Parental pressure horror stories

wisteria
Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:37:57 +0000

The reason i asked when you graduated is, times have changed since then, and pretty dramatically, in my opinion. Yes, one probably can put oneself through college even now, but in my eyes it will be such a failure on the parents’ part( I am speaking strictly about the situation when parents can and are willing to pay, but only for a particular school or major)



Actually, precisely because times have changed, there are many students who can put themselves through college.

The widespread use of merit aid means that many students are quite capable of putting themselves through college without parents needing to kick in any money, even if their “need-based EFC” is quite high.

I would imagine that just about any MIT student could have gotten a full-tuition merit scholarship to a wide variety of colleges—not MIT, of course, but just about anyone who can get into MIT had the high school stats to get into some college with a full tuition scholarship, possibly even a full-ride scholarship.

But a full tuition merit scholarship should be enough for most students to get through on their own resources if they are willing to work and borrow and cut corners on living expenses (i.e., multiple roommates in inexpensive off-campus apartment or taking an RA job for free room & board, etc.)

The problem, as I see it, is that it’s unfair for parents not to spell out ahead of time exactly what they are willing to pay for and what they are NOT willing to pay for.

Once the kid has already started at MIT, it may be extremely difficult to get those generous merit scholarships elsewhere. That’s because most of the most generous scholarships appear to be reserved for entering freshmen. Not only that, MIT’s tough grade standards may make transferring hard, especially with any kind of merit aid.

So it’s terribly unfair for parents to reveal after the fact that they will only pay tuition for a degree in XYZ or any other contingencies they want to place on their kid.

If Opie wants to place whatever restrictions he likes on his willingness to pay for a college education, I think it’s only fair for him to state those restrictions up front, preferably before his kid even starts making up college lists–and certainly before the kid enrolls at a particular college.

It should be noted, however, that there are ways for kids to pay their way through MIT if they are determined enough–one way is ROTC, another way is certain NSA (National Security) undergraduate funding programs (which admittedly limit the student to certain majors–typically math or computer science…or other majors possibly not available at MIT like Arabic or Farsi, etc.) Of course, these programs have some stringent strings attached–like years of one’s life that one must agree to serve in the armed forces or work for NSA.

It would be nice if there were similar programs that allowed students to pay for their college educations by committing to other kinds of public service–like delivering health care or teaching in underserved poor areas in this country or abroad in the Peace Corps.

Maybe if we weren’t spending so much money in Iraq, we’d have money to pay for a public service educational funding program like that one.