<p>SEATTLE - A few months ago, Rebecca Gottlieb faced a difficult choice: continue on at her $50,000-a-year private school in Massachusetts, or leave her new friends and life and enroll at a cheaper school near home in Washington.</p>
<p>Gottlieb, 19, decided to transfer, dumping Tufts University for Western Washington University and joining the growing numbers of college students realizing that attending their dream school was no longer financially sustainable.</p>
<p>"My parents set up a college fund for me when I was little," the 19-year-old from Bainbridge Island said. "One year there almost drained it."...</p>
<p>Admissions directors at public universities around the country are reporting bumps in transfer applications, said Barmak Nassirian, a spokesman for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.</p>
<p>Indiana University has seen a 23 percent increase in transfer applications for next fall; the University of North Carolina had a 15.3 percent increase; and the University of California system saw an 11 percent increase in transfers of in-state students....
Economy</a> sends college students home - Education- msnbc.com</p>
<p>I wonder how she and her parents were planning to pay for 4 years of Tufts if they could only afford one year. Her dad said that they would somehow manage. </p>
<p>Western Washington is one of those schools that gets very good ink from the CC community. Sounds like it’ll all work out fine.</p>
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<p>I don’t think this is such an unusual situation. Very few people have enough money in the bank to pay for four years of college. If you’ve got one year’s full cost saved (or a little more, as this family apparently had), you’re probably doing pretty well. Most people count on a big slice of current income, financial aid, and loans to cover the rest. The problem comes if your income shrinks or begins to look uncertain due to the possibility of a layoff, at the same time your home value, retirement savings, and other investments are taking a beating—and financial aid isn’t keeping pace with the deterioration in your financial situation. Then suddenly loans may become hard or impossible to come by; the wisdom of borrowing begins to look suspect; and the idea that deep financial sacrifices now can easily be made up later looks overly optimistic, or downright naive. That’s the situation many families find themselves in now, even if their household income continues to make them ineligible for need-based financial aid, or eligible only for a small amount of it. A school like Tufts might have looked affordable in a strong economy when their personal finances were riding high. It now looks like an expensive and unnecessary luxury now that their personal financial situation is so much worse, and appears so much more uncertain.</p>
<p>Good points, bclintonk. What might have been possible or seemed a good idea a year ago is not seen that way today.</p>