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<p>Public colleges were a lot cheaper (adjusted for inflation), so that “working one’s way through (public) college” was a much more doable option back then. Private colleges have also gone up in price, though not as much as public colleges have.</p>
<p>“I think what has changed is that more parents feel the need to pay for their kids’ college education and they themselves have taken on more debt, which is not included in the above numbers. Just one example from some friends–they have taken on over $80,000 in loans for their 2 kids so their kids could go to their dream schools. They had other, less expensive options that would not require them to take any debt. No idea why they went that route but back in our day, that would NOT have happened.”</p>
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<p>Maybe THAT’S it. Among our peers, we have been expected to work like heck to put our kids through a very good, if not dream, school. That has changed dramatically over the last two to three years. Job loss, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and escalating costs have all contributed to a new reality where in-state flagship replaces high-cost private, regional state school replaces flagship, and community college replaces regional state school. They all still GO to college, just a little cheaper one as a rule.</p>
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<p>It’s a risky gambit, but not without some logic. A generation ago, parents were not so worried about saving for retirement, especially if they had seniority at a Fortune 500 company and a healthy pension waiting for them. Nowadays, no one has half a million dollars sitting in a portfolio available for discretinary spending. Those days are gone. Hence, the need to take out loans.</p>
<p>jnm123–I call it the Michael Jordan factor. There was a definite shift in parenting as soon as Michael Jordan started making millions wearing tiny shorts and playing with balls. Parents moved from feeling that if their offspring went to college and were self-supporting they had done their job and done it pretty dang well. That shift turned to a parent feeling like their parenting skills were in question if their child wasn’t the “best” at everything. The KIDS know the difference and know who the best athletes, musicians, students are and for the most part it doesn’t bother the kids that they are not the “best” but not so for the parents. </p>
<p>How often did your parents talk to your teachers at school or hound you to get your homework done or make excuses for you if you didn’t? Now, that is pretty much the norm. We have online gradebooks, which are nice, but just a symptom of the over-involvement of parents (yes, us included).</p>
<p>Look at the parents here that are shunned by their neighbors if junior isn’t accepted at Harvard (ok, exaggeration but that is the feeling that comes across in many posts). Look at the posters here with 7th graders wanting to know what programs to get their kids in so they can get into Harvard–does the kid even know what Harvard is let alone want to go there? It’s bragging rights for most parents. Along with that though, comes the need to PAY for that education and to heck with retiring and enjoying your own life, you are mortgaged to the hilt but you get to wear a fancy sweatshirt :D. If we asked our parents to do that for us we would have been laughed at. Our parents either expected us to pay for it on our own or only paid as much as they could afford without loans.</p>
<p>circuitrider–there is NO need to take out parent loans for a child to go to college, ever. Parents do it all the time but there is no NEED. That is an assumption parents make. There are 100’s of other schools that are affordable where kids can attend and graduate with little to no debt of their own and NO debt for their parents. The problem is, these schools aren’t in the top 20 of any list and people assume they aren’t good schools. The school our DD is attending isn’t on any list. We’ve talked to ONE person that has even heard of her school in our area, yet ALL of the kids that applied to medical school over the past 3 years at this school got into medical school (dd’s chosen field). Please tell me why I should take out 1000’s in loans for her to go elsewhere that doesn’t have even close to that acceptance rate :D. What is left of her costs for school we can pay out of our discretionary income and not miss it because it just isn’t that much money–private school too.</p>
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<p>Ha. All the time. My mom got me a tutor for French when I got 2 75s in a row. When I brought home a 98 on a test, she’d say “that’s nice what did you miss?”.</p>
<p>I’m a lot cooler with my kids but, as you can see by my participation on CC, I am not uninvolved either :D</p>
<p>this graph is relevant, it shows that since 2000:</p>
<p>average tuition/fees at a public college: +72%
average earnings for full-time workers with a bachelors: -15%</p>
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<p>I presume you mean, “Why should I pay for a more expensive college when Podunk U was enough to get my dd into [name of prestigious graduate school]?”</p>
<p>Well, not every child knows from Day 1 that they want to be a neurosurgeon; if, at the end of the day, they change their mind, what do they have left other than a degree from Podunk U? But, more importantly, it’s a pretty hard brick telling your child - not that they can’t have the school of their dreams - but, they can’t have the kind of education that YOUR parents could afford a generation before.</p>
<p>No, I wouldn’t call borrowing heavily to finance an Ivy or a NESCAC education a NEED – but, I would call it a SYMPTOM. :)</p>
<p>soccerguy, you must have forgotten to include a link to that graph.
