What we did is have our daughter take out the usual $5500 loan which we said we would pay for if she maintained a 3.0 avg.
‘Deliberately manipulated’?
‘Refuse to’?
What is the matter with students required to pay some of their own college costs even if parents could pay 100%?!
This, again, is completely foreign to the way we think or parent.
"I feel that it is important that the student does contribute "
-The only reasonable contribution is earning substantial Merit awards. How they can reasonably contribute while earning the darn minimum wage? it is not reasonable to assume that they could. However, having high GPAs / scores in HS and college is a something that everybody can aim at. And that may result in very high Merit awards, but again, if they attend at UG that offer a great financail package. The same student will get widely different Merit awards at different colleges even if they are all in-state publics.
Most colleges assume that students can contribute a few thousand dollars from part time jobs while at school, or from summer earnings.
It is true that merit scholarships can be much larger than that (e.g. full tuition to full ride). However, such merit scholarships are typically earned from high school credentials, so a current college student is not likely to have much opportunity to earn more big ones. A current college student with a big merit scholarship should have a first priority to ensuring that s/he meets the renewal criteria, since the big merit scholarship will be larger than any realistic work earnings.
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Marian wrote: And I think that students in these families react to the need to contribute to their own education differently than those in families who could pay for all of their expenses but refuse to. Young people know when they're being deliberately manipulated, and many of them resent it.
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I don’t know about that.
One of my sisters is quite wealthy largely due to a mega-inheritance (millions) that her H received upon the death of his parents. (My sis and her H were already affluent, but this really “set them for life”. ) Her kids obviously knew that the parents could pay full-freight for any school. But, the kids were required to work over summers, pay for their own textbooks, and fund their own pocket money. I never saw any “resentment” from her kids and my sis would have told me if they had given her any “lip” about it.
My sis and her H want their kids to have a grounding in reality that money doesn’t grow on trees. They don’t want the kids to have “trust fund mentalities” and end up being loafers or feeling entitled. The kids are now thru college and working. They are very much “normal” in every way.
Many wealthy parent will pay for the educational costs, but nothing else. Warren Buffet, the Johnson and Johnson (Johnson and Sons?) family and other fund the educations for their children and grandchildren, but that’s it. I remember one of the ‘Johnson’ kids made a public remark about it being unfair and was cut off. A friend has a very (very) wealthy father but you’d never know it from looking at her lifestyle. She’s grateful the father pays for the all the tuition for the grandchildren, k-12 and college, but that’s it. They know they are lucky they got to pick any colleges they want to (and could get in) and they know it is a gift that can be stopped at any time.
I didn’t like the description above of a family ‘refusing’ to pay when the family could. I think the family has every right to set the terms, and those might include a financial contribution from the student, the right attitude, the correct behavior (no arrests, no drugs, no tattoos). Just because a family can pay doesn’t relieve the student of all responsibilities.
Parents have absolute veto power over the kid’s college choices until the kid is 24, married, or a military veteran, unless the kid gets a full merit ride somewhere.
However, some types of parental controls and restrictions, such as requiring the kid to go to a parentally-chosen specialty college or do a parentally-chosen major that is unsuited for the kid’s interests, tend to get much less support from posters here than some other types of parental controls and restrictions.
“to work over summers, pay for their own textbooks, and fund their own pocket money” is reasonable reagardless of the family’s financial situations. Parents don’t have to expect it, but they can.
If the family has no choice, then kids have to take on loans and/or win scholarships based on high school performance (even though they’re rare, those are more likely than athletic scholarships since most sports only offer very partial scholarships.)
Parents with financial means can and must be clear about their limits - 25k, 35k, whatever they feel comfortable with, regardless of EFC.
I do object to parents with EFC 40-50K+ telling their kids they are on their own for college. Due to the cost of college, If these kids can’t win a scholarship (and having wealthy parents may mean higher test scores but it doesn’t guarantee them, nor does it guarantee the child is super smart and will be in the top 10% of their class or top2% nationally for test scores.) What’s the hard-working 3.4/1850 student with rich parents to do in that case? Stay home and wait to turn 24 or get married while working at whatever jobs are available locally to high school graduates? Depending on the state, even community college may not be possible (if commuting is not possible or if they’re expensive… or if the student attended a high-performing hs in a state where community colleges are primarily for remedial and career retraining, hence not having enough classes the student can take fruitfully - such as having all the classes from prealgebra to precalculus with special review and slower-pace versions, but offering calculus1 only, because few students take it.)
Gone are the days when a high school student could self fund through federal loans and part time work. Gone are the relatively stable jobs with middle class status, that you can have without a college degree. So in that last case, the parents are essentially keeping their child from going on with their lives and yes there would be resentment.
“skin in the game” by choice essentially presumes the parents have a choice and that the kid will squander opportunities if not given that added pressure. I don’t think it’s necessary but it depends on the kid - each family should evaluate whether their child needds an added incentive to focus on their education rather than other activities and whether taking on an un-necessary loan will be the right incentive, or having a job, or both (again, if given a choice in the matter - many will not have.)
No, if you mean money-wise.
The only skin in the game my DSs have is to get great grades, which is their job in school. I am more than fine with that.
I do not get the concept of purposely giving any kids debt that you do not have to. All you have done is reduced their economic buying power in the future, when they might really need it in an emergency or when a great opportunity arises.
