<p>I read one study that said the amount of college debt taken out by parents is equal to the amount taken out by students. The parent debt mainly includes PLUS loans and home equity loans. The average debt per graduate figures for various colleges typically only include debt in the student’s name. Too many parents are putting their own retirements at risk by agreeing to send their kids to overpriced colleges.</p>
<p>If a student is willing to attend a college that is one tier lower in prestige, they often can receive a substantial merit scholarship. In many cases, it may also result in a better education and smaller class sizes, depending upon the major.</p>
<p>“The part that kind of bugs me about the FAFSA and aid calculations is how families who scrimped and saved and have the savings are penalized compared to other families with same incomes and households. We have higher EFCs, not fair!!”</p>
<p>This bothers me to no end!! If you had your way, you’d be punishing the KIDS of parents who didn’t save. My parents did not save, I rec’d financial aid AND took on loans, my parents did not help cover the difference between cost and aid/scholarships, and I am stuck with the debt. Without that aid (which you would take away), college would have been a pipe dream. </p>
<p>"FAFSA does discourage savings qua savings. If you are applying to FAFSA only schools (most schools are FAFSA only), the equity in your home, the value of your retirement plans, cash value of life insurance policies, and the value of your cars are not used to compute your EFC. Savings are used to compute your EFC (at a 5% level). "</p>
<p>5% is not alot. If you have $100,000 is savings, I think you can afford to contribute $5,000 of that. </p>
<p>I actually think that basing the calculation off of you savings & income (liquid assets) is a good thing. Despite your protests, I doubt there are many students of super rich families who get a lot of need-based aid because their families are not savers ;).</p>
<p>I started a thread some months ago about one of our cousins whose son started college this year. They saved, but not quite enough. Their son was a good student but not quite good enough for the top, need blind, full need guaranteed to be met. The same with the test scores. So were faced with an array of college choices that ranged from definitely unaffordable to free. Like my son, this cousin got a full tution scholarship from a local Catholic school that made this private option even less expensive than the local community college. With a part time job, both boys could commute to college and do quite welll, getting a paiid off car out of the deal as well. </p>
<p>In the end, he went for a college where he could board, and to pay for it, even after an award, it means loans, current income (work) and savings from both the parents and the student. Doable, but making things a bit tight. Future, current and past income is the way I look at it.</p>
<p>And yes, I agree with those who have said before me 60K/year is NOT the norm for middle class families. </p>
<p>If you go to a 4 year state college the tuition cost is more likely to range from 15-25K. Room/Board and living expenses on top of that is obviously more, but you can bring those costs down by living at home and/or going to community college. Still ALOT of money that people struggle with of course.</p>
<p>i could be wrong, but commuting from home is not an option for UCalifornia freshman class. And to send my child to the next tier (CSU) is just not an option. He worked too hard for this. We will have to drive our current cars a bit longer and postpone retirement for a few years.</p>
<p>Personally, I’ve never had much sympathy for those who choose to go to a 4 year university over community college for the first two years when the cost between the two is significant (which is quite often). That is a choice you make that is far from necessary to get a great 4 year education/degree IMO.</p>
<p>I find my a dozen-year-old car more attractive and plan to drive it some more years. I thought about replacing it when kiddo was to leave for college last year.</p>
<p>There are differences between community colleges and four-year universities and the four-year university might be the more appropriate choice for some students, particularly those interested in research or those interested in taking upper-level courses or graduate courses.</p>
<p>Our D had 3 semesters of CC. She then transferred into great but expensive private U. Her spending a few terms at CC allowed her to get many of her GEs out of the way and minimized the time both S and D were in college at the same time. </p>
<p>Neither we nor our kids said D worked too hard in HS to go to CC and it was a very affordable option for us. </p>
<p>I do wonder how they can study private and home equity and perhaps retirement loans parents may have taken to fund kids college expenses.</p>
<p>“There are differences between community colleges and four-year universities and the four-year university might be the more appropriate choice for some students, particularly those interested in research or those interested in taking upper-level courses or graduate courses.”</p>
