More debt depending on College major?

Parents Forum
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<p>My husband and I are big believers in our kids not having much debt when they finish College. So far, so good. Our daughter has just a couple of thousand dollars to pay off since graduating in 2007 and our son, who will graduate this May will also have just a few thousand. Our daughter is a teacher and graduated with dual degrees in education and Sociology/Anthropology. Our son is and English major with a Communications minor. Both were able to get substantial merit aid that made their small private colleges affordable.</p>

<p>Our third child is a Junior in HS and is looking at more technical majors such as Management Information Systems, Computer Information Systems or perhaps Computer Science. The colleges that he seems most interested in are ones with co-op programs that are more expensive and offer less merit aid then his older siblings choices. We won’t qualify for need based aid. He is a B student, so we are not talking MIT.</p>

<p>At this part of his college search, it seems to make sense to look at many colleges in different price ranges but I am concerned that he’s going to fall in love with one of the more expensive schools. We’ve already made it clear how much we are willing to pay, so he knows that but does it make sense to expect that there will be more debt but that part of that can be over-come by co-op jobs and an expected higher salaried job at the end? </p>

<p>What we told our other two was that we would pay up to X amount and would co-sign for loans over that amount and the payment would be on them after graduation. As part of the college search, we prioritized schools that had a history of good merit aid but both kids also applied to ones that were not known for merit aid just to see how it would pan out. That strategy worked well but do we look at it differently with our youngest son knowing (hoping?) that he would be able to handle a larger debt?</p>

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<p>We just recently sat our son down in front of our family budget pie chart explaining to him where our $$ goes. He looked dumbfounded when he found out what things cost including taxes, insurance etc. It is important for your son to fully realize what having debt means in terms of his own budget when he graduates. Kids assume they will make a lot of $$ when they graduate from top tier school…well the job market is not what it used to be and they need to be prepared for that. My son also wants to go to $$ school because of his engineering major and it will mean sacrifice for us all. Our visual explanation definately set off a light bulb since he felt that going to big buck school was somehow his birth right since he has been such a good student. He will definately have some skin in this game and we also told him that we expect him to be taking full advantage of everything that our $50K/year will be paying for. Good luck.</p>

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<p>Your son has to understand that as a rather new graduate in MIS, his salary is not going to be THAT high to pay back big loans.</p>

<p>He’ll be lucky to start out around $50k. While that may sound like a lot to a young kid, unless he’ll be living at home for many years after he graduates, it will be hard to pay back big debt.</p>

<p>I don’t know how much debt you’re talking about, but tell him this. For every $25k he borrows, he’ll have a payment of about $300 per month (like an extra car payment). So, if going to an elite school would mean borrowing $50k or $75k, that could mean paying back 2-3 car payments every month for 10 years. That would be a strangle-hold.</p>

<p>There are many excellent MIS schools that don’t require big debt (and that have excellent co-op opportunities). I would encourage him to research and visit as many as possible. What’s the point of having big debt, when he could get the same results for less?</p>

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<p>What if he doesn’t like those fields, or isn’t particularly good at them, and changes his major? My son is a computer science major and has never wavered. On the other hand, my nephew has come to seriously dislike COINS (not the same kind of field as cs, by the way) but is stuck finishing the program because his scholarship will not allow him to change fields.</p>

<p>I guess what I am saying is, don’t go into significant debt based on years-out predictions of what field he will be working in; he might be in a different field, or the field may not be so employable several years from now.</p>

<p>Debt means fewer options. For young people, options are good. I would vote for keeping the debt load reasonable if at all possible. For this sort of field, it should be possible.</p>

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<p>I guess I’m not explaining myself very well. Son is not in love with any school now and we are looking at all kinds of colleges including LAC’s. He is not insisting that he go to some expensive school. The most expensive college that’s on the list is Drexel at $51,000 but it includes 4 co-ops and takes five years. Son is also not really interested in making big bucks, he just loves, loves computers and technology. He’s taking his third programming class now, is very active in the computer science club and the Robotics team. None of which were our ideas or suggestions. </p>

<p>Our older kids went to colleges that had sticker prices of about $40,000., but cost about half of that. We ended up paying about what it costs to go in-state to PSU. Which, BTW, is on youngest son’s list.</p>

