low income, those “lottery” schools are cheaper than your instate options. I was FGLI - MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell were all cheaper than UCLA and Berkeley. USC and Harvey Mudd were insanely cheaper. I wish there were more people actually helping kids who are low income as I don’t think most posters have any idea other than they didn’t want to pay for college.
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But given the topic, this isn’t the case being argued here.
Here it’s - I’ll pay x $ for generic school but if it’s Ivy or Stanford, I’ll pay more or I’ll figure it out even if I don’t have the means and Stanford isn’t giving me enough to meet my means.
This is the Comfort Inn customer giving up their means to stay at the Ritz Carlton whereas the Ritz Carlton isn’t giving them a discount large enough to hit their reality.
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We have a slightly different take on this question. First, we would be happy to pay for a school that has a good reputation, even if it is not highly ranked. We would not, however, be willing to pay for a marginal college that is little better than a decent public high school. We’ll pay for Michigan State, or even Grand Valley State (whose students have surprisingly good outcomes in Michigan), but not SE Northern Monroe County Junior College.
Second, we are happy to pay for majors that result in good paying jobs like engineering, nursing, business, etc. We are also willing to pay for majors that might require an advanced degree for a meaningful career. We would not pay, however, for a degree that does not result in a job outside of academia, like sociology or anthropology. We absolutely would not pay for a “studies” degree (women’s studies, LGBTQ studies, African American studies, etc., etc.) that are more focused on activism than education. (I know many here will take issue with this position; let’s agree to disagree).
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That’s fair.
So is it fair to say you are looking at this from an ROI perspective? (Which is not the same as “name brand”.)
I don’t get this thinking.
Sometimes knowing that at age 17 our kids aren’t fully baked is a good thing. The most gifted CEO I ever worked for majored in Renaissance Studies. To state that he was a Renaissance man is not an overstatement. Brilliant, erudite, exceptional leader. The most gifted investor I’ve ever met (heads a family office with billions under management) was a Latin American Studies major. One of the first investors to recognize Brazil as an “about to explode economy”-- he was able to read the Portuguese and Spanish financial press at a time when the world was not paying attention and therefore the FT and WSJ were not covering their financial news.
Med schools and Business Schools are filled with “Studies” majors who have learned to connect the dots in an inter-disciplinary field…
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One thing that I think UK unis do a lot better than US ones is emphasize “transferable skills” in their degrees.
For example (disclosure, I’ve used google to do this research for me), a history major:
A history degree from a UK university can provide a range of transferable skills that are valuable to employers:
- Critical thinking: The ability to think objectively, analyze sources, and evaluate evidence
- Research: The ability to conduct detailed research, investigate, and gather material
- Communication: The ability to express ideas clearly and persuasively in writing and orally
- Problem solving: The ability to solve problems and think creatively
- Time management: The ability to manage time and priorities effectively
- Attention to detail: The ability to pay close attention to detail
- Flexibility: The ability to adapt and work iteratively
- Cultural knowledge: The ability to understand foreign cultures and new ideas
- Quantitative skills: The ability to analyze data and use quantitative skills
- Initiative: The ability to use initiative to drive research forward
These skills can be applied to a wide range of careers, including law, politics, journalism, academia, government, non-governmental organizations, museums, archival work, and heritage organizations
in the US it seems to be “do you plan to teach history at school or become an academic?”
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There are some interesting spins on this topic. We gave our first two kids the option to apply ED to their top choice. We budgeted for school and they had worked for competitive grades / scores. Both were highly selective and likely full pay.$75k We then did pretty deep research on buyers/seller school and out of state flagships that hit the mid-range tuition zone through likely merit money. Then in state colleges.
In the end neither got their ED option. They each had a range of 5-6 schools of varying costs. Because we approached like any other purchase and value, including distance travel cost and time, leaving the decision to them ultimately was easy. They appreciated the costs and relative value of their choices.
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Some good thoughts on things. One of the comments about paying for let’s say a state school but not a community college, made me think of something. Community college may be a perfectly good way for a kid not sure of themselves to take college courses and see what they want to do without breaking the bank. Given that in most colleges you don’t declare your major until end of sophomore year, you wont lose anything going to a community college as long as the credits are transferrable, lot of kids go and transfer.