<p>I guess it depends on how much money you think upper-level courses, graduate courses, and potential research opportunities are worth for a freshman or sophomore. Would they even have access to these as lower-level students? </p>
<p>I guess I am speaking as a business major - in which there was no way a freshman was going to be taking a graduate or upper division course (I’d imagine this would be even more true for research intensive majors, but what do I know?). </p>
<p>But point taken, there are other qualitative factors that come into play. I just think that in many (most?) cases, community college is a viable and much more affordable option that is overlooked by middle class families.</p>
<p>And I retract my statement. I almost always have sympathy, just not as much as I would towards someone who did try to make more affordable options and are still struggling.</p>
<p>When I was in college, it was common for freshman and sophomores to be able to take upper division courses at a four year school, but students who do so are typically among the more advanced and academically oriented students. It was particularly common among math majors, most of whom came in with at least AP credit, and some of whom have already exhausted their community college’s math courses while still in high school. But students in other majors, like engineering and CS, did it as well (indeed, at least one engineering major was and is structured so that upper division courses were supposed to begin in sophomore year).</p>
<p>For the community college and transfer route to be suitable for such a student, the student needs to complete other college courses needed for transfer (general education courses and the like) concurrently with the math courses (rather than going to community college just for math courses while taking regular high school courses otherwise). Presumably, that is how at least one [math</a> prodigy](<a href=“http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/at-just-14-ucla-math-student-moshe-229359.aspx]math”>Newsroom | UCLA) did it.</p>
<p>However, for the large number of students who are not going to take advanced courses early, starting at community college is a perfectly reasonable option, despite the common opinion on this forum that it is “beneath” the student in question. Indeed, for a very undecided student, it may be a better option in giving more freedom to explore without as much of a financial or administrative requirement to decide on a major early (extra community college semesters are generally less expensive than extra semesters at a four year school).</p>
<p>Hmmm, what if the parent said before kid 1’s college applications that each kid gets $X for college (possibly adjusted for inflation for the later one)? Kid 1 gets scholarships to bring the net price of expensive college to below $X. If it is made clear to kid 2 that kid 1 could go there only because of the scholarships, is it still likely that kid 2 will feel “entitled” to go to the same expensive college even if s/he does not get the scholarships to bring the net price to below $X?</p>
<p>Yes, I do realize that each family has to make and live by the rules that work for that family. As a PRACTICAL matter, both our family and a friend’s family decided NOT to prohibit our younger child from applying to same school older sib attended with GREAT merit aid even tho younger sib was full freight. </p>
<p>It is largely because older kid was so relatively inexpensive that we could consider letting younger kid be full pay.</p>
<p>By the time we get finished paying for our first 3 kids to get through college, we will be so poor - our 4th will get lots of FA (and food stamps). ;)</p>
<p>This is probably going to be our situation too. What we have not had to spend on our older child we will be able to transfer to the younger (or use for the older to attend grad school if that’s the path he takes). The first one wanted a small LAC, and got generous merit aid from many of them. The second wants a big university with specific programs and may not qualify for much merit aid–we’ll see.</p>
<p>We’ve run the math, the car expenses alone for commuting for most kids pretty much eats up the difference between living on campus and living at home. It’s not the money saver people think it is and the FAFSA takes into consideration if you are living at home or on campus and your award from your school will be less as a result. Add in the cost of the car, gas, the excess mileage, insurance, etc. and you just don’t save much, if anything. Buying a cheep car just means more in repairs, again, costing money down the road. Now, if you live in a college town and the kids walk or ride their bike, maybe you would save some money that way. Also, some merit awards require kids to live on campus.</p>
<p>For our kids, just attending a community college would cost them $1000/year more then they will pay at the 4 year school they will attend.</p>
<p>As for allowing kids to apply to expensive schools their siblings attended with merit–it would depend. If the sibling didn’t work as hard in high school to get the grades to attend that school, no, they would not be allowed to apply. Our kids were given a figure to work with, they had to make it work. That figure was pretty much the same for all the kids so if they got more merit aid, great, that allowed them to go to a more expensive college.</p>
