<p>They don’t</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. Student loan debt set to hit $1 trillion; already outpaces national credit card debt](<a href=“http://news.consumerreports.org/money/2011/06/us-student-loan-debt-set-to-hit-1-trillion-already-outpaced-national-credit-card-debt.html]U.S”>http://news.consumerreports.org/money/2011/06/us-student-loan-debt-set-to-hit-1-trillion-already-outpaced-national-credit-card-debt.html)</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>Is “meeting full need” a meaningful term if need is partially met through loans? There is a big difference between “meeting need” by arranging $20K a year of loans and giving a $20K grant. I think net cost to the student and her family, including loans, is the meaningful metric.</p>
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<p>choatiemom, I respect the fact that you have planned, and probably sacrificed. But so has most everyone else. Many others with far fewer resources than you have undertaken “draconian” measures to send their kids to college. And they didn’t have the luxury of spending a quarter of a million dollars on boarding schools to better prepare them. Just want to make sure we keep things in perspective.</p>
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<p>Sorry, Steve, but this is not the norm among the middle class. Do you know how many families are headed by single parents (usually women making less than men for similar jobs)? If I recall correctly you live in an inexpensive rural area. Many of us do not. Not every place is as expensive as NYC or Hawaii, but I think you have an unrealistic view of the situation faced by most of the middle class in this country.</p>
<p>sally305–how is it unrealistic when I specifically state the parameters along with qualifications that income varies from one area to the next. Don’t confuse middle INCOME with middle CLASS they are NOT the same thing. Single mothers have no bearing on being middle class. It’s a lifestyle, not an income level. I do not live in an inexpensive rural area…</p>
<p>I wrote this in the summer based on a real life case: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1367319-how-families-sometimes-do.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1367319-how-families-sometimes-do.html</a></p>
<p>Kid’s doing well. It’s a squeeze for the family, but barring no emergency, it’ll be doable.</p>
<p>I live in one of the most expensive COL areas in the country, and the average income is $77K. That includes some mulit millionaires, actually a fair number of them in some estates and mansions, but there are also low income families as well. But the number is meaningless in our discussion as only a portion of this population has college aged kids, and those are the ones who are of focus here.</p>
<p>@Steve: Sorry–perhaps I was confusing you with someone else.</p>
<p>I still don’t know very many one-income families where I live (a midwestern college town) or anywhere else–maybe 10% of the people I know, max. Incomes have stagnated relative to the cost of living for decades.</p>
<p>And being a single parent is not a “lifestyle choice.” About 50% of married people get divorced and become single, for a variety of reasons.</p>
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<p>Where I live, that lifestyle costs a lot more than $80k/year…we live in a house that tracks pretty much exactly the median existing home price in our county. That income would not qualify to buy a house here. It would have not qualified to buy that house at its 1998 purchase price. In fact, $80k/year qualifies a family of four for subsidized housing here, assuming one is willing to be on the waiting list for years.</p>
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I find this statement highly offensive on a number of levels.</p>
<p>To sum it up, and get back to the OP’s question – how do middle class parents pay $60,000/year? They basically don’t. And they probably shouldn’t. There are cheaper ways to get educated. There are more, nicer, cheaper ways if you are a high stats kid. Fewer if you are not. But the vast majority of true “middle class” parents don’t mysteriously pull $240,000 per kid out of their socks. The grandparents might.</p>
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<p>About 40% of births in the U.S. are now illegitimate, and that is a lifestyle choice, as are many of the divorces initiated because of “incompatibility”.</p>
<p>Beliavsky, you do not want to start this argument here.</p>
<p>According to the New York Times, hardly a right-wing publication, what separates classes in the U.S. is the decision to get married or not before having children:
[Two Classes, Divided by I Do
By JASON DePARLE
July 14, 2012](<a href=“Two Classes in America, Divided by ‘I Do’ - The New York Times”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/two-classes-in-america-divided-by-i-do.html</a>)
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<p>CountingDown–I didn’t mean that being a single mother was a lifestyle, I meant middle class is a lifestyle, not an income level. Sorry for the confusion…</p>
<p>Also, if that lifestyle takes more than 80K, it’s more than 80K that would be middle class in your area. In our area about 150K would be closer to a middle class lifestyle.</p>
<p>Beliavsky. Right on.
Also, income level and quality of life is not the same thing. The lifestyle of same income for people in CA/NY and AL/WV are very different.</p>
<p>Do you know the % of single parents with high school/college aged children who do not hae a NCP in their lives? I don’t know. In our township which is diverse economically as well as ethnically, about half kids have divorced parents, but I don’t know what % of those parents are single. </p>
<p>I know a number of parents who started out as single parents who are now married, so looking at out of wedlock births is not necessarily going to give you an accurate count of who is a single parent 18 years later.</p>
<p>For those very few families who have children who can get accepted into a school that meets their full need, they do not pay $60K a year. About half the kids at most selective schools are on financial aid. Even more in the community colleges and schools that take more than 80% of their applicants. So who is paying that $60K price tag fully? Well, take the number of school charging that much, and then half of their students are on financial aid, and then there are those school in the mix that give merit money and there are kids who are getting that. I don’t have the figures to crunch, but I don’t think that many people are paying $60K a year.</p>
<p>Sorry, don’t know what a NCP is, so hard to understand your lead sentence above, CPT.</p>
<p>I think it is useful to distinguish between schools who meet full need WITHOUT LOANS and those who claim to meet “full need.” There is a huge difference in my mind. It is academic because our family never sought nor received any FAid, but I know many people confuse the two and ASSUME “meeting full need” means only giving GRANTS and SCHOLARSHIPS in excess of the parents’ and students’ expected contribution. That is NOT the case, from what I’ve been hearing & reading over the years, especially for most of the over 4000 colleges & Us in the US.</p>
<p>Also, families need to keep in mind, whatever is borrowed for their and kids’ contributions, all of the loans need to be repaid in most circumstances.</p>
<p>ncp=non-custodial parent</p>
<p>Agreeing on the loans and how deceptive financial aid award letters can be. I know a very low income student who was so excited to show me his $40,000 or so “full need met” award letter. Sad to explain to him that more than half of it was government loans for him and a Parent Plus loan for his mother.</p>
<p>This might be moot sooner than any of us plans. I am really starting to read a lot more on the impending disruption “online” and internet education will cause to most of our definitions of “higher education” - it WILL happen fast. A mere 10 Years ago, I started every morning with the daily newspaper…:eek: POOF! gone.</p>
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<p>You do not seriously believe this? It might be time for you to take a sociology/psychology class. Do you really think that girls that grow up without a father " choose" to have children without a father? A lifestyle choice? Haha… I doubt many of them choose a lifestyle.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but… I don’t even know how to nicely put it.</p>
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<p>Oh, puh-leez. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a ■■■■■ statement. We all know $500K isn’t “middle class.”</p>