<p>I agree with all of the recents posts but the biggest factor distorting the system is the current FA system. Everyone is essentially paying a different price and the system relatively punishes saving and rewards spending. As I said before everyone except the poor should be paying the same price. How is the world does it make sense to give FA to familes making between 90th-96th percentile in income. Doesn’t that just mean the price is too high. What the top schools are really providing is a very selective method of grouping 18 year olds for a four year group learning camp where eveyone has a 1450 SAT and other nice accomplishments. The actually teaching to undergrads is much less important since almost all of it could be done on-line or by video-conferencing with one prof teaching thousands. All this new technology and yet the colleges are virtually unchanged in the past 30 years. This is no accident and it’s because the main purpose of the colleges is now feeding the educational beast rather than providing the American students with meaningful cost effective educations. Many schools today have more administrators than teachers all earning top dollar and good pensions. As I said before, for things to be sustainable the cost of the good(degree) must be equal to it’s value for the student(job). Virtually no undergrad degree is worth anything close to 250k and really for most top students serve merely as the entrance exam to grad/professional school which costs even more. Meanwhile the parents have underfunded pensions and are forced to limit their spending to pay the tuition which has other economic implications for the economy. So someone please tell me where is this financial train wreck is heading and where will it end?</p>
<p>SAY, I thought these increases would peak and plateau 20 years ago. Clearly I was wrong. I figured we could pay for our kids colleges based on our savings and jobs, but I was wrong. The cost is such that we cannot pay for a top priced private, and we did save for our kids. So the increases passed my expectations some 15 years ago.</p>
<p>I’m with you on this because I have four children. The actual cost to educate them will approach two million dollars which is insane since they will hopefully end up the very good tax paying citizens needed by a vibrant society. The end result is that the educated of society are choosing voluntarily to have fewer children while the other segments of society will have more offspring which over time will make everyone poorer. It’s a self destructive policy that is already much further ahead over in Europe where many countries will functionally cease to exist in 25 years since the native populations are having very fewer children. But getting back to FA the real problem is that the college FA officers pretend to care but as mercenary as any wall street banker. What other negotiation would you ever enter into by giving them every detail about your financial life. The FA officers use this info not to help you but to determine just how much they can extract from you and still get you to enroll.</p>
<p>SAY, it doesn’t have to cost $2m. You the parent can tell them that you can afford to give them each $X per year/per education. Then they can find options that make that work, be it a school with generous merit aid, public school, two years of community college first, working for a year or two to save up money before starting school, what have you. And if you’re estimating $2m to educate all four, it sounds like you’re including grad or professional school. Let them pay for that themselves. </p>
<p>It looks like you have a child at Carleton, one of those excellent-but-expensive schools. I took a look at their Common Data Set financial aid numbers. There were 512 matriculating freshman starting in 2010, of which 62% applied for aid. That compares with 1991 undergrad students, of which 86% applied for aid. And–the real shocker–when you look at just the non-freshmen students, 94% had applied for aid. The percentage of full-pay students is creeping upward, along with tuition costs. Some of the upperclassmen might have families suffering from job losses, causing more to ask for aid, but still, it’s a shocking increase. </p>
<p>The sad truth is that being a full-pay student is an admissions hook at many highly selective schools. Fewer schools are need-blind for admissions; they’ll keep the blinders on for most admissions decisions, but for the last 10-20% (or more?) of the class, they’ll go to the pile where the applicants have stated they’re not asking for any need-based aid. </p>
<p>I honestly don’t know where it will end, or how high costs can go. But ending need-based aid is not the solution. The students enrolling in expensive schools are increasingly aware of how much it costs, because they’re not receiving or asking for need-based aid.</p>
<p>*I have four children. The actual cost to educate them will approach two million dollars *</p>
<p>If it costs you 2 million to provide a college education then that is your choice to provide a luxury education. </p>
<p>I don’t understand the complaint. If I decide to buy 4 Lexuses for my kids, why would I post and complain about it? </p>
<p>And, I don’t understand why it will cost $500,000 per child anyway.</p>
<p>I don’t know where it will end, but it’s got to be getting close to the max schools can discount and/or parents can pay. I do know this, even with zero aid (only loans for us) there is no need to pay $250,000 per student to get an undergrad degree. I buy my luxury vehicles used…so I’m just that type of girl and my H appreciates that. I just graduated #1 to the tune of $83,500 roughly + $23,000 in Staffords. Two more to go…the plan is to spend around $250,000 for all three and the kids to pay Staffords if they choose. I gladly traded that (the college undergrad educations) for about doubling the size of our home 15 years ago. Plus we now don’t have a big house to unload as some of our friends do.</p>