<p>mom2collegekids, What colleges are you referring to that do not cost an arm and a leg with MIS or IST and co-ops? On our list to visit right now are RIT and Wentworth.</p>

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<p>If he wants to date Giselle, he needs Tom Brady’s income. If he wants to attend a more expensive school, he needs top grades (where he can earn some merit money). Simple.</p>

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<p>^^^^</p>

<p>LOL…</p>

<p>Blue…I’m going to steal your quote…watch me plagerize it in the future. LOL</p>

<p>(I’ll try to remember to cite you. :wink: )</p>

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<p>*mom2collegekids, What colleges are you referring to that do not cost an arm and a leg with MIS or IST and co-ops? On our list to visit right now are RIT and Wentworth. *</p>

<p>This is just off the top of my head (because I live near it LOL), and would only be a safety school…but has EXCELLENT co-op opportunities because it’s in Cummings Research Park (the second largest research park in the nation!). <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cummings_Research_Park[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cummings_Research_Park&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Seriously, anyone who wants a co-op can get one at this school. The list of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 industries that are here is long. I don’t know of anyone who graduates in one of these fields that isn’t immediately employed full-time (often by their co-op jobs).</p>

<p>UA-Huntsville [CBA</a> - Management Information Systems Major](<a href=“http://cba.uah.edu/mis/mis.html]CBA”>http://cba.uah.edu/mis/mis.html)</p>

<p>It is cheap for OOS students. It gives generous merit. My friend’s son is from PA, and he was just an average student. Yet, he got a $12k per year merit scholarship which paid all the OOS portion plus some of the regular tuition. He’s a comp sci major. </p>

<p>This school is excellent in engineering, comp sci, MIS, nursing, business. It doesn’t have depth in many other majors, which hurts its overall ranking. However, in these areas, it is known for. It has about 5,000 students, so it’s not too big or small. It is well-funded. Frosh and sophs are required to live on campus, so kids get a good start on their education. The dorms are very nice, the facilities are very nice. Millions of dollars have been poured into the school…</p>

<p>Here’s a link to the website. [UAHuntsville</a> | The University of Alabama in Huntsville](<a href=“http://www.uah.edu/]UAHuntsville”>http://www.uah.edu/)</p>

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<p>Thanks for the help bluebayou, instead of getting B’s now, I’ll suggest he just get A’s! ;)</p>

<p>Mom2collegekids,
Thanks for that suggestion and I can certainly put it on the list but Son has said he’s not real sure about a Southern culture. That may change as we get closer to application time and he see’s that Southern schools are generally cheaper. But I’m not sure I agree with your statement, “There are many excellent MIS schools that don’t require big debt” we’ve found many colleges that offer MIS or IST but narrowing them down to B students AND affordable is what makes me think that a larger debt then what the other kids have might be something that we have to consider. </p>

<p>Of course, he can go to one of our very good State Colleges but all the ones we’ve looked at only require one internship, not a real co-op program.</p>

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<p>If you are interested in coops, the major schools are Drexel, RIT, and Northeastern.</p>

<p>Other, more expensive options woud include WPI and RPI.</p>

<p>Computer Science/ IT types make north of 60k coming out of those schools:</p>

<p><a href=“Students | Career and Professional Development”>Students | Career and Professional Development;

<p>[Career</a> Development Center - Full-Time](<a href=“http://www.wpi.edu/Admin/CDC/salarysurvey.html]Career”>http://www.wpi.edu/Admin/CDC/salarysurvey.html)</p>

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<p>Lurk on the Drexel sub-group here.</p>

<p>You say he is a B student, but that may not tell us the whole picture. SAT/ACT are a large part too.</p>

<p>Drexel has nice merit and plenty of B students can receive it.</p>

<p>A few months ago, after seeing Mom2collegekids various posts and the great financial incentives of Alabama, I did some more digging. Basically (as M2CK proclaims) Bama isn’t as “southern” as I thought - with the exception of crazy football fans (and let’s face, we got some of that at PSU here in PA too).</p>

<p>Is there a reason Pitt isn’t on the list? Pitt is more generous than PSU even for us in-state.</p>

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<p>I don’t know about MIS but a CS grad should typically start out at around $65K-80K. Any internships he might take will likely be paid internships. </p>

