“I’m gonna have debt anyways, so the amount doesn’t matter.....” Ack!

Paying for College
21

"IMO, there’s a bigger gap in opportunities between a good public/good honors program and the very worst schools than there is between the very top schools and a good public/good honors program.

That seems to be something that many on CC gloss over or don’t seem to realize."

PurpleTitan- I wish I could like your post 100 times.

The kids who are evaluating an open enrollment type of college vs. Rutgers because “Everyone hates Rutgers”. Except of course, employers in banking, pharma, consumer products, capitol hill, think tanks, media, advertising, etc. all of whom recruit successfully at Rutgers every year. The kids who would rather study Math Education than major in math (even though they really want to major in math) because the private U which admitted them doesn’t offer a math major, although it has a fine elementary ed program, and the flagship U “is where all the losers from my HS end up”.

On CC, the only publics which seem to get any love are Michigan, Berkeley, and UVA. Which I totally get- they are world class institutions. And then comes the next tier- Texas, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Illinois only gets love from non-residents, and Florida only gets love from Bright Futures participants. Delaware and Maryland make the cut if you live in New Jersey (Rutgers? horrors) or Pennsylvania since Penn State is so expensive in-state.

The other states? Nope. There are countries around the world pouring money into their public institutions to create something which will never be as good as the university systems in North Carolina, Georgia, Washington State. I tell people about Missouri M&T- a powerhouse in engineering- and they think I’m crazy (but I recruited engineers years ago, and Rolla, MO was our undiscovered gem).

But parents here post about mortgaging their future for Pace, Hofstra, Adelphi, Providence, Stonehill-- fine schools all. And if you can afford it- fantastic. But if you can’t- and your kid can’t seem to find the love for their public institution (at least on par with these colleges and in some cases FAR superior)…

Well, that doesn’t make me an elitist. Don’t sell a kidney to send your kid halfway across the country to Pace.

22

That is a strange argument!! Why wouldn’t such a premed be an eng’g major premed with no debt??? Then if Plan A (med school) doesn’t work out then onto the eng’g career.

Better off with an eng’g degree with no debt from a mid-tier than $100k debt from MIT

23

neither of my kids have taken loans for undergrad (thank goodness) but now my oldest is starting grad school in the fall and may need loans for Year 2. It amazes me how quickly the amounts do become like monopoly money, as noted above. For example, D is deciding between 2 schools and was deciding whether to appeal (for the 2nd time) the merit aid and she said, “honestly, the best i can probably get is $2000 more so it’s probably not worth it”…and I agreed…but last night I was thinking, “If I saw $2000 on the sidewalk, would i reach down and grab it. Hmmmm…lol”

We’re going back in for it…but the money does become absurd, very quickly.

24

Actually, it’s more rare to hear the people who pay $70k per year for an Ivy, etc, to say “don’t go into (big) debt”
They’re usually the ones who believe that those top schools are the only path to success! Lol

Agree…and it will be both parents and students complaining. Parents complaining that they can’t retire because of Plus loans or helping payback cosigned loans…and young people complaining that the debt is crippling, but they had “no choice”.

There is always an alternative to big debt…always.

25

Many of us are realists/pragmatists. The dream/goal is a happy successful life, career, family, etc…not 4 years of college.

I recently spoke to a mom who’s cosigning $35k of debt for her “anxious daughter” who feels that she “has” to go to this OOS mid-Atlantic public. The mom claims that she’s doing this for her daughter’s mental health! What? She even suggested that daughter could become suicidal if she doesn’t get to go to this school.

Well, no one wants anyone’s beloved child to commit suicide!!!, but there was no thought as to the anxiety/stress this young lady will experience as a newish grad trying to pay back that debt while also paying for her living expenses. The mom went silent when that was pointed out to her.

Do we live so much in the moment that we can’t imagine what such a future would look like???

26

When I read those “yes we too are $xxxk in debt but our child is loving it so it’s worth it” I always think to myself - your child really couldn’t “love it” anywhere else? They probably could. And I say that as the parent of a kid who matriculated at a school that she was not the least bit happy about going to but after basically 1 day there decided it was all going to be just fine and as she approaches the end of her second semester she is gloriously happy.

