I think of it less as a “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” and more of “Family takes care of family.” You help each other out when they’re not able to help for themselves.</p>
<p>It’s like a cycle, almost. I know when I graduate, debt free thanks to my Mom’s help (and know she didn’t take out an $80,000 loan for my education), I will save up and get myself into a well enough financial situation so that I’m able to help her. Whether that be helping to pay down her mortgage to whatever other debt she has. So sure this could be considered a “You scratch my back, I scratch” yours, but I see it as helping out family so that they are not burdened.</p>
<p>I think some of us are just suggesting that you should expect to reap what you sow. If you sow a concept of family helping family and sharing, that’s what you can hope to reap. If you sow a concept of “I’ve got mine; you’re on your own,” well…</p>
<p>A household income of $80,000 per year puts a family roughly into the top third of American households. It seems to me that on a household income of $80,000-$100,000, it would be close to impossible to come up with $80,000 per child–and plenty difficult to come up with $80,000 that is truly available, for a single child, even via a loan.</p>
<p>My father used to say to me that I could ask for anything “up to half my kingdom.” That seems like too much, to me. And if a son or daughter is asking for more than that, I think it is so completely out of line as to be ridiculous.</p>
<p>I think the lenders might approve a loan, since it cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, and to the best of my knowledge, it cannot be discharged through death, either. The fact that the loan may be made would not necessarily make it wise to take.</p>
<p>The rhetoric about helping and sharing is good, of course. But it really needs to be put in context. I don’t understand why there is contention about the possibility that the money may not realistically be there. How is it “helping and sharing” if the money truly is not there?</p>
<p>I do not know any families personally where the parents are spending a lot on unnecessary items/trips/cars, while leaving the children to fend for themselves, in terms of college costs. That does not make sense to me, where it happens. Of course, I live in a enclave, practically, where education is highly valued.</p>
<p>If a student from a family of modest means can get into HYPSM+Cetc. these days, that is great, because the costs are greatly reduced, and the parents would not need to come up with $80,000.</p>
<p>Based on collegehelp’s post, it seems as though the students would like to attend a private college (to meet a better class of people, ahem), which either does not meet full need or meets it with a heavy loan component. I am not sure that this is truly better than less expensive alternatives.</p>
<p>When one takes out a loan on a house, one has collateral. If the investment doesn’t work out (or circumstances change) one an always sell the asset - - not so a bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>Hunt, neither of those concepts really leap to mind. Not everybody can help and share. It was more like if you can sow*, GO for it! We didn’t think too much about what anybody was reaping (not much!). We figured us “sowers” were the blessed/lucky ones. ( The Jehovah Witnesses in the family didn’t like to hear “lucky”.) </p>
<p>*Looking up reap and sow, just to be sure I got it right. I can’t find a good definition that does not include a lot of lessons about the reaping part. I don’t think it means spending a lot of money or taking out loans. </p>
<p>My real life example is what comes from a tomato seed. That is something else!</p>
<p>Out of curiosity stemmed from comments in this thread, I generated a list of average net price paid by in-state students at selective colleges in the United States, according to the data in IPEDS for 2011-2012 (latest available data). Results are below. A spreadsheet containing information for thousands of other colleges is at <a href=“http://collegecost.ed.gov/catc/resources/CATClists2011.xls[/url]”>http://collegecost.ed.gov/catc/resources/CATClists2011.xls</a> . I realize that the results have as much to do with how wealthy the student body is, as how good the FA is. Nevertheless, I find it interesting to see how the average net price compares to sticker net price. I also compared the rate of increase in average cost from the oldest data in IPEDS (2007-2008). When averaged over these 39 schools, the average rate of increase was within 0.2% of the inflation rate, suggesting that the average cost is unchanged during this period, among these selective colleges. Data isn’t available for older years, but I suspect that I’d see a similar pattern. That is financial aid for lower incomes was dramatically improved, so the sticker price goes up for upper incomes to make up for the increased FA.</p>
<p>Average Net Price
$17016 University of California-Berkeley
$18059 Amherst College
$18280 Princeton University
$18761 Harvard University
$18926 Yale University
$19060 Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
$20133 Williams College
$20862 Stanford University
$21107 Pomona College
$21581 Vanderbilt University
$21640 Swarthmore College
$22689 Haverford College
$22698 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
$23096 Grinnell College
$23199 Bowdoin College
$23254 Columbia University in the City of New York
$23503 Duke University
$23543 Dartmouth College
$23584 Wesleyan University
$23743 Middlebury College
$23997 Rice University
$24674 Brown University
$25096 Hamilton College
$25444 California Institute of Technology
$26235 Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
$26821 Cornell University
$27143 University of Pennsylvania
$27299 University of Notre Dame
$27944 Tufts University
$28179 Georgetown University
$28385 University of Southern California
$29132 Johns Hopkins University
$29529 Case Western Reserve University
$30070 Carleton College
$30311 University of Chicago
$31961 Northwestern University
$32718 Carnegie Mellon University
$33547 Harvey Mudd College
$34849 Washington University in St Louis
<p>I’m sticking to my angle that those who’ve gone though this can or may have some different visibility. But, btw, as soon as 2008’s crisis hit, at the U I work for, one immediate step was to pull more money into FA reserves, knowing there could be families with addl need- or those who may have freshly needed it. Since it’s one of those meet full need schools, no idea how others handled this or its lasting impact. But it could conceivably affect any comparisons.</p>
