<p>Then there are parents who will be paying plus loans in retirement. These are choices too.</p>
<p>Whether or not to send your child to college (assuming they have the ability and desire) should not be a finanacial choice anyone needs to make in a nation as prosperous as this one. As to the academic/vocational track, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. In any event, there could be ways for a student to switch tracks, provided they have the actual ability to succeed in college. </p>
<p>If we have to have loans, I see no reason why we couldn't make a system where kids are loaned the money at zero interest. Everything doesn't have to be a predatory, for-profit business.</p>
<p>All it takes is being working class in America.</p>
<p>Most areas, you need a college degree to enter the career track of a teacher or an accountant. I also don't think that people with a college degree, are working class, they certainly aren't when teacher salaries & benefits are compared to physicians and attorneys.</p>
<p>I * didn't* graduate from high school, IMO because of unserved and undiagnosed learning disabilties & have been struggling ever since- I am determined to make a difference at least for my own kids.The highest level job Ive ever had that I was paid for, was as a college advisor at a community college. I didn't have a degree, but since they needed help, they had a few students work as peer advisors. So I have been telling kids what to do before mine were even in high school. ;)</p>
<p>My H, barely graduated from high school to hear him tell it, but has worked in highly skilled jobs all his life. Installing light tight doors in the shipyards and building prototypes of aircraft for commercial and military.</p>
<p>He and his assistant are the only ones at his company who do what they do but paid less per hour incidentally than a teacher & work in highly stressful toxic environments besides.</p>
<p>* My* family is working class.
Someone who had the opportunity to attend college instead of start supporting themselves fulltime as soon as they were old enough- not what you typically consider blue collar workers.</p>
<p>We have disproportionality in the K-12 system, IMO, we need to take a closer look at that, before we can fully address disproprotionality in the undergraduate sector.</p>
<p>Of course some might argue that anyone who works for a living, rather than by making calls to their broker for updates, is working class.
By that reasoning- Bill Gates is working class.
He certainly works hard, drives himself to work, his wife takes their kids to school, gets his coffee at 7-11, sounds like a working Joe to me ( except of course when he stops at Burgermaster and doesn't even think to check if he has his wallet)</p>
<p>In many communities, renting a halfway suitable home can cost up to 1/2 of the monthly income of a a teacher/nurse/accountant.</p>
<p>Sorry to be so p-issy, but lucky for them-those jobs are so portable- that they could pick up and move to many communities.</p>
<p>Those jobs ( except for accountant probably)
can't be offsourced very easily either</p>
<p>
[quote]
As to the solution, perhaps the OP might consider working for a year or so, and becoming an independent student, so that financial aid isn't tied to parental income levels, but rather to student income, which would likely be nill.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Unless OP is :</p>
<p>Married
24 years old
Has served in the Military
Has their own dependent child for whom they provide more thatn 50% support for
has completed a first bachelors degree
Was a ward of the court before turning 18</p>
<p>they will not be independent of their parents for FA purposes.</p>
<p>I don't think the test of working class is college/no college. Around NYC, Chicago or LA, most trades (with no college) make quite a bit more than a lot of teachers or accountants, who have college and debt to go with it. And they have the protection of their unions, which teachers get only to a point and then only after getting tenured. Moreover, once a teacher gets tenured, any portability of their jobs has come to an end, unless they are willing to give up tenure. </p>
<p>Additionally, many teachers are substitute teachers, or part time teachers, or teach in parochial schools, and thus have few, if any, benefits and no job security.</p>
<p>As to outsourcing, nurses, for example, can be and are replaced by recruited foreign workers all the time. The relative ease with which foreign nurses are allowed to come (or are recruited by hospitals) into the US and take nursing jobs keeps nurse wages artificially low, generally well below a skilled trade. Additionally, nurses often have very poor benefits compared with other jobs.</p>
<p>Finally, all of those jobs have the additional problem of licensure or certificaiton to contend with, which also severely limits mobility. </p>
<p>There are plenty of non-college educated, skilled workers who make quite a lot more than most teachers, accountants, nurses and even attorneys, without a lot of the associated expenses or limited mobility. Thus, I do not believe there can be a bright line college/no college test, or strict color-of-collar equation which would correlate with working class.</p>
<p>"The relative ease with which foreign nurses are allowed to come (or are recruited by hospitals) into the US and take nursing jobs keeps nurse wages artificially low, generally well below a skilled trade."</p>
<p>do you have any idea of shortage of nurses in rural areas?</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>perhaps the OP might consider working for a year or so, and becoming an independent student>></p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Agreed with Sybbie. Working for a year will not make the student independent for finaid purposes.</p>
<p>However, working for a year WILL put money in the bank for attending college. I think NSM makes some excellent suggestions...Americorps, a job, a well planned gap year, community college, school part time/work full time. Transferring to a four year school after completing general ed requirements after the community college. Yes...loans might still be needed, but only for two years instead of four. </p>
<p>These are all good options to consider. The OP should also apply to four year schools where their stats are at the tippy top of the admitted students and where they might qualify for merit aid. You never know what might pan out!!!</p>
<p>I agree that there are a lot of options-for students after high school.