<p>Yes is can be done for less but the cost for educating a child today is 400-500k when professional school is included. This is not a luxury choice since that is the price for every single top 20 school. In the past the state schools were a good option but today the cost at the UC’s while cheaper is rapidly getting close to the privates when you add in the common extra year to graduate. The professional schools already are about the same price as the privates so their is no way to avoid huge costs.</p>
<p>I also live in California, and I am seeing the vast majority of students finishing at UCs within four years. An extra year is absolutely not common. This is what I see based on information from friends, from numerous high schools (private and public), and from professors at the UCs. What DOES take longer is that some students will take off a year or a semester in order to work so that they can continue to afford to go to school. That does not translate to a “common extra year”. </p>
<p>Parents are not obliged to pay for professional or grad school for their children, let alone for four children. Most people have a hard enough time paying for undergrad. Parents paying for their children’s professional school is indeed a luxury item, same as if you were able to help them with a down payment or a fancy wedding. </p>
<p>So, your total bill for four children is around 4x$30k/year x 4 years = $480k. Throw in some inflation, we’ll take it up to $500k. Which is a big chunk of change, but unless you had triplets or quadruplets you were probably expecting that there was going to be a big tuition bill for college some time down the road. That’s also about the same as two full-pay educations at a pricey private–again, expensive but possible for a family earning $300k a year, depending on their spending priorities.</p>
<p>We put limits on what we could contribute for our kids. How I wish it could be more. For all I write and say about affordable choices, if one of mine did get into a highly selective school and really wanted to go, I would be obsessed with finding away and very unhappy if I could not. I have to say that my kids are bigger than I am in that regard. They have made it work without a thought.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove is makes no difference whether I pay or they take loans. What exactly is your point? Do you think the tuition is fairly priced? Can a typical undergrad get a job that justifies spending 250k? That is the issue not who ends up paying. As four the four versus five year thing the unsolvable financial crisis is going to cause massive disruptions and the following are from current students on CC.</p>
<p>"I’m not sure where you’re getting this info from, but doing any major or pre-professional track at any California public university could take 5 years to complete, because of the limited spaces in classes and funding and such. So saying that doing pre-med will limit you in that way is not the whole truth.</p>
<p>Anyways, the thing about doing pre-med at Berkeley is that it is horrifically cutthroat, to the point of sabotage. I’ve talked to Cal students and alumni, and they’ve told about the things pre-med students would do to each other in order to stay “competitive”. It sounds ridiculous; it’s one of the main reasons why I didn’t apply to Cal.</p>
<p>UCLA, on the other hand, is still competitive, but supposedly not as bad as Cal. UCLA also has its world-renowned medical center and medical school which can provide you many opportunities and connections that will benefit you as a pre-med student. In these ways, UCLA may be a better choice for undergrad. </p>
<p>Most importantly though, you should go to the school you like best and feels right for you. Certainly each of them has their own shortcomings or benefits, but it’s really what you make of them and how they can ultimately contribute to a satisfying undergrad experience. Good luck on your decision!" </p>
<p>Next</p>
<p>Senior Member</p>
<p>Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 2,151 I have a niece in pre-med at UCLA. She WILL graduate in 4 years - but she’s had to attend summer school, take on a heavier load of credits at times and had to be smart and assertive about her schedule needs. That said, she’s loved her experience. She chose UCLA over several other outstanding universities, some of which had offered her scholarship $$. From day one she felt she made the right choice, and that being forced to be more assertive about her schedule has made her less shy and a bit tougher: qualities that will serve her well in med school, I think.</p>
<p>SAY, the point is that you do not have to pay $250k per child for an undergraduate college education. You have the option to send them to a UC, a Cal State, or to a private where there is merit aid. A degree from a UC will cost $120k, not $250k. A student who can get into UCLA could find opportunities where merit aid will bring the cost even lower. What do you feel a college education is worth? $120k? $80k? Less? If that’s what you feel, then set that as the limit for your kids. </p>
<p>As for the examples you show below for how long it takes to graduate from a UC: there is one where one student says that it “could” take 5 years to complete, and another where the student was able to finish in four years by taking a heavy course load. Yes, it could take 5 years. That doesn’t mean it’s common. And you have to work hard to finish in four years. Well yes, college isn’t easy! You have to work hard and take lots of classes! This is hardly newsbreaking stuff. And the kid who had to work hard loved the experience.</p>
<p>Yes UC’s are cheaper but rapidly rising in cost. They are also not top twenty schools. You have not refuted any of my arguments. The system is in crisis and not sustainable over the next 10-15 years.</p>
