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<p>Depends. What state(s) are you talking about?</p>
<p>Here in California, I see newspaper stories about families in danger of losing their houses after taking out second mortgages so that they can afford to send their child to the local Cal State. Increasingly, there are more and more people who can’t afford public college, either.</p>
<p>California Community Colleges are about $40/credit hour, right or about $1,200 a year in tuition. The American Opportunity Credit is good for 100% of the first $2,000 of expenses and 25% of the next $2,000. It seems to me that any in-state student that wanted to go to community college in California can do so on the Federal Government’s dime.</p>
<p>BCEagle, the CC option of course only works for the first two years.</p>
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<p>I was just about to say the same thing. BCEagle nailed it in his response (#92) to Lafalum with the exception of the added point above.</p>
<p>Yes it does. But that’s for free.</p>
<p>One could then work summers and a part-time job during the school year for the full year, use the other $2,500/year tax credit and take out relatively small loans for the remaining two years. To avoid loans, one could work for a full year. This, of course, assumes some support (room, transportation and board) from the family. I have a nephew going this route except for the working part. His parents are funding him but it’s not that much money, especially with the tax credit, at least so far.</p>
<p>I’d support a 50% tax credit for an additional two years of university courses with a limit of $5,000 to $8,000.</p>
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<p>Let’s say $4,000 per summer x 4 = $16,000 and the current tax credit of $2,500 x 2 = $21,000 that could be applied to two years at a California 4-year degree. Maybe add $4,000 ($1,000 part-time job per semester for two years) for a total of $25,000. Would that do it in California?</p>
<p>While I don’t want to get all elitist about this ;), you can’t with a straight face talk about a community college as an equivalent opportunity to even a middling private 4-year college or U (you can’t even get a bachelor’s degree from a CC). If the answer is, “lower-income people are just going to have to settle for community colleges now,” OK, but that’s a little different from saying “colleges they can afford,” as if we were talking about things that were roughly equivalent aside from cost.</p>
<p>^Agreed. CC is not the same as a four-year university. And not all states have high-quality CCs like California’s.</p>
<p>I had always hoped we could afford to see our kids go where ever they were admitted–so that $ would not affect them reaching higher…
there are great schools at all levels but some are just better in certain programs than others…</p>
<p>Where our student will go in the fall of 2011 is yet to be determined…and like everyone else–we hope for merit aid, etc or scholarship etc
and many places offer only fin-aid by need and that fafsa is a mess depending on your stte/taxes/housing costs etc</p>
<p>we may or may not qualify … its to be determined…</p>
<p>I just wonder why so many families are looking for aid to send a kid to a private school—</p>
<p>its a “socialized” education mentality, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Assuming one can find a job.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s possible. But it’s become much, much, much tougher to do. There are families with a financial perfect storm, sometimes partly of their own making, sometimes not. These aren’t families that are blithely thinking that they’ll send their kids to Northridge or San Jose State instead of Mills or Occidental; these are families where the students always knew it was going to be Cal State East Bay or Los Angeles while living at home and working part time. The public funding per student has dropped, the fees the students pay has increased. </p>
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<p>Sold! :)</p>
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<p>I can afford full-pay four years at a private for our daughter but she is going to community
college to determine what she wants to do and she is fine with that. I’m fairly selective
about the courses that I want her to take and that’s mixed in with the courses that she
wants to take.</p>
<p>The quality of four-year colleges varies all over the place. There’s a four-year college
near my workplace that has an average SAT score in the 900s.</p>
<p>My understanding of California’s Community College system is that it is very good and that there a good number of students that transfer to the Cal U system to get engineering degrees. Their CC system can’t be that bad if students can handle Cal U engineering courses. I looked at the AMAYTIC (Community College Math Contest) scores around the country and California Community Colleges score very well compared to the rest of the country.</p>
<p>Community colleges in many other states cost three or four times what they do in California. My impression of CCs in other states is that quality varies widely. We send our daughter out of state because our own local CC is of poor quality - our state does a poor job of supporting higher education.</p>
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<p>Not at the moment. But I believe that CCs in MA are lobbying to offer four-year degrees.</p>
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<p>I’ve seen community college courses of better quality than university courses. Community
college courses tend to have smaller classroom sizes and I haven’t seen the lecture halls
and inaccessible professors off doing research in community colleges that are common with state universities.</p>
<p>You aren’t going to get the nice gyms, pools and other athletic facilities and the dorms, etc. But those aren’t needs for a good education.</p>
<p>See my other comments on funding the third and fourth years of university.</p>
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<p>The needy bright kid does not NEED a HYPSM education to succeed. But, we all benefit when this kid receives a good education. Society needs as many bright and educated citizens in its work force to remain competitive and wealthy. Also, I wouldn’t feel safe in a society where only the rich are educated. For the above self-preservation reasons alone, I wouldn’t mind some of my son’s tuition goes to help the said kid…if I have the money of course. It is much harder to find motivated bright kids than it is to find the money to educate them - my speculation.</p>
<p>BCEagle</p>
<p>I have a friend who did that with each of her sons…
the boys did 2 yrs at a cc and worked while living at home. She paid the balance of the 2 yrs at a 4 yr school and the boys got a great deal of growth, responsibility, money mgt, and education for that plan.</p>
