<p>I have to speak up for those of us who chose to stay home with kids. You're right -- every choice has consequences. And it's not easy to return to the workplace after staying home, or hanging out on the "mommy track" for a number of years. </p>
<p>That's the choice we made, and it means that H and I will be still be working while many of you are retired. We opted to spend less than we could on housing, cars, vacations etc. and gave up the second income in order to provide the kind of home life we wanted our kids to have. We're not complaining -- we don't qualify for FA, but cannot easily afford private HS and private college. </p>
<p>We don't care, though. All we ever wanted was to give our kids the best opportunities we could. But please don't denigrate the choices that some parents make -- either to have one spouse stay home or to take jobs w/o travel or whatever. All of us, I dare say, have done the best we can. Live and let live.</p>
<p>SJ- not denigrating your choices at all-- I respect them and had my life been different I would have made the same choice that you did. But H and I got married acutely aware of how unexpected illness and job loss in middle age (watching a close relative go through it) can put you behind the 8- ball just as you hope to retire, and so we decided that we'd live on one income and bank the second-- or live on the second income if one of us got downsized or ill.</p>
<p>So much of this is luck; we've had a few brief periods of unemployment but never both of us at the same time. We've have illness and the usual but nothing that wasn't covered by our insurance, and nothing chronic that will approach our life time maximum. So- I'm not smug in saying that we made the right choice for us-- I'm acutely aware that the same choices could have been horrible if we hadn't been lucky as well.</p>
<p>However, a choice is a choice. And I do laugh at the carping I get from family members and friends because we live in a pretty open society-- it's just not a secret that orthopedic surgeons, by and large, make more money than dental hygenists. I'm not making a value judgement-- this is just an empirical observation. So when friends of mine with graduate degrees leave lucrative jobs to work as party planners with a local florist and then complain incessantly that they don't get prescription drug plans or tuition matching programs-- it's sort of comical. Did they expect a two -person family business to offer the same benefits as GE or Accenture? Does the NY Times not run articles about the uninsured virtually every day?</p>
<p>My life as a corporate sellout isn't as much fun most days as it would have been being home with my kids-- but they seem to have done fine with my overbearing mommying in smaller doses.</p>
<p>Sjmom--hope you don't think I was denigrating. I was speaking to the issue of someone saying as a stay-at-home mom, she wouldn't be able to send her kid to the school she graduated from, and implying that was the school's failing. that is what I disagreed with.</p>
<p>I worked part time most of my "career"; I'm definitely not where I would be had I worked full-time, but that was a choice I made, and I would not expect that choice to be subsidized by a college. OTOH, when we needed more money for college, going to work full-time while maintaining the same frugal lifestyle, meant the increase in income could go straight to paying for school, which worked out very well.</p>
<p>So I do not denigrate people's choices, but I do question when people bemoan the consequences (which of course you do not and have not done.)</p>
<p>I hope I did not sound denigrating, SJMom! I strongly feel, as you do, that everyone does what they feel is best for their family and their particular circumstances. Also, I was not saying that anyone on CC or this thread denigrated others for their choices, whatever they may be.</p>
<p>I was just complaining about one particular relative who denigrated ME for choosing to work when my kids were young, and now acts like I have somehow gamed the system for being able to afford to send my kids to private college and for having future retirement benefits.</p>
<p>I never denigrated her or anyone else for their choices, and I wish she wouldn't always have to find something wrong to say about my choices either.</p>
<p>EDIT - I just noticed Garland's phrase, "Bemoan the consequences" of one's choices. That is exactly the phrase I was looking for (I believe Garland was an English major or something similar :) ) Now that my relative has seen that my kids were done no harm by my working (so she can't denigrate me for working anymore), I have to listen to her bemoan the consequences of her choices.</p>
<p>There is a third leg to the stool in the parent staying at home to raise the kids or not arguments re: college costs- the kid.
So far we have been able to ride our own kids' accomplishments into categories of college funding support that would have not have been available otherwise.