<p>I still don’t see any source for the suggestion a 150k family gets aid without mitigating circumstances. And, now the disussion has morphed to the total cost of college PLUS grad school/professional school costs… and the pre-med rigor? </p>
<p>*the system relatively punishes saving and rewards spending. *
No, the system doesn’t reward “spending.” In theory, the system offers assistance to those who earn less and have fewer assets to draw on. It does demand families over certain income tiers pay more. Some might call that punishment. (I say, “in theory,” because so many schools offer lousy packages in general. Just read the disappointment threads this season.)</p>
<p>If you earn 300k and spend it all, you have still earned 300k. Spend every dime and your income remains the same. Your Fafsa and Profile still reflect this. If the spending means you have no assets (no home equity, no investments, bank accounts or, in some cases, cars and whatever else could be converted, etc) you still earned 300k.</p>
<p>Rare colleges like Harvard may aim to keep family contributions to 10% or so, up to the 180k income tier. (C’mon, they have a $25 billion endowment.) But in the research I did for a number of well-respected LACs, at 150-180k, you’d have to have 6 or so kids and/or some other qualified circumstances to get good aid.</p>
<p>If families accept the costs, choose to send their kids to these “overpriced” colleges, then why should costs change? As long as schools have an unending supply of families willing to foot their portion, whatever it is, willing to rob savings or take loans and turn down the heat, colleges have zero incentive to change. </p>
<p>Families play a larger role in this problem than they want to acknowledge. They buy into the idea that the kid has to go to School X because it is so great or they can’t bear to deny kiddo the “dream school.”</p>
<p>But that’s not really true once you factor in years and years of spending does it? It’s not like the college sees your parents’ entire job history, or when their salaries changed. If you spent that money on vacations and other recreational activities the colleges wouldn’t necessarily know would they?</p>
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<p>You are arguing that you are somehow entitled to send your children to a top twenty school for what you regard as a reasonable cost, a cost which you have still not set. </p>
<p>Here’s the refutation of your argument: no one is entitled to any such thing. Your children are not entitled to be granted admission to a top twenty school. All these schools, and many outside this magical top 20, are lottery schools for any student. Even if your children were admitted to these schools, the schools are under no obligation to provide enough money to make attendance fit within your budget. You are not entitled to tuition at whatever you deem a fair cost. </p>
<p>I tell my children that they can have anything they want, but they can’t have everything they want. If your household income is in that $300k a year range, then the same thing is true for you and your family.</p>
<p>The thing that gets me is that the cost of these schools has risen to a point where they have to be excluding more and more of the population. Coming up with the sticker price of these private colleges is getting increasingly difficult. Even families who can do this, are increasingly in positions where it is not a wise financial move to make for the rest of the family. Yes, you can raid your pension funds, borrow the money, take on another job, sell the house and move to cheaper digs. Those actions have to be balanced against the value of the expensive school. </p>
<p>I won’t go into the situation of a $300K or even a $150k family, since the bigger concern is with families making $40-60K a year maybe more, who are looking at sending their kids to college. In some states, this is a big problem since the state school tuitions and costs are high even in state. We often blithely say, “go to community college”, but too often those local state schools are sadly insufficient in quality. They may not prepare a student adequately in the foundation courses, and/or not have a lot of courses available . I stirred up a huge stench where I lived before when the local cc clearly was not serving the needs of the local community. The majority of kids were not getting even half the courses for which they would register and find out just days before the start of the term, and would have no viable alternatives that would move them along in getting an AA or the credits needed to transfer to a 4 year school. </p>
<p>Then you have the situation where there is no state school that gives a 4 year degree within affordable commutable range. You gotta buy a car to finish that degree and the cost of that is not insubstantial with insurance, maintenance, gasoline, repairs to go to ANY state school, or board which brings in additional costs.</p>
<p>If I could make changes, it would be from bottom, up and I would loot the privates now enjoying state and federal subsidies to make them. I think a lot of the privates overcharge by far and are getting away with it, and will as long the market will bear. I know some of them are having a lot of trouble now. The top schools will not be affected for a while since they have more families willing to pay for them than they have spots for their offspring. Where I think the shame is, is that the private schools are the better option. That is not the situation anywhere else in the world. I’d like to see the best school in each state be the public flagship and the most qualified kids in that state get sufficient aid to be able to go there. In that sense the UC’s are well on the way, though CA has a lot of issues it needs to address to make the model even better. I’d like UMass to rival and exceed Harvard in academic quality. Strip Harvard of all it federal and state monies and give to UMass to work its way to that goal. </p>