There is something a bit backwards about fake debt - all that is teaching is that it OK to take on debt even when not necessary. Does not strike me as a good economic lesson. I teach debt avoidance at all costs.
I would not go as far as to say many.
The reason these families are known for this is because they are really the exception and not the rule. And they are a bit different business-wise in that, unlike Trump. Waltons, Rockerfellers etc., they had no sense of a tight-knit family business.
No one I went to high school with had to worry about paying for college or grad schools etc. and less than 10% of them (maybe as low as 5%) had rules like the Buffets and Johnsons. In fact, these students stood out because of it.
I think it’s useful to require summer jobs and perhaps some school year job as well (10-15 hours a week maximum), but I agree sticking a kid with unnecessary debt is just mean. If the parent can’t afford to be full pay, yes you can ask the kid to shoulder some of the burden if they want to go somewhere more expensive than what the parents can manage, but to just give a kid debt because you don’t trust them to work hard otherwise seems weird to me.
Some kids need more parenting and guidance than others. Parents being the best parents they can be may not look like it from an outsider; however parents do make mistakes and are human, just like kids will make mistakes. The hope is to keep mistakes small and not costly to the big and important goals.
Some parents are ‘done’ when the child is 18 - most times I see those parents as either overwhelmed and trying to keep their head above water (for whatever reasons they have in not having any more energy for this child), or are so needy/selfish that they only want to spend their time/energy/money on _______.
Some kids have loads of resources and squander it all. Other kids manage to rise above their circumstances.
I just think that sometimes really good communication and transparency with a mature YA will go a long way.
If the YA is immature, then more restraint and controls may be needed with parenting.
This is a very accurate statement, and I look at it vis a vis debt in the inverse of the scenario presented, i.e., the more immature a YA, the least debt you should give him / her, as it can really bury them if they are not mature enough to pay it off in a timely way.
Immaturity is not cured by giving debt, as they will be just immature about the debt, like with everything else. And debt is not a good lesson because it is longterm and the “pain” is not really even felt, especially to someone who does not think longterm.
I believe immaturity would be best cured by hard immediate impact action by simply saying, “There is no college period unless you clean up your act,” and not thinking twice to not paying the bill if they screw up.
The amounts a UG student can borrow w/o more fiscally sound adult co-signing is an example of how the system can somewhat restrain a YA who is making terrible decisions - as long as someone doesn’t enable them.
I am also all for parents having an academically lazy student ‘prove them-self’ with local community college (and commute from home) before going into more expense option at get-go (and potential for failure). If immature and lazy at CC, still more growing up needed.
Casual drug use also has some of these students getting into very bad trouble very quickly. Heroin. Seriously.
If under your roof, you may be able to intervene better. However sometimes a YA has to learn some lessons the hard way.
Isn’t alcohol the most common casually used recreational drug?
@Marian wrote:
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And I think that students in these families react to the need to contribute to their own education differently than those in families who could pay for all of their expenses but refuse to. Young people know when they're being deliberately manipulated, and many of them resent it.
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@mom2aphysicsgeek replied
It’s very interesting to see the variety of attitudes and parenting styles of people who post on this forum. Clearly, there are many different ways to handle similar situations. What works in one family may not work in another.
Our daughter will begin at Vassar College in the fall. We didn’t have a set amount exactly, but once the financial aid came back, based on what was required of the family, we decided on the following:
We will cap her at $15,000 in student loans by the time she graduates. She will be eligible for $19,000 total, but we decided $15,000 is reasonable both for her and for my wife and me. She will provide $2,000 toward the bill each year through her own working in the summer and/or work study, and if something gets in the way of her being able to pay during college, we will let her pay us back after she graduates and gets a job.
We didn’t do this so that she would have “skin in the game”. We did it simply because we don’t make a ton of money and we need her to contribute a little if she is to go there. We have one other child who will be starting college when she is a senior in college. Depending on our finances then and how much we have to pay to send him to school, we may or may not pay all of her loans off at that time. I would like to be able to actually. She has always been very invested in her education (very self-motivated), and so I don’t feel that for HER that helping to pay for it really does much. I DO think that working a little during college (even if it’s just in the summer) is good for her though, and having to raise $2,000 a year (she pretty much has the first year’s amount already, so she likely will not do work-study as a freshman unless she finds something she really wants to do) is good for that goal.
I agree. Especially considering the rash of news stories and folks I know IRL who are buried in education debt…even if they had done the right things like attended the local public college.
It’s also a bit backwards to what I was learning as a kid/adolescent about finances from older neighbors who grew up during the Great Depression/WWII and from personal observation: debt is something to be avoided whenever possible.
To them, inflicting it on your own kids unnecessarily would be unconscionable.
Most within my extended family would be of the “There is no college period unless you clean up your act” school of thought or pull their students out if they were goofing off to the point of academic probation.
Then again, they were of the mind that college was for the most accomplished HS students, not everyone and WILL prioritize college funds depending on who showed the most academic accomplishment/potential on basis of HS GPAs and attitude towards academics.
College is a good time to start letting kids learn about life’s little details. We make sure the tuition, housing and health insurance is paid, but the other things seem like appropriate challenges for the student to take care of out of their earnings.
Clothes (makes Christmas gifts a little more interesting)
Incidentals
Snacks
Supplies
Books
Auto expenses including insurance
Student trips
Recreation
Trips to and from home we supply for obvious reasons. 