We had a decision about whether to support her going to the $70k Top 50 school she got into off the wait list or the $35k school OOS Public Honors College. We could have paid full-freight with no debt for the $70k school and not had to deal with her being sad and upset all summer after high school graduation because she was going to a school she felt was beneath her level of academic achievement in high school. But she simply was not going to be able to do $140k more with her life by getting a degree from the Top 50 school compared to the OOS Public.

But I do admit to feeling conflicted about nixing the Top 50 school because she did work really hard in high school AND with the exception of this wait list school it sure felt like her college acceptance results did not provide any validation of that AND we could have afforded it. I’m very glad I followed my head instead of my heart on that decision though.

27

Yes. This!

Students may be more in the moment but the parents should know better.

28

.

This is very true. Whatever the culture is at that school, likely a similar culture can be found elsewhere.

I’m also disturbed by the posts from both students and parents where the students have declared that they won’t apply to any instate schools because THEY are GOING OOS!!!

29

The bolded part is one of the other arguments that we frequently hear from both parents and students.

You were able to follow your head. Many can’t.

We must remind them that however hard they worked in HS, it was not for naught. Their education foundation and study skills will make difference in college and in the workplace.

And even it means that they’ll end up at a school where some of their flakier HS classmates go, the student with the strong foundation will still shine. Those skills will still be put to use.

30

Our oldest was accepted to a top 25 private university, and went there as a full pay student. We took on parent loans for about $15k a year, but started payment on them immediately on a 10 year repayment schedule. It took us about 14 year to pay for his college costs. We did this with full awareness of the costs and put that in our budget. It was an arduous 14+ years of paying that stinking loan. This is even with incomes that under any measure should have been able to easily accommodate the payments. Life happens, and all sorts of needs cropped up that made that payment a true money on our backs, banging on our heads.

That young adults just getting out of school are taking on these amounts–ham strung as they have parents who truly can’t afford the payment co signing the danged things, boggles my mind. Once school is over, it doesn’t mean that the needs stop. You need money for security deposits, job interviews, start up for a job, a car, etc etc. Dental work happens, eye glasses, contact lense. Networking, socializing, traveling, etc etc. Job search, job search job search. Maybe low paying jobs to start, stretches of unemployment.

All that time the loans are spinning like slot machines adding up the interest. And the interest is capitalized. It doesn’t take long for even the Direct Loan amounts to increase, when you take advantage of the 6 months after graduation hiatus. Those loans have slightly better interest rates than the parent loans and cosigned ones, most of the time

My oldest is finally making the income where he isn’t living in a “group home”, hand to mouth, with a car that could belch out a huge repair bill at anytime. It was not easy for him, as a lot of his peers were making large salaries or had tremendous family financial backing. It’s not like college when the disparities in financial situations are somewhat mitigated by the college “bubble”. It’s real life and nothing makes you feel poorer than not being able to live like those immediately around you. It can hurt terribly. I’m seeing this a lot now.

That’s just the first phase. The next phase is when the time comes to buy a home, have a family,need a reliable car, and want nursery school and extra curriculars, not to mention child care. When credit starts become a really urgent issue. Need it for getting the next level up apartments or buying a house.

This is the future that the 17-22 year old crowd simply cannot foresee or even imagine. Difficult and painful as it may be, those parents who can spell it out to them, are saving them a lot of trouble and stress later. Those four years go by in a flash, 4 years, we hope and done. There is still the next 40, 60 maybe even 80 years to go…

31

I am dealing with this now - friends have asked for my advice at times and I have not been able to get thru to them that it is not responsible of them to let their daughter take out over $150,000 to attend an OOS public to fulfill her career goal of managing a clothing boutique. Kid has no shot at real merit - ACT<20, SAT<1000 so full pay. Parents don’t understand why they didn’t get financial aid. They make a lot but spend it all - no retirement, etc. and think because they live paycheck to paycheck they should be entitled to something.

I think the description of monopoly money is a good one - I just think people don’t get the real life consequences of that kind of debt. The money isn’t real to them at this point.

32

I can get it that those parents who spend it all, buy the maximum house they can afford, lease the most expensive car, shop the best stores, go out a lot to the top restaurants, vacation and travel extensively, or simply spend as much as they can get away with, even as the bill collectors spam their phones and stuff their mailboxes as the destroy their credit, will continue on this path when it come to college. To me, that’s predictable. The loans that become available when a kid is going to college just opens more opportunities to lay on the debt.

