How did you justify paying for a reach over a financial safety?

Parents Forum
341

<p>@Pepper03 - in large part I agree.</p>

<p>However, there is a danger in going too far with the “it’s none of my business what anyone else does if I don’t pay for them” mentality. Part of living in an interdependent society is acknowledging that certain choices do impact other people. And potentially feeling that some “redistribution” or taxation of wealth is good for the common purpose.</p>

<p>So it is a legitimate line of questioning to analyze what might happen if middle-class people are priced out of elite/private colleges on a large scale. In that context, it can seem like other people’s business if huge gobs of wealth are spent on Birkin bags or Maserati cars instead of education (their own or other people’s).</p>

<p>Wealth is not accumulated in a vacuum, so it’s not as simple as “they earned it; it’s theirs to waste if they want”. You just have to look at economic data for the past century or even less, to see that extreme wealth happens in the same context as extreme income disparity. Do we really believe, as a nation/world, that this is appropriate? If not, what’s a good fix?</p>

<p>Reading this, it seems like I’m a lot more of a Socialist than I actually am - I’m really not. But I can understand that line of reasoning, and I am sympathetic enough to feel a little bit nauseated at the thought of people buying new toys or accessories every season when it is enough money to send a kid to Harvard or Yale.</p>

342

<p>To be less facetious for a moment, this whole issue of judging others is interesting to me (see the tattoo thread for lots more). It seems to me that in a conversation like this one, we can discuss whether certain decisions are sensible or not, under various different circumstances. Having a point of view about this is not the same as judging somebody. If I think bungee-jumping is a foolish and dangerous pastime, am I judging people? Well, sort of. But how can we talk about whether something is a good idea or a bad idea otherwise? If I say that, in my opinion, it’s important for people with kids to have a will, am I judging people who don’t have them? Well, sort of.</p>

343

<p>Most decisions are judgements. There often isn’t a right or best answer, just an option that is right or best for you. I’m all for critical analysis and judgements. I’m just not sure it’s right to say someone is bonehead because they got a tattoo or chose Mizzou over WashU, Illinois over Northwestern, UConn over Yale when money wasn’t the issue. It’s about values. They value education, just not an elite education. Bonehead is saying I’m buying a Maserati, you’re on your own for college cause it’s a waste of time. And FWIW neither brother has a Maserati, but one does have a Tesla, which is such a cool car. </p>

344

<p>I, for one, like to read opinions of people who are different than I am. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy reading people’s descriptions of their own experiences and thought processes. It doesn’t mean I’ll agree with them for my own life. But it doesn’t mean I’m judging them either. And, when I do read something that changes my mind or challenges my way of thinking, it makes up for the aggravation caused by posts from vapid 17-year-olds who celebrate spending grandpa’s money with a shot of Scotch. (So, okay, sometimes I do judge. I’m human.)</p>

345

<p>I reserved “boneheaded” for things I’m pretty sure I would never do myself.</p>

346

<p>Hunt- we all judge. I think my acquaintance is nuts for selling her kids short in looking for colleges which have fun sororities and nice sports facilities instead of trying to encourage them to get a great education. But every time you see a news report which shows that college A (second tier, country club environment, few Pell awardees and bad need-based aid) costs as much as Cal Tech and you wonder, “who pays full freight for a second tier college?” I can tell you- my friend and her ilk.</p>

347

<p>

</p>

<p>I’d say calling them irresponsible IS judgmental!</p>

<p>I don’t care how others spend their money, or what they buy, or how much it costs.</p>

<p>And that includes both personal items, and college costs.</p>

348

<p>I can’t judge because I usually don’t know “the rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey used to say. Even for my closest friends, I don’t know everything that’s going on with their bank statements, or behind bedroom doors. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Depends. I expect folks to pay for the boring responsible things first, assuming they’re not living in such poverty that they are living paycheck to paycheck to manage food and shelter. Insurance, savings, retirement, health care. If you then want to buy, oh, $20k of fancy wheel rims for your Escalade, or have weekly mani-pedis, that’s fine by me. </p>

349

<p>“I reserve boneheaded for things I’m pretty sure I’d never do myself”. Haha. I bow before you! I use it to describe things I do almost every day.</p>