<p>QM, re the PP loans: “If you are a parent PLUS loan borrower, then the loan may be discharged if you die, or if the student on whose behalf you obtained the loan dies.”</p>
<p>But that is the last reason to overborrow. Just responding to that lingering question. </p>
<p>My take on OP’s original question and some later explanations was not, “the students would like to attend a private college,” but that OP would like some relative family to borrow in order to send their kid to a better school. No input from the kid, iirc.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information about the loans, lookingforward. I had read in the New York Times about students who had taken out loans of some sort, and died, but apparently the payments were still due (according to the Times’ original article anyway–I don’t scan their lists of corrections very often).</p>
<p>If there is a private loan that required a co-signer, then yes the other person is stuck with the loan until it is paid off or the other person manages to get it discharged. Those are the type of loans that we read about in the press. Yes, there are parents and grandparents who are paying down the loans that they co-signed for someone who has since died, become disabled, or is unable/unwilling to pay the loan him/herself.</p>
<p>Yes, when loans are co-signed, BOTH parties are on the hook for full repayment for the life of the loan (or the lives of both parties). If one party dies, the survivor is still fully liable. Folks concerned about this should get term life insurance on both parties, for the life of the loan, in an amount at least sufficient to pay off the loan.</p>
<p>ParentPLUS loans require a cosigner and keep both parties liable for repayment. Perkins loans are the only ones that students can generally take out in their own name with no cosigner. If there is no cosigner, only the student is liable for full repayment.</p>
<p>Moral–NEVER co-sign anything unless you will be OK with being on the hook for full repayment of the entire amount of the loan PLUS interest and potential penalties.</p>
<p>The standard PP loans don’t need a co-signer. That’s if you have an issue with your credit history. As they put it, “Applying…with an endorser (cosigner) can greatly improve your chances of approval.” I also asked them this, while pursuing another matter. </p>
<p>But, back to borrowing, in general: first year, IF a family qualifies for a private loan, second year, that loan is on their history. I’d think it gets progressively harder to qualify. And that any blip could pose more risk.</p>
I know many, many people who bought homes in the 2002-2007 time frame for which this statement was emphatically untrue.</p>
<p>And while I don’t see this in these terms, for those counting the beans, doesn’t it make sense that the better chance you give you child to succeed in life the less likely they are to kick you to the curb when you’re in your dotage, all other things being equal?</p>
<p>And finally, being old and crotchety, I’m getting tired of reading condescending posts from folks (who read and post on CC) lecturing about how it isn’t “necessary” to attend a better college to succeed. That’s true. I think everyone here knows that. Heck, many individuals have been wildly successful without attending any college at all. I know some of those folks. </p>
<p>But it’s equally true that that there will be some degree of correlation between those two variable when numerous data points are analyzed - that is, it is more likely that a given offspring will have a successful life if they attend a college which is a good match for their abilities and potential than if they attend one that isn’t. </p>
<p>If that’s not true, what are we all doing here?</p>
<p>Kluge, we felt “the better chance you give you child to succeed in life” started very early, with a grounded family (which I have long felt can take many different forms,) affection, respect, guidelines and goals, consequences and appropriate rewards, learning to give and seeing our examples. And learning in lots of different contexts. The issue of paying as much as possible for a best college comes later and imo, is not the one definitive action. </p>
<p>We know that plenty of kids don’t take full advantage of college. The rightness of the match is just the beginning. Not all kids are able to go on to greatness, post grad. Life happens. But if the beginnings were good, if they were raised as well as we could from the get-go, they will have strengths and resilience, do what good they can, continue to feel close to us/our families- and carry the caring message to the next generation.</p>
<p>And plenty of top dogs from grand universities don’t go on to be good folks, are some of those complained about here, who don’t return the favors, in the many ways that count. We know them, too. Some of them have earned great financial rewards, maybe done some good things for society, but it stops there.</p>
<p>Lookingforward, I agree with everything you wrote. I just don’t think it is germane to the point under discussion.</p>
<p>I guess I’m just baffled by the fact that so many people have so much difficulty detecting the difference between:</p>
<ol>
<li>“You have to attend an Ivy League college, or your life will be ruined!” and</li>
<li> “If you are able to attend the best college you can qualify for admission to chances are you’ll do better in life (in a lot of ways) than if you can’t go there because your parents won’t give you the financial assistance needed to do so.”</li>
</ol>
<p>I keep saying (2). People keep replying that (1) is false. (1) is false. But it’s not the same as (2) and I still think (2) is true.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean “in 100% of cases.” It means: “for most people this route maximizes the probability of achieving the stated goal, all other things being equal.” I don’t think that should be too controversial, but people seem to be reluctant to accept it - even here, on College Confidential!</p>
<p>kluge, when you say “best college”…well, that’s squishy. If we’re talking extremes, e.g. Williams versus your local community college, it’s clear. But what if we’re talking Williams versus, say, Bryn Mawr? Where Bryn Mawr is offering big merit money, and Williams isn’t offering anything, and the parents would need to take out that canonical $80k in loans to be able to swing Williams?</p>
</p>