<p>She says her boys’ friends (many) came home within the first yr of school floundering. </p>
<p>Now she did it for maturity in her boys–but each of the gained so much more. </p>
<p>It is actually a very sound way to get a great education–and requires the student to be focused (and humble…if living at home)</p>
<p>Its an option we have not tossed out here as well (funds not maturity being the driving factor)</p>
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<p>Uhm, because college is really really expensive? ;)</p>
<p>It’s more that that’s where the aid is. It’s not just private schools; the threads about pursuing merit aid look for any school which offers money to kids with desireable stats. </p>
<p>Another consideration is the message that many colleges give in their info sessions and mailings that their school is going to be “affordable” and that you shouldn’t worry your sweet little head about the finances, because all of these wonderful schools will make it possible for you to attend. Sure they will, with lots of unsubsidized loans.</p>
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<p>The specific question was regarding California.</p>
<p>I’m sure that there are other states with high-quality CCs but my research is obviously limited to my states of interest.</p>
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<p>I found part-time work in the sharp economic downturn in 79-80 and I saw plenty of college grads bagging groceries at the local supermarket. I worked 20 hours a week in my first year of college and there are people that I work with that worked similar hours, even up until full-time. That’s not an ideal situation as there’s less time for studying but you do what you have to in your own particular financial situation.</p>
<p>I see a steady stream of minimum-wage jobs offered at my son’s university. Lifeguard, secretary, filing mail, help desk, PC technician, person to move equipment around, lab monitor. I wish that community colleges offered these jobs to students there too. Maybe they do in other states.</p>
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<p>I recall the huge fights that one of my sisters had with my mother over funding her education at Penn. ROTC was suggested. My sister worked part-time and took out a lot of loans and she managed. She married well and I think that took care of the problem.</p>
<p>My other two sister put themselves through their college degrees too. College was a lot cheaper back then but it still took a lot of effort.</p>
<p>I understand that California is dire straits. I also understand that people can quite often accomplish a lot through hard work and perseverance. Perhaps we need help from the Federal tax code. I think that some kind of state bailout is necessary too.</p>
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<p>Sometimes one must live within their means and not rely on the largesse of the government or private colleges. I realize our government has been trying to create even a greater dependency on big brother and public handouts than exists today but I happen to believe in people taking personal responsibility for themselves.</p>
<p>As BCEagle points out, there are several options available for those students who can’t afford the cost of private education to get a good college education. No one is entitled to attend a private college and no one needs to attend a high priced college to succeed when lower cost alternatives exist</p>
<p>While the sticker of publics and privates may vary widely, I thnk if you tune into to many private school’s financial aid pages on their websites, they will flat out tell you that you can often times get aid at a private that makes it very much the affordable equiv. of a public. To get into the whole financial aid process, however, is above my scope for sure. But I know there is more paperwork to fill out and the private school’s paperwork in addition to the FAFSA can, to some, feel overly invasive. Still… to assume private is far more expensive than public is accurate if you’re only looking at full boat. I know of many people who are going to private colleges for far less than had they gone to the state flagship AND I know a few who under the fafsa would get no aid, but at the private, it made it work so it’s a wash.</p>
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<p>I’ve seen a lot of kids do the same thing except the costs were in the $20,000 range at State U. Better to blow $2,000 than $20,000 if the kid can’t handle State U off the bat.</p>
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<p>I think it depends on whether you are talking merit aid or need based aid. Assuming its the latter, it is indeed a socialized education mentality.</p>
<p>My view is if you take two families - earning the same amounts and one scrimps and saves to fund their child’s college and the other one lives beyond their means and doesn’t save anything, why should the non-saver be rewarded.</p>
<p>Or if you take 2 different families - and one has both parents working - perhaps one even works a side job on occassion - where another family just has one parent working (their choice) - why should the family who is trying harder to earn more to pay for college be penalized?</p>
<p>Thats why I take a stronger view of merit aid and a dim view of need based aid. With merit aid, one earns it based on their accomplishments. With need based aid, you can end up with a perverse set of disincentives to save and earn less</p>
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Certainly it is. But it’s socialism intended as the groundwork for meritocracy. The idea behind it is that if the quality of educational opportunities available is correlated to family wealth, that’s the formula for a permanent class system. There was a time when this was seen as an obvious evil in this country, even by many of those in the upper class. </p>
<p>And need-based FA is not, as somebody suggested up thread, a phenomenon as new as the recent economic bubble. It’s at least as old as the 60s and 70s (the essential concept that educational opportunity should be subsidized for the talented poor is much, much older, of course, and is the basis for all public elementary and secondary education). I went to college in the late 70s on a roughly 50% grant that was need-based–I could probably have qualified for merit aid if my school had had it, but even back in the 70s, if my memory serves me correctly, that school’s FA was need-based only, except for a few prize scholarships and such.</p>
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<p>It’s already changed. That train left the station a while ago. Sounds like the industry / firm you’re referring to is just now catching up if they are “discovering” that many of the best and brightest are in places other than the top 10 or 20. Maybe you can tell them about the internet too :-)</p>