350

<p>Slithey…I hear you. But really I do NOT care how others spend their money. If they want to buy things that I would view as luxuries, in lieu of necessities, it’s fine with me…they are spending their own money, not mine.</p>

<p>Disclaimer…if they are putting minor children at risk because of lack of food or medical care because they are buying luxuries, I would raise an eyebrow!</p>

351

<p>

</p>

<p>Contrary to popular belief around here, $300,000 per year is still a very high income, even in expensive areas. The median household income in NYC is only about a sixth of that. So someone earning $300,000 per year should be able to live an ordinarily low cost lifestyle to save up enough for kids’ expensive college and/or other expensive things. (That’s assuming that s/he is not burdened by huge student loans from medical school, law school, or undergraduate.)</p>

352

<p>

</p>

<p>Saying that someone is judgemental IS judgemental.</p>

353

<p>

</p>

<p>You can really only judge that if you have actually owned a Maserati.
I agree with the general principle because it makes far more sense to buy an Aston Martin instead of Maserati.</p>

354

<p>I agreed earlier that if a parent and their kid plainly do place a high premium on a particular school, I think it generally makes sense to pay for it if they can responsibly do so. And yeah, I’m comfortable judging someone who plunks down 120K on a Maserati but tells their kid there isn’t any money for a pricey college…</p>

<p>But I think this conversation is usually dominated by the assumption that most people who choose not to pay for the pricey college fall into one of two camps:a)they have a lot of, but not unlimited money and balk at paying that much extra for a more expensive school even though they think that school really does offer a significantly superior experience or b) they don’t actually care all that much about education, have little respect for intellectual pursuit, and take the attitude “a degree’s a degree wherever you get it.”</p>

<p>That may, in fact, be an accurate assessment of most people in that boat; I don’t know. But as college costs rise ever higher, I think (and, frankly, hope) that more and more people are going to be inclined to question how many colleges really are qualitatively superior to a host of cheaper options at all, let alone to the tune of 35K extra a year. </p>

<p>After three years of teaching elite college students, and four as an undergrad at a similar school, I think that, if we’re talking about really elite schools, it is worth paying the extra if you have it, whether or not there is a tangible (or even intangible) ROI to warrant it; whether the experience in these places, let alone the financial payoff, is actually 150-250K better than that of students at the average state school, it is, in my opinion, worth enough that I’d pay full freight if I had the money to do it without hardship. </p>

<p>But even having said that, I also think that the impression people have of some of these schools is…well… a little inflated. I hear again and again that it is so super-hard to get into certain schools that everyone walking around is brilliant and special, and I’m just not seeing it. My best students are truly impressive, and do enrich the level of class discourse, but a lot of the students are pretty ordinary - well above average, certainly, especially given the dismal state of K-12 education in a lot of places in the country, but not people who I’d point to as evidence of the “intellectual thickness” of the community. And sure, in some cases, these students probably have other things going for them, but in a lot of cases, I get the sense they are exactly what they appear to be: bright kids from fairly privileged backgrounds who worked hard to get where they are - nothing to sneeze at, but not necessarily the best minds of a generation among whom it is a privilege to exist. As for the teaching, it is a funny thing: while this school does have a high concentration of big name faculty, year after year I see our newly-minted, fancy-pants PhDs - who, by the way, have been doing their fair share of teaching, too - thrilled to go off to places like Arizona State and UC-Riverside (plenty of them, of course, don’t get tenure-track jobs at all). Maybe they’ll stay there, and maybe they won’t; maybe they will themselves become leading scholars, and maybe not, but in the meantime, there are a heck of a lot of public university students benefiting from some pretty smart, accomplished people. </p>

<p>And again, when you get to a school of a certain level, despite everything I’ve just said, I still do think it is worth paying the extra money. You do get to be around smarter people, and more renowned faculty (who may not teach the same texts or classes at Arizona State as they do here); there are certain opportunities here that aren’t as widely available at other places, and the name will sound nice when it comes time to apply for jobs. My question is, though, if even the very elite schools (and I have a similar impression of my own, perhaps marginally more fancy-pants undergrad, although as a student I didn’t get quite the same perspective as I do when teaching) aren’t perhaps the absolute bastions of intellect and pathways to success that a lot of people assume them to be, at what point are you really paying mainly for bragging rights and a wealthier (rather than brighter) student body? </p>