Many adults don't attend college until they have been living on their own for a while, particulary if they did not have college educated parents who had higher education on their radar.
I advise high school students who don't have college in their background, perhaps they do not even have parents with a high school diploma.
They have a lot of catching up to do, when they start thinking about college as an option, in their junior or senior year of high school.</p>
<p>As Paul Fussell points out in * Class*, while college educated men and women may choose careers for reasons not solely based on money which may result in their earning actually less than a self employed manual laborer, that doesn't make them "working class".
[quote]
Fussell is quick to point out that class in America is not decided exclusively upon finances; it is also a matter of taste, what one does with one's recreational time, what one reads, what colleges (if any) one has attended and how well one speaks. He describes the anxiety associated with maintaining or bettering one's position in society, and identifies the phenomenon of some members of the upper class descending in class ranks - apparently for kicks.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>We all have choices & those with a college background have more choices than most- I suspect that is why we are so interested in expanding the choices for our own kids.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>two car or lease payments, adequate automobile insurance, life insurance, health insurance, gasoline, heating bills, electric bills, telephone bills, auto upkeep, groceries>></p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>The above list and your mortgage or rent are considered consumer debt (in my opinion). Yes, some of those things are necessities...but they are necessities for everyone (everyone needs a home, utilities, some kind of transportation, food, clothing, etc). </p>
<p>I'd love to keep giving the OP some ideas on how to GO to college in the absence of being able to get significant financial support from their family. For whatever reason(s), there are many students who are in this situation who could benefit from some helpful hints on this situation. College costs CAN be very high. But some here have pointed out some ways to cut down on the costs. I'd like to see more of these ideas posted to help the OP.</p>
<p>"do you have any idea of shortage of nurses in rural areas?"</p>
<p>Again, the supposed shortage exists because employers, largely hospitals, refuse to pay a fair wage, and thus cannot attract workers for the wages they are actually paying (either because of better paying jobs elsewhere, or because they cannot afford to take the job - much like the parents of the OP). The government then allows the employers to self-declare a 'shortage,' and recruit foreign workers, who are willing to take American jobs and thus artificially depress wages for all nurses. If the much touted 'supply and demand' mechanism were allowed to operate, wages would rise and the jobs would be filled by Americans. </p>
<p>"We all have choices & those with a college background have more choices than most- I suspect that is why we are so interested in expanding the choices for our own kids."</p>
<p>Completely agree, but wealth generates choices more so than education level, which combined with debt can become a shackle. </p>
<p>">>two car or lease payments, adequate automobile insurance, life insurance, health insurance, gasoline, heating bills, electric bills, telephone bills, auto upkeep, groceries>></p>
<p>The above list and your mortgage or rent are considered consumer debt (in my opinion). Yes, some of those things are necessities...but they are necessities for everyone (everyone needs a home, utilities, some kind of transportation, food, clothing, etc)."</p>
<p>Consumer debt for bankruptcy purposes, but necessaries of everyday living in RL. As they say, it takes money to make money. These are becoming barriers to entry for many working class Americans, as they apparently are for the OP. I am applying to college this year, and face the same obsticles, and applaud the top schools for their move away from loans to grants. I only wish there were more programs available to more students.</p>
<p>"Again, the supposed shortage exists because employers, largely hospitals, refuse to pay a fair wage, and thus cannot attract workers for the wages they are actually paying"</p>
<p>Nitrox just for you</p>
<p>AACN</a> - Media - Nursing Shortage Fact Sheet</p>
<p>Nurse</a> Salaries - Nursing Salary Surveys</p>
<p>PayScale</a> - Nurse Salary, Average Nurse Salaries, Registered Nurse Salary</p>
<p>Simba - I am well aware of the industry position, well cited by employers as 'evidence' so that they are allowed to bring in lower paid foreign trained nurses to take American jobs. There is a similar problem in IT. Unfortunately, simply refusing to pay a fair wage because the government allows you to declare a 'shortage' if you don't fill the jobs, and then recruit less-skilled foreign workers to take American jobs hardly proves the existance of an actual shortage. </p>
<p>Rather, I would cite you to the experience of the California Department of Corrections recently. For many years, they had an RN staff vacancy rate of 40 percent. However, inmates filed a lawsuit based on allegations of substandard care, causing a federal judge to appoint a receiver to assume oversight of the prison healthcare system.</p>
<p>Almost immediately, to ameliorate inmate claims, the judge ordered pay raises such that corrections RN incomes were upped to nearly $80K a year with full state benefits, which are excellent … much better, actually, than most private hospitals - which generally have been cutting back on benefits. </p>
<p>The result? After the initial court ordered pay raise, the vacancy rate dropped from 40 percent to 15 percent, which was comparable to staff vacancy rates at California hospitals in general. (And, this was in California which suposedly has fewer RNs per capita than any state except Alaska). </p>
<p>But the Court didn’t stop there. Since the average California RN pay was slightly more than $70K a year, and the Court mandated full staffing for prisons, yet another pay raise was ordered … nearly $90K to start at most facilities, with longevity incentives taking the pay to $100K at most facilities.</p>