Where it hurts, is with the families who have saved and slaved over the years. They have been careful. Spent responsibly, painstakingly weighing the expenses and choices to give their children the best opportunities, the safest environments, the best education. Now they are at the crossroads where they are looking what they and their kids want more than anything in the world in terms of buying. They want to give their children the college education of their (the children’s) choice. How can we blame them?

33

No one blames them for wanting that. I think we all understand why they want that. But there are going to be tangible and intangible costs to them and to society as a whole when they sign up for a debt burden that most reasonable people would know to be unwise. I think the better answer is to try to figure out how to make more colleges more affordable for more kids.

34

“I think the better answer is to try to figure out how to make more colleges more affordable for more kids.”

Sure, that’s a good thing. But plenty of affordable options are available to US citizens/residents that can get in to a good private that requires them to pay $70K/year.

Is it really a societal problem if those kids are turning down schools that offer them enough opportunity to let them reach almost any goal they have?

It seems to me that a more pressing problem is that poor kids who are good enough to get in to a good state school and go down a path that could change their life can’t afford to go because Pell+Federal loans+work still isn’t enough to meet tuition+R&B and they really don’t have a school within commuting distance that affords them the opportunities a good state school would.

I’d say that figuring out how upper-middle-class kids can go to their dream school that costs $300K total rather than slumming it with the proles at a school that showers them with merit money probably is a little less of a pressing concern.

35

In general, I would say this is bad advice. An engineering grad from MIT with a decent GPA and a couple of internships should be able to find a job that allows them to easily pay off $100k in debt, and the MIT degree will open more lifetime doors.

36

What happens if they take the 6-figure debt but decide to change their major or don’t have a high enough GPA to stay in the program?

37

In our community, high school sports are everything. Last year and this year, an astonishing number of parents of athletes have told me that they are taking out full parent loans for their kids to play sports at D3 schools. They don’t want to deny their kids the chance to play their sport in college. One of our student athletes from the class of 2018 has already called it quits at her college and will be attending junior college here next year instead. Too bad her parents are already on the hook for a $75K loan for just that one year of playing the sport.

38

If you’re not capable of doing the work, MIT won’t admit you. If you spend all your time drinking or playing video games and barely graduate, then you have only yourself to blame for not taking advantage of the opportunities available to you.

39

"It seems to me that a more pressing problem is that poor kids who are good enough to get in to a good state school and go down a path that could change their life can’t afford to go because Pell+Federal loans+work still isn’t enough to meet tuition+R&B and they really don’t have a school within commuting distance that affords them the opportunities a good state school would.

I’d say that figuring out how upper-middle-class kids can go to their dream school that costs $300K total rather than slumming it with the proles at a school that showers them with merit money probably is a little less of a pressing concern."

I agree with Purple Titan 100%. The waitress who works double shifts at the diner down the street from you, who pays state income taxes (and sales taxes- a regressive tax if there ever was one) who can’t afford to send her kid to the state flagship-- that’s a conversation worth having. Pell plus federal plus work AND an outside scholarship or two still doesn’t get the job done.

I’ve heard too many stories of financially illiterate well to do parents passing on their financial illiteracy to their kids (borrowing heavily to go to Bucknell to study physics when you are in-state for Stonybrook-- this I don’t understand) to think that we can solve this problem. But the issue of how instate public options became unattainable for smart kids whose parents are Pell eligible… this is a problem I can wrap my arms around.

I wish the Northeast (not to generalize too much, it’s a big region) had as robust a community college system as California, or the Cal States type systems. I wish Massachusetts and CT hadn’t put their flagships in a semi-rural area away from the population centers. Vermont and Maine are suffering from both low birthrates and low immigration- so maybe sheer demographics will entice the legislatures to expand some affordable options for their low income residents just to keep bodies in the seats at their public U’s?

I don’t have the answers. But agree with Purple Titan.

1 Like
40

“that the government will do a bail-out like they did for underwater mortgages 10 years ago.”
@melvin123

Ahem- the government did NOT bail out underwater mortgages held by individuals. They bailed out the BANKS that underwrote the mortgages in the first place!!
I suggest you watch The Big Short to get a more accurate history of the financial crisis.