<p>Most colleges seem to have a CS major so why is he looking only at more expensive ones with coops? He could go to a college with a variety of majors that includes CS and simply do internships in the summers after around the second year if he wishes.</p>

<p>The other thing to consider about a CS degree (I’m not so familiar with MIS degrees) is that they’re a lot of hard work and can be intellectually challenging in the areas of math, logic, problem solving, etc. and a fair percentage of students who start one of these engineering degrees end up switching out of it to a humanities or science degree so attending a school that offers a reasonable choice of other majors can be beneficial.</p>

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<p>Thanks for that suggestion and I can certainly put it on the list but Son has said he’s not real sure about a Southern culture.</p>

<p>The southern culture in Huntsville is quite diluted, since most of the people here are transplants from elsewhere. I’d have to make an effort to find a person with a southern accent here. Moving here from California was no culture shock at all.</p>

<p>*Bama isn’t as “southern” as I thought - with the exception of crazy football fans (and let’s face, we got some of that at PSU here in PA too).
*</p>

<p>LOL…I think the state went into a complete tizzy last week. </p>

<p>BTW…Bama is going to play Penn St next year!!! So, Joe Pa is coming to Tuscaloosa! :slight_smile: The place will be insane. I’ve loved Joe Paterno since I was a young girl.</p>

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<p>kathiep, You might want to check out NC State University. It has a large co-op program.</p>

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<p>I think this might be your answer. </p>

<p>The average person in his field may start at 50Kish but the job he wants may pay less. If at all possible, debt should not be driving a young person’s career path. </p>

<p>We can pay X a year and our son made it his mission to find a school where we would qualify for financial aid (very, very few) or where he would have a good shot at merit aid. He’s simply not in a position to take on a lot of debt because we will not co-sign for it. It’s more important to us that he have the freedom to take a lower paying job or go to grad school or do whatever it is he is going to do on his own. </p>

<p>In somecases I can understand why a person would choose to go into debt for graduate school but for undergrad? I just don’t think it’s a good idea.</p>

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<p>*In somecases I can understand why a person would choose to go into debt for graduate school but for undergrad? I just don’t think it’s a good idea. *</p>

<p>I agree…I cringe when I hear of kids taking out loans larger than - say - Stafford loans. Even with the max Stafford, a student is going to have a monthly payment of about $300 a month for 10 years! That’s like a car payment! And, if the new grad needs to buy a car, he’ll feel like he’s paying 2 car payments. yikes!</p>

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<p>pugmadkate, Your last sentence is exactly what I am asking. If a major has a higher earning potential and the co-ops earn the student enough to pay part of the tuition, is that a good reason to allow more debt?</p>

<p>PackMom, Son would actually love to consider NC State as that’s where his best friend may end up, but they don’t offer MIS or IST [North</a> Carolina State University :: Academic Departments A-Z](<a href=“http://www.ncsu.edu/academics/departments-a-z/index.php]North”>Colleges and Departments | NC State University)</p>

<p>The reason I think co-op’s are such a good idea is they give students the opportunity to experience a real job for a good amount of time, they get paid for them and have to interview for them. They also find out what they like or dislike about their intended future career and then can apply those experiences back in college. I think the job placement rate is also much higher. An internship is often just one summer or semester whereas colleges with co-op’s require three or four experiences of six months each. Here’ a little bit about Drexels [Co-op</a> Opportunities - Drexel at BCC Academics](<a href=“http://www.drexelatbcc.org/academics/coop/default.html]Co-op”>http://www.drexelatbcc.org/academics/coop/default.html)
Internships are great, but it seems that a school that integrates co-ops into it’s program provides a deeper experience both hands-on and academically. You get to really practice what you learn.</p>

<p>Pitt only seems to have IST at the grad level as far as I can see. [Academics</a> | University of Pittsburgh](<a href=“http://www.pitt.edu/academics.html]Academics”>http://www.pitt.edu/academics.html) I mean, it looks like they have it at the bachelors level but when you go to the IST page, it’s all about grad programs. We did one of our first visits to Drexel. Son really liked it.</p>

<p>Okay, we’ll look more at Alabama - I’m all for Southern schools and my older son is about to graduate from one this Spring. </p>