<p>Net result? Not only were the prisons fully staffed with RNs, but the State DoC had to create a waiting list. </p>
<p>All accomplished by paying a fair wage commensurate with the demand, and in less than a year.</p>
<p>Thus, the only shortage is one of fully trained professionals willing to work for substandard wages - an artificially created 'shortage' which allows the importation of less skilled foreign workers willing to work longer hours for less money and fewer benefits, under less than optimal conditions.</p>
<p>^ One anecdotal data point does not make a trend.</p>
<p>Nitrox...come to my part of the country. Anyone who is a qualified and licensed nurse will be able to find a job. The wages are fine and the jobs flexibility is terrific.</p>
<p>Now...back to the original topic of this thread. Let's think of ideas to help this original poster realize a college education with (what appears to be) limited financial help from her/his family. </p>
<p>Nitrox...it appears from other posts that you are a high school senior (or is that someone else who got accepted to Tulane?). Perhaps you can provide some insight on how to choose affordable colleges from that point of view .</p>
<p>"^ One anecdotal data point does not make a trend."</p>
<p>And actual shortages do not exist simply because industry or their paid lobby says so.</p>
<p>Thumper - yes, I am a senior. I carefully chose my schools based on my GPA/score combination, coupled with my interests. I hope to avoid taking undergraduate loans, and have worked very deliberately over the past several years to acquire skills which will enable me to earn a decent wage while in school, if need be. Nevertheless, I hope to get enough scholarship funds from various sources to avoid having to work while in school. As to the OP, if I were in her situation, I would likely go for the most affordable state school, and either go into a field like nursing (notwithstanding the wage/benefit issue), or work very hard to get and keep a perfect or near perfect GPA and position myself for a good graduate program. Or else marry rich - lol. </p>
<p>Also Thumper - 'fine' wages are not necessarily fair wages. My point vis a vis nurses is that they are paid far less than their actual worth because employers are allowed to cry 'shortage' where none actually exists and import lesser skilled and lower paid foreign workers to further depress wages.</p>
<p>This is the America employers are seeking to create for my generation.</p>
<p>"And actual shortages do not exist simply because industry or their paid lobby says so."</p>
<p>That's it. This is your belief supported by few anecdotal data points. You have no real data, and no amount of data will convince you otherwise. You will simply dismiss them as propaganda. It is ironic, but similar traits are found in the supporters of gun rights, anti warming crowd, stem cell research and many other issues. Belief system plays much larger role than facts.</p>
<p>People should only enter the field of nursing...or any other field for that matter..because it is a field in which they have strong interest and skill. I'm sorry, I would not advocate the OP entering nursing unless, of course, that is something that person really wants to do. I didn't see her asking for career advice. I saw her asking for financial aid advice. </p>
<p>Actually Nitrox, using your comparisons...the pay for nurses (and other shortage areas) would be higher...and I have to say, in my area that is the case. I'm sorry you didn't interpret my use of the word "fine" correctly. But the wage for a nurse in this area is more than just adequate, it is excellent...for folks who want to enter the profession of nursing.</p>
<p>Nitrox, you had a good plan for yourself in terms of finding schools with sufficient aid for attendance (or so it seems from posts here). I hope that your college education provides you with some lifes' experiences that will broaden your view of the world, economics, job wages, etc.</p>
<p>I am an above average student, but by no means a 4.0.
My parents are in debt and both have decently-paid jobs, but we still have so many bills to pay that a contribution of $500 a semester would be pushing it.
What can I do? I'm not considered "poor" by the state because I have two parents who live together and they both have jobs (one's a teacher, one's an accountant).</p>
<p>I take this to mean that -while prepared for college- not eligible for merit scholarships in some areas
Parents have no savings to contribute toward expenses or from current or future income.
That is difficult as you will be considered their dependent for aid purposes till 24.
However- many students arent able to have family financial support- so you are not alone- students whose family makes the average annual income of $48,000 a year often don't have college on their radar and so may have options limited because of few college prep classes.</p>
<p>What they can do however is - both reduce expenses- by attending a community college- or instate university , maybe even just part time and increasing available funds by working and taking loans.
Students often are expected to contribute $3,000 from summer work to their EFC- if you combine that with work during the school year & add on loans of $5,000 or so while finding a few scholarships, that will expand your choices.</p>
<p>There is nothing written that parents have to pay for higher education for their young adult children & while students may feel disappointed that they don't have all the options they would like- part of becoming an adult is setting a goal and making a plan to acheive it.</p>
<p>$500 a semester??? It would cost more to have you at home for 4 months than that. </p>
<p>BTW, this same poster mentions (in a different thread) that they live in Maine and just moved into a new house (and thus have a lot of debt to home depot). They are currently a junior in HS.</p>
<p>here are her stats:
Junior
3.0 GPA (unweighted)
All honors English, history and math classes
AP Biology (A, A- average)
Tons of clubs
Leaderships positions in 3 clubs
Member of the Junior Classical League
Outstanding Latin student
Magna Cum Laude on National Latin Exam
59, 50, 66 on PSAT</p>