No mommy wars, either. Most often it was the Dad who stayed home, or didn't maximize income.
Also no merit aid. Just kids with enough to offer to get the best need-based aid.
Here's to our kids. If not for their accomplishments, we wouldn't be thinking about high cost education. The local community college offers a low-cost alternative, and not a bad one!</p>
<p>I did misread the quote and my comment was off- point. I also think that parents on CC(including me historically) seem to focus on the top thirty or so lacs and the top fifty to one hundred universities(private mostly). Those schools' total costs including tuition, room and board, etc are significantly over $30,000 per year. At those schools at least 40 to 50% of the parents are paying the full costs. Unless a kid is at a Harvard or Amherst that truly are needs blind, FA is significantly made up of low cost loans and work study. I think all of we parents can agree that what we are paying to send our class of 2011 kids to attend college will go up every year between now and May 2011. Even for we parents who have higher incomes paying $50,000 per year and saving for retirement(I'm 59) is a significant stretch.</p>
<p>I know a number of solidly middle income folks who are being hard pressed to afford public universities based upon the annual upward drift of 5% to 8% per year. </p>
<p>It's interesting to note that in my neck of the woods quite a few folks send their kids to private school (often since grade school) to the tune of 10 to 15,000 a year and then they go to the local state university (no flagship but not too shabby) for a fraction of that cost. It's actually a relief when the kids graduate from high school. At this point bemoaning comes to mind.</p>
<p>That is another example of a choice that families make. Around here, many send their kids to private schools after 8th grade, but we told our kids that if they took advantage of everything offered to them at the public high school, they would do fine, and, thankfully, it did work out that way for both kids.</p>
<p>" Very few people pay the top private school tuition," so the title of this thread ends.</p>
<p>Is it supposed to end this way. Very few people are supposed to pay the top.
The cost of tuition will continue to rise because there are people who will pay for that education. </p>
<p>If there are a lot of people who can afford that type of education, then the school is not being selective enough nor is the price high enough to make distinctions amongst the applicants. </p>
<p>The question to each of us, Is there enough value in any cost of education ?, what ever that may be.</p>
<p>My newspaper ran this article yesterday and it went on to say, "For the first time, the College Board report includes the rapidly growing sector of for-profit education, which now caters to about 8% of students. Their average prices are also rising rapidly-to $12,089, up 6.2 percent from last year."</p>
<p>Could someone please tell me what is considered "for-profit" education that is attracting so many students?</p>
<p>Yes, University of Phoenix and Capella University are examples of for-profit higher education. There are quite a few other examples, e.g., DigiPen University.</p>
<p>Actually the college cost relative to the average income, assistance has become so skewed that those who can afford it are hiring consultants. In the current issue of the "Chronicle of Higher Education" Elizabeth Farrell has an article about the issue of costs escalating to the point of the surreal.
The mere fact that middle class families, have to consider hiring specialists to guide them around and enable them to pay for the education system, is a disturbing trend.
First because, is it just another layer of companies who are benefitting from what is already a scandalous and unequal situation? And the mere fact there is a market for consultants in this field indicates that this system is unmanagable for a growing portion of our society.
Now obviously the less affluent will never have the money to buy the services of a consultant to guide them around the education funding morass. As such they become easy targets for the sleazier elements within the financial mess which has grown around the current US higher education system.
And really, speaking as one inside the system, if a more equitable means of providing education for our students, isn't provided...the system as it exists now will simply become a enclave of the economically elite. Some might be inclined to state that those who lack status shouldn't aspire to attain it...but unless the citizens of US wish to live in a stagnated plutocracy...these type of trends cannot continue.
And quite truthfully, working within the system, I see most students, especially when the bills come due, are not getting their money's worth. Whether its an 8%, 6% or whatever escalation in costs.</p>
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And quite truthfully, working within the system, I see most students, especially when the bills come due, are not getting their money's worth.
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<p>Are you saying that you work in a college and that college doesn't offer good value for the money? How sure are you that that observation generalizes to most colleges?</p>