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<p>Perhaps, but keep in mind that parents who save a decent amount of money are often penalized with very low/no financial aid offers - ‘if they’ve saved up enough money for 1-2 years, they can clearly afford to pay 4 years full price!’ Which makes the issue of debt and loans that much more complicated.</p>
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<p>Absolutely. In fact, that’s where my family is.</p>
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<p>Sschools say that if your circumstances don’t change much from year to year, you can expect the same (or lack of) FA each year. But since schools re-calculate aid each year, if there are fewer assets, then there might be more FA. So for families where higher assets is a factor, there might be hope. We’ll see if that happens for our family next year, since assets will definitely be going down.</p>
<p>I think its wrong to even expect parents to pay for the children’s education. If you are over 18, parents owe you nothing anymore. When I turned 18 I never saw another dime from anybody in my family.</p>
<p>My family just works that way, if I was to go back to my mother now, im 23 starving and homeless, she would shut the door on my face. Absolitly zero help after 18.</p>
<p>I do have a recommendation to all students.</p>
<p>Get emancipated from your parents. A ton of new grants and scholarships will appear for you.</p>
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<p>Just curious, if the shoe is on the other foot, your mother is starving and homeless, will you treat her the same way ?</p>
<p>Nope id support her as she supported me for 18 years. and I owe it to her. she could have put me on the street.</p>
<p>No. That is just wrong. When I went to college (private OOS) my mother had almost no money and I got a lot of financial aid. I also worked like a dog to lower the loans I had to take out. Every spare penny my mother had (and they were almost pennies) went to help me out. Additionally, my sister, who had gone to CUNY and had graduated by then and had a job also helped out when she could. Neither one of them had to help, but they did because that’s what families do.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s really comparative to look at one or two generations back. Tuition and other fees and expenses have gone up considerably (even considering inflation, etc) and what was feasible and reasonable then (in terms of paying for college with no parental help) may not be now.</p>
<p>That said, it’s every family’s decision. </p>
<p>It’s just important to realize that aid policies at the national and institutional level are built upon your family’s ability to pay. Not their willingness to pay. Financial aid formulas are not going to step in and cover the gap just because a family has strong values about kids bootstrapping their way through college. Such a decision may have a major impact on a child’s educational choices, and his or her debt load upon graduation.</p>
<p>This is nothing new. The problem I have these days is the amounts of debt in proportion to the income expected after graduation. When I was in college, the total cost was about $5k for a private school. So, even if I borrowed every dime of it, the debt would be about $25K, about twice what I made the year after graduation. These days the cost is about 10x that. But salaries have not gone up proportionately. In fact, some kids are not finding full time work, barely getting minimum wage. It’s a problem. My father worked for the government, and I can look up his GS rating and see what his pay would be today. Interestingly, I qualified for grants (BEOG for one) from the govt and subsidized loans on that family salary. Would not today. It’s too much income for PELL. However, it is a much tinier percentage of the cost of the same private college. So it would be much more difficult for that same parent to help make a dent in those loans even if they wanted to do so.</p>
<p>Yep, cptn, one of my high school friends attended the OOS private that my youngest now attends. A few months ago she was clearing out some papers at her mom’s house and ran across her tuition bill. Tuition in 1977 - $3100. Tuition in 2007 - $32, 980. I’m sure graduates aren’t making 900% more than they did then.</p>
<p>the worst part is you can go to school, lets say go through medical school become a doctor and still come out making just 70K a year, nowhere near enough.</p>
<p>My parents see it as sort of a duty. there’s no question about it. If you want to have a kid, make sure you are financially committed to giving the support he/she needs in his/her early life, and that includes being able to help him/her with college. Otherwise, don’t have a kid whose life will be disadvantaged.</p>
<p>it’s the biggest and smartest investment parents can make. It’s not risky if you trust your kid.</p>
<p>JohnC613, I very much agree. I came from a very fortunate, insightful family. My parents were of the mind that if you bring a child into this world you are obligated to do the best you can to allow that child to become self-sufficient. This pertained very much to education. They saved, lived below their means and paid for our college and graduate school. We were expected to do our best and give back to the world. My husband and I feel the same. We have been lucky enough to do well economically, but we have also made sacrifices and saved, watching the money and putting it away since the day our children were born. Again, we have been lucky. Still, I have difficulty with parents who never planned to fund their children’s education at all.</p>
<p>There are quite few countries where parents don’t pay a dime to their children’s education, however necessary it is to survive in their rapdily growing job markets begging for college degrees.</p>
<p>My parents were very generous but they were also careful about dealing with the loans. I did contribute- I owed it to them. First two years was putting $500 towards the tuition. Once I got off the meal plan, I paid for my food (which would equate about $500/semester anyway). We also took advantage of the state’s program that provides assistance to students in my situation. All at the same time, Colgate refused to give us a penny. Not even work study which I had when I was at Smith. I snorted every time I heard someone say that they got great financial aid package from Colgate- I had a hard time believing it! Fortunately with adjustment to the meal plan and boarding (moving from dorms to Greek housing) and being part of this state’s program, my parents ended up saving 35%, which was darn nice.</p>
<p>However, my brother is a different story because he doesn’t care about school and is lazy so they’ve set a rule for him (or rather his ROTC program will). They’re sending him to a OOS public that’s pricey and giving him one year not to screw up. They value their money if only spent wisely.</p>
<p>And I’m going to graduate school and be a poor student with uncertainty in the job market for this particular career of choice? Took them a little while to get over it that they’re spending over $100,000 for this! :)</p>
<p>Every family is different. My family believes in providing education all the way to bachelor’s degree but not beyond that. Law, med, grad, biz, the children are on their own. </p>
<p>It does break my heart with the current FA system not realizing that there are parents out there who don’t want to pay for their children’s educaiton, not because they’re greedy or want to keep their retirement savings but more of teaching the children the value of education. We need to fix that.</p>
<p>I truly believe this is very tied into one’