Maybe you mean this one:
[Whoa</a>, College - The Daily Beast](<a href=“Whoa, College”>Whoa, College)</p>
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Actually there’s a school of thought that a student who goes to Podunk and gets a great GPA has a better shot at med school than one who went to a selective one and finished with unremarakble stats.</p>
<p>@SteveMA “My parents did not contribute a dime to my education though. I had ample choices and worked my butt off to pay for a private school, that cost a heck of a lot less net then the state schools I applied to thanks to some nice scholarships. The rest I covered with loans.”</p>
<p>I’m curious if you think your kids could work their way through college now and take out the loans they need to pay for anything they couldn’t cover through their wages?</p>
<p>My husband worked for Hostess (his union was not the one on strike) and his salary has paid for our oldest daughter’s college costs so far (she’s a junior). We are currently trying to figure out how to pay her last year (after cashing in some small investments to finish out this year) and start paying for our younger daughter’s first year of college. </p>
<p>My older daughter had a job at a daycare this summer and worked 30-40 hours a week but only at minimum wage. That was definitely not enough to pay for her tuition and she goes to the cheapest state university but it is across the state from us so she has to live there (she received a couple scholarships the first year but they were not renewable). As far as I know, the only loans she qualifies for are Federal Direct loans and the maximum is $5,500/year. I don’t think she could get any other loans since her work is sporadic (during the summer for a few months and with a job on campus as a tour guide but she only gets a few tours a week @ minimum wage–enough to have a little spending money in her pocket and that’s about it). Most of the on campus jobs are work study which she does not qualify for but maybe she will now that my husband is out of work. The college is in a sad, pathetic little town with few businesses for the 12,000+ college students to find work (they don’t even have a movie theater or major store other than a Safeway grocery store).</p>
<p>My younger daughter started working earlier this year and only works two-three hours a day after school (she worked a little more during the summer). She gets $10/hour (not much higher than Washington’s minimum wage) and is saving for college but that’s not going to give her much money for the first year and she’ll have to give up her job to go to college.</p>
<p>I just want to point out that it is not as easy as it once was to put oneself through college these days. Also, in this economy, I don’t think it is wise to take out a bunch of loans without a great prospect of finding a living wage job in the future. As a parent, I know I am not comfortable taking out any loans for my kids because who knows when/if my 48 year old husband is going to be able to find work again and if so, will it even be more than minimum wage?</p>
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<p>This may have less to do with Michael Jordan than demographics.</p>
<p>Decades ago, getting into a good state university or good non-elite private university was not especially difficult compared to now. That is likely because the population has grown faster than the number of places in those good universities. So one has to be “better” than one’s parents had to be in order to get admitted to the same university that one’s parents went to, due to increased admissions competition.</p>
<p>In addition, the elite universities reduced their preference for the scions of inherited socioeconomic eliteness in favor of more academic merit based admissions. Those complaining about what goes on behind closed doors in their admissions offices today may want to look up how they mainly took students from socially (but not necessarily academically) elite prep schools back then. So that meant that more people felt that they had a chance at the elite universities, if they got high enough grades and test scores, increasing the competitive push.</p>
<p>There certainly were a lot of machinations behind the scenes in admissions back then, and maybe it wasn’t scrutinized as closely as now. A good example is University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign, our state flagship. A top 50 public U. then & now, admissions as it turned out was rife with corruption, and only in the past 5 years or so has this ‘clout’ been uncovered to the public. We all kind of knew it went on, that certain kids got in that were dumb as a box of hammers.</p>
<p>Currently, UIUC is SO competitive that many of the best & brightest in the state cannot get admission, so they end up elsewhere. A story in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune reports that schools such as Mizzou court these high-achieving kids (and their paying parents) with in-state tuition after freshman year, making it affordable. In the meantime, Illinois as a state is flat broke & must lure more full pay OOS applicants, many of them international from the Pacific Rim, who have high stats and can handle the $45,000 out-the-door per year costs.</p>
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<p>haha, thanks for the assist… I had a different article ([Shocking</a> Chart On Tuition Vs. Earnings For College Grads | Personal Finance | Minyanville’s Wall Street](<a href=“http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/personal-finance/articles/Shocking-Chart-on-Tuition-Vs-Earnings/11/30/2012/id/46251]Shocking”>http://www.minyanville.com/trading-and-investing/personal-finance/articles/Shocking-Chart-on-Tuition-Vs-Earnings/11/30/2012/id/46251)) but yes, it was the same graph =)</p>
<p>ucbalumnus–I wasn’t referring to admissions at all. I don’t think that admissions to schools is any easier or harder than it was when I was going to school personally, it’s a perception of what is happening. Sure thousands more are applying to more schools but often they are not viable candidates to begin with. </p>
<p>Anyway, I was talking about the perceived NEED to apply to such schools or the perceived notion, seen here every single day, that if your child doesn’t attend a top 20 school they are doomed to flip burgers for the rest of their life. THAT was not the case 30+ years ago. I think the internet has changed that as well. Before you could see what “everyone else” was doing, you had your social circle as a references. Since most of your friends went to regional schools and did just fine, there was no need to fee like you HAD to go to Harvard to get a job anywhere. </p>
<p>Search these boards, almost daily someone comes here and posts a thread about “my child’s friends are all applying to HYP but my child’s grades aren’t good enough, should we still apply” or “I can’t show my face because my child didn’t get into an Ivy” type threads. Even on the acceptance list thread–people go out of their way to make sure people know that their child got into the “honors” program at a “lesser school” or that that school was “just a safety”. Why, who cares, it’s an acceptance to a school your child liked for one reason or another, leave it at that.</p>
<p>Also, I think there are a lot of assumptions about what goes on behind closed doors at various colleges that are just that, assumptions. Someone hears about the super student that didn’t get into the school and all of the sudden your child has to be better than that super student. What people aren’t taking into consideration is the rest of the deal for that student. I know several super students that didn’t get into a lot of the schools that applied to. I can only guess why but I have a pretty good idea of what that is–lack of social skills for many of them. I also know students that have gotten into EVERY Ivy and similar they applied to, with lower GPA’s and test scores then these super students. Again, educated guess would be that these kids are outstanding candidates because they are good students, well rounded and will represent the school well down the road. </p>
<p>I really think it’s a dart game for lottery schools though. The admissions officers post the apps on the walls and toss darts…if you get a dart, you are in :D.</p>