<p>UCS Dad (sorry, too many initials in your screen name) I’m not sure I can easily explain the difference between MIS, IST and CS but this is how I think of it as a layperson: [Computer</a> Science v.s. Computer Information Systems v.s. Management Information Systems - Stack Overflow](<a href=“http://stackoverflow.com/questions/723487/computer-science-v-s-computer-information-systems-v-s-management-information-sy]Computer”>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/723487/computer-science-v-s-computer-information-systems-v-s-management-information-sy) This answer, " lot of the answers you are getting here reflect very accurately the way I saw things back when I was an undergrad at the University of Texas. The CS program lead to a B.S degree and the MIS program was a B.A.</p>

<p>Of course, in all my infinite 18 year old wisdom at the time I KNEW that a B.S. degree was more prestigious and any kind of “Arts” degree was the type of fluffy degree program that someone would take to get into marketing or something silly like that. After all I was learning how to write assembly code and taking EE classes while those jokers were flitting around with 4th generation languages and writing apps in databases. They were definitely not “hard code” like me.</p>

<p>10 years later I realized that unless I planned to work at NASA, all that fluff they were teaching in the MIS program was more representative of what the vast majority of programmers do for a living. Eventually I regretted not taking the easier degree plan, that would have likely resulted in a higher GPA and skills that I would actually use in the real world.</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong, the CS stuff is definitely a lot cooler and I agree that the low-level stuff helps you understand the high level stuff better. However, here in the real world most working programmers spend most of their time doing high level integration using libraries, toolkits, and languages with abstractions like built in garbage collection.</p>

<p>That said, if you want to work for Google or NASA, or just want the extra cache, go for the CS program."</p>

<p>Son does not LOVE math and programming. He likes what computers do and how technology can be used.</p>

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<p>2/3 of undergrads change their major at least once during college. That is just part of the reason why I think deciding to take on more debt before the student even sets foot in their first class is a bad idea. By the time your son graduates, his plans for his first major may be nothing but a dim memory and his co-ops may have paid very little, if anything.</p>

<p>I am also keen on the idea of co-ops, as is my kid and so he has applied to Northeastern. However, if the merit aid is not enough, it goes off the list. These next four years are important but my kid will only be 22 when he graduates. He’s in an incredible position; he has the option of graduating with very little or no debt. It’s what he does at the school he attends that is going to dictate his future, not the name of the school on the diploma.</p>

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<p>Kathie…</p>

<p>The school I mentioned is UA-Huntsville. That’s not U Alabama (which is in Tuscaloosa). I live near UA-Huntsville, but my kids are at U Alabama. However, both schools have co-ops and both are rather inexpensive for OOS. Both give merit scholarships and both have strong MIS programs. </p>

<p>What is your son’s weighted GPA? What are his test scores?</p>

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For CS majors their internships typically make use of their skills - i.e. they’re generally programming or doing some form of software engineering rather than filing papers or being a gopher such as happens with some majors when interning. this is one of the reasons they’re paid. </p>

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The word LOVE is used too much on CC IMO (i.e. not everyone has to LOVE their college, their major, etc.) but if you mean that he would doesn’t want to take a lot of math or do programming then a CS major is not for him. When it comes to what computers do and how technology can be used the field’s wide open - there are very few fields where computers aren’t leveraged whether it be to help unravel the genome (bio), figure out the stucture of molecules (chemistry/pharmacy), map the earth, build a car/plane/spaceship, perform actuarial studies, perform statistical analysis for almost anything, design solid items (anything you see around you), use with architecture, play games on, make CGI movies and special effects, etc. </p>

<p>The point is that one can ‘work with computers/technology’ in just about any field and one doesn’t need to work it from the software engineering/programming angle to do so.</p>

<p>When I said I’m not as familiar with MIS I meant as far as initial salaries go. But IT people also, of course, use computers/technology but generally not from a programming perspective - it’s more in usage.</p>

<p>I’m only talking more about CS because I’m more familiar with that field since I’m in it myself and have had two Ds pursue CS degrees. I’ve seen some other posters who appear to be more familiar with the MIS area than me.</p>

<p>One more thing - a lot of people with CS/MIS, etc. degrees don’t pursue a grad degree in it and aren’t really very negatively impacted by entering the workforce with a BS. It could be money might end up being saved as a result although I think it’s best to at least keep the option of grad school open financially if he chooses to pursue it.</p>