<p>Just examples I am giving, but you get the gist. In my state, the state schools, though excellent in certain departments and certainly available widely are not up to par with the top privates. No where close. I’d like to see the SUNYs up there with the UCs, UVA, UMich, yet keep the cost affordable. Take those PELLs, TAPs and Staffords away from those going to privates and use it to beef up the state system.</p>
<p>Most of the posters are so busy arguing about the hypothetical 300k family that you seem to miss the point. I picked 300k becuase that is about what most successful highly educated professionals that I know roughly earn. This would include attorneys, doctors, oral surgeons, and MBA business types. The 500k per child is the correct number for a parent to budget and it could be more if they are younger than middle school. Yes I am including grad/professional school because that is typically the only way a student can hope to get a high return for their education. After it all it certainly makes no economic sense to spend hundred of thousands to be educated and make less than gov’t/state union workers who get nice pensions and retire 50-55. Yes you can go to cc or your state school and yes you could make your child take on debt. All of these points are really mostly irrelevant to the main point. Many of you have spent a lot of time pointing out how well off someone is making 300k but if you do the math they(the mostly highly educated) can not afford to fully educate 2-4 children. Very few people who make 300k will ever be able to save 1-2 million after taxes plus they only make that after a number of years in the work force. So my point was if the doctors, dentists, and attorneys can’t afford college+ professional school without taking on big debts then yes the education system is headed for a train wreck and very soon. Back to what I said before; there must be some close correlation between the cost of the good(degree) and the value of the degree(job). Ultimately the perceived prestige of attending “elite schools” won’t be enough.</p>
<p>Well, SAY, if some of us hold a position different from yours, it is based on the position you stated and the examples you defended. This is the first mention of hypothetical.<br>
I, too, know some professionals earning at that level (incl many from my grad school years and in the sorts of profssions you now mention.) Some, but not all, are the ones whose 16 year olds are driving he Escalade to school. Wanna chew on something? How about the fact that the tiers for finaid are stuctured such that the family earning 59k gets an entirely different view for FA than the family earning 61k.<br>
Many of those around you are struggling with the cost of living, the realization they have little for retirement, the reality of caring for older relatives, concerns about home or car maintenance, etc. Many are “stuck” on how to get their kids a decent post-hs education so he or she can achieve some greater potential. Those of us who are highly educated- and who see the true intellectual spark in our kids- suffer though the financial challenges on a daily basis and make the wisest decisions we can, on a daily basis. </p>
<p>Some parents here worked the merit aid options. Some of their kids are at great State U’s. I daresay that for many parents here, little “fell in their laps.” There isn’t much sympathy for someone earning 300k, who can’t make it on a budget that is so many times greater than others endure.</p>
<p>You can call tuition 500k per kid, if you wish. You can add in expenses for study abroad with a generous travel allowance from mom and dad. You can talk, as some parents did on some older threads, of the “expense” of buying kiddo his first house. Or, taking the whole family on the winter cruise. It can go on indefinitely.</p>
<p>SAY, the point is that you do not have to pay $250k per child for an undergraduate college education. You have the option to send them to a UC, a Cal State, or to a private where there is merit aid.</p>
<p>*Yes UC’s are cheaper but rapidly rising in cost. They are also not top twenty schools. You have not refuted any of my arguments. </p>
<p>You are arguing that you are somehow entitled to send your children to a top twenty school for what you regard as a reasonable cost, a cost which you have still not set. </p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Slithey is right. YOU have decided that only a Top 20 school is good enough for your kids. If I decide that only Ferraris are good enough for my kids, then why would I be upset that Ferrari (or even Mercedes) hasn’t made their cars affordable for me to buy for my children?</p>
<p>Are you going to give me an ounce of sympathy if I post, “Dang, I can only buy Toyotas for my kids.”</p>
<p>You can’t expect to have Harry Winston jewelry standards for colleges at “regular people’s” prices.</p>
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<p>As many posters have written again and again, all of these high income professionals CAN afford college for their children, even college+professional school, and without big debt. They can do so by having their children pursue merit aid or by going to less expensive schools. Just because people can’t send their children to top 20 schools doesn’t mean that the entire system is failing. </p>
<p>The big problem, as cptofthehouse so eloquently described, is with lower-income families not having access to affordable public options. That’s the train wreck in the making. Wealthy parents not being able to pay for their child’s law school tuition isn’t even a fender-bender.</p>
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<p>You aren’t keeping up with the times. State and federal governments are going after those pensions with a vengeance. Our children won’t have this kind of job as an option; they’ll be responsible for their own retirements, and they’ll be working far longer.</p>