As far as ROI on a college major, that is a hard one and one there is no right answer. Seeing college as training for a career then yeah, things like sociology or anthropology or history may seem like a waste if they aren’t heading into it academically and especially in this day and age of specialization it can be hard to look at programs like those and not say “what use are they?”. Honestly, I would say the same thing about business administration, if you are looking for a business focus then finance or accounting or economics or things like that would be better. Without going into specifics, there are also supposedly “good majors” I would steer kids away from because the reality of those professions today is they aren’t a path to a guaranteed good career (and I’ll leave it at that). As a parent you have the right to make decisions like that of course.
That doesn’t mean, though, that someone that gets a degree in music (academic, not performance, though that has its problems) or sociology or history is doomed, it just means it likely will be a more amorphous path to what they end up doing. Plenty of people major in something like sociology and end up getting hooked onto a company or found one and do well; there also are the people who major in those things then find out ‘gee, you mean I have to get a job and survive? Wow’. A college degree once meant a certain level of knowledge, the ability to learn , and became a de facto entrance to the world of work, that is changing because the cost of college has soared and companies are rethinking the ‘must have a college degree’. One thing to keep in mind is even programs with ‘marketable’ skils like engineering and computer science don’t necessarily guarantee getting a good job, you almost have to come in with real word experience and a degree to get that first job (internships or working before leaving school).
And yes, I would rethink ‘you must go to college’. I would seriously look at skilled trades, like electrician , plumbing, even things like CNC machine operation and the like. They are not only in demand but they aren’t easily outsourced or automated (though CNC machine operation with AI looming may be a problem eventually) and because they require certified skills you can 't just pull people off the street to do it, same with skilled trades like being a cerified carpenter. Things like Landscaping or doing sheet rock hanging are fine if you own the business, these days, at least where I live, those kind of jobs are being done by low wage workers, not skilled workers so I wouldn’t recommend doing that unless it is your business (and maybe instead of spending money on college, have the kid take courses in those businesses, and then give them seed money in lieu of college).
Someone else on here said something interesting and it is true. The elite schools, like the Ivys, are expensive, but often they are a lot better with financial aid than other schools (i n part because they have large endowments), so if you have the stats, at other schools where you only get serious financial/academic merit aid because of family income, you can do well at an elite school, whereas at a flagship state school you end up saying “WTH” when you see the cost. Sadly not all ‘elite’ schools are that good, some very high prices ‘elite’ schools are really horrible with aid.
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In theory, any bachelor’s degree major should practice all of the listed skills, although the amount of practice can vary by major*. Of course, if the student’s academic major is secondary to parties and beer, then such practice may not have as much effect on intellectual development than it could have for a more serious student.
However, employers are often looking for more specific skills relevant to the job rather than the listed general thinking skills, since the listed general thinking skills are harder to test during job interview processes, even though the listed general thinking skills can become highly valuable once on the job.
*A math or statistics major may have greater quantitative skill practice, and an ethnic studies major (of a different ethnicity from one’s own) may have greater practice with cultural understanding, for example.
Unfortunately, businesses in the US these days are looking for direct skills, even people with experience up the wazoo have problems when looking for another job because they write job descriptions wanting very, very specific things, and if you don’t have them, your resume goes into the waste pile even though you have shown you can do the job at a high level (often, it isn’t even '5 years experience Java programming", it is now "5+ years java programming in an Saas environment using X environment, Y systems and an Oracle 7.x environment).
There are exceptions, I read about how Goldman Sachs in looking for entry level employees were looking for kids with non traditional majors, like music performance or the arts, because they found the kids coming out with economics or finance degrees all thought the same way and have heard at least lip service given by other companies to this idea (on the other hand, it also could be like companies saying they wanted people who ‘think outside the box’ but the culture absolutely stomps on people who do just that).
I think college became what a high school degree once was, and that is crazy. What college is and what it is for is evolving. Will it still be a place where you are supposed to learn to learn, or will it be a very expensive trade school?
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I can think of a number of people I know in the last ten years who were not hired for “specific skills”. One striking example is a Chinese language major with a minor in gender studies who got hired for a financial analyst role (they had done premed courses so had some quants skills but nothing high level). This person had however graduated with Latin honors and the attitude of the employer seemed to be “you’re clearly smart, we can teach you what you need”. This is the same as what I see hiring the entry level at my company is - some have related degrees, but not all. What they do all have in common is strong academic records and, often, interesting life experiences. Obviously it’s different when specific skills like engineering are required, but that’s another argument.
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Btw, this is part of what a good academic performance is supposed to tell you - screening theory.