<p>It depends on the student and available resources. Not all four-year schools have research opportunities or have graduate schools.</p>
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<p>Many do.</p>
<p>Research opportunities are provided by university professors doing research work requiring extra volunteer or paid labor. Professors need students with a strong enough background and work ethic to provide the labor. Then the student has to be assertive enough to contact one or more professors doing research work that they are interested in.</p>
<p>My son took his first graduate course at 16 and came into university with a year of college credits. There are a lot of kids that come in with a year of college credits and these kids and they could exhaust General Ed requirements pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Our local community colleges are tech-vocational. They didn’t even offer calculus courses until a few years ago. Our daughter attends a community college in another state because they provide academic as well as tech-vocational majors. Community college systems vary widely around the country in quality and in what they offer.</p>
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<p>AP courses can provide advanced standing for chemistry, biology, computer science, physics, and calculus and you can get a year of credits or advanced standing from those five. I had a look at the list from the College Board and there isn’t anything that’s really business-related.</p>
<p>Our daughter is taking Calculus 2 this semester at a community college. There are about 6,000 students at this campus. They offer one Calculus 2 (science/engineering) course. There are 17 students in the course. At our son’s state university in the same city, they offer 11 sections of Calculus 2. The community college offers one section of Calculus 3 in the summer. The state university offers five sections of it during the regular spring/fall semesters. Our local community college doesn’t offer Calculus 3 at all.</p>
<p>This is our area. I’m sure that community colleges in California, for example, offer more courses as they are feeders into the UC system and I’d assume that you could get more math courses there. A look at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose shows that they offer Calculus I, Calculus II, Calculus III, and Differential Equations. Their catalog indicates that they offer Linear Algebra too but apparently not every semester based on their course schedule for this semester.</p>
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<p>I would agree that community college is the more affordable option, especially in those areas where community college costs are lower than the America Opportunity Tax - in those cases, community college is essentially free excluding transportation costs.</p>
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<p>A lot of people are moving to state universities and community colleges. You can see that in course closing up earlier and earlier, parking becoming more of a problem and prices rising. I ordered our daughter’s textbooks from Amazon this semester because of the headache at the bookstore. It’s typically difficult to park near the bookstore and it’s metered parking (it’s a city campus). The checkout line is typically 40 minuts in the weeks before classes start and the week when classes start. The higher demand for low-cost options is squeezing the low-cost options too - particularly as state funding continues to decline.</p>
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<p>I commuted for one year at BC and I took the MBTA to and from school. It was a pretty inexpensive solution and I had a part-time job (16-18 hours/week) close to where I lived that took care of commuting expenses. My guess is that a car would have cost me a lot more than the MBTA. The MBTA was a lot nicer than trying to do the same route with buses.</p>
<p>Living on campus costs about $15000 on average. Let’s say $1500 a month for 10 months. I don’t think gas, insurance, and car payments would add up to $1500 a month unless your kid were driving a brand-new Mercedes. A used Toyota might add up to $600 a month.
As a community college instructor, I have to give a shout-out to the opportunites CCs provide. Our faculty are top-notch, interested in teaching, and really get to know the kids. Students take mostly GEs in the first two years anyway. We have transfer agreements with four-year universities. We have leadership and volunteer opportunities. We have outstanding performing arts programs. Some even have marching bands. What we don’t have are dorms, frats and sororities, and D1 sports. And big tuition bills.</p>
<p>Some colleges aren’t generous to transfer students, so there are circumstances under which the total cost over four years could be less if a student got substantial aid as a freshman that wouldn’t be available to transfers in an area where it is expensive to commute.</p>