<p>I don’t have an answer, but I can say that before we ask people to stop paying 60K for Harvard, maybe they should think twice about paying 60K for BU. In CC-land, the choice is often between full-pay at a more elite school and merit money at a place like BU, but there are plenty of people paying the full cost of attendance at BU as well, when I’m not sure the person who tells their BU-loving kid “Tough. You’re going to UMass” is the one with warped values in that particular scenario. </p>

355

<p>Is a Tesla in the same class? :)) </p>

356

<p>

</p>

<p>I think there is too much in that sentence. It should be 2 different cases.</p>

<p>At CC, plenty of people put forward the idea that education is valuable, but it doesn’t matter where you go undergrad if you plan on a PhD or Masters since final degree is what counts.</p>

<p>I disagree with that generally, since I think undergrad does build a foundation.</p>

357

<p>

</p>

<p>Similarly, some families feel strongly that their child’s interests are best served by investing the educational dollars earlier than college. Those folks will pay for top-notch private K-12, and then go for less expensive options for undergrad. In our area of SoCal, a year at the most highly sought after/academically rigorous private high schools runs $30-40k. Four years of private high school plus four years at a UC campus ends up costing pretty much the same as four years of public high school plus four years of full-pay at a private. What’s “better”? Depends on the kid. Sometimes there is no “better”. There’s no one size fits all answer. </p>

<p>Of course, there are plenty of folks at those private high schools who can manage to swing four years of full-pay private undergrad as well. And there are many, many more families who will struggle to manage two years of community college followed by two years at a UC after 13 years of public K-12. </p>

358

<p>Haha @thumper! you are right!</p>

<p>Guilty as charged! I had in mind when I was writing my post a particular case of a friend who talked to me about how to reach a decision about her older child. The kid had great offers as fine schools but wanted to go to the dream school at full pay. Financially I told her I wouldn’t do it-based on the debt they already had prior to paying for college. They ended up being full pay-which means they have to be pretty maxed out on debt. OK fine that is your decision best of luck. Now second child is coming along and ready to look at schools-they won’t be able to let them have the same choices as the oldest-why didn’t they take that into consideration when they were making the decision? Well gee I don’t know considering when I was helping you out the first time I mentioned that they had another one coming along. </p>

<p>It appears they now have another new car! Good for them-an expensive one at that-when my friend just told me two weeks ago they didn’t know how they were going to afford school for the younger one. It does get hard not to be judgmental when you see such behavior-I don’t know how they are managing. My point about not wanting to pay for it is this-no more bailouts. </p>

<p>I amend my prior statement to say I TRY not to be judgmental-that is a more honest statement. I don’t really care where people spend their discretionary income either so this doesn’t turn into a debate about paying for the basic needs of living.</p>

359

<p>Firstly- this is wonderfully articulate and worth while discussion, everyone.</p>

<p>"…it can seem like other people’s business if huge gobs of wealth are spent on Birkin bags or Maserati cars instead of education"</p>

<p>Do middle class folks with kids buy these things? Really? I haven’t met even one of them.</p>

<p>For the record, we have ONE car that is fifteen years old and was on the cheap side to begin with. We don’t go on vacations. We try to manage and we value education, and we like both the public and private schools, depending on many factors.
The fact that higher education, now more necessary than ever, should become a luxury in a country that wants to be competitive, should be of concern to all Americans. We do not want at this historic junction to be where the children of the uber-rich and a smattering of the poorest on scholarship are the only ones getting this training/education for the 21st century. State schools were supposed to ensure this won’t happen, but they are becoming expensive enough that working your way through school is not as doable as it was only a generation back.</p>

<p>I have no idea how to solve it, that’s why I’m not running for anything. But I wanted to strengthen the point that this is more than a private to-each-his-own matter, in the end. </p>

360

<p>I wish I had not used the word judge either. Of course I have opinions who doesn’t-but I don’t (or try not to) assign some moral failing to another person based on a decision they make which I may not agree with. I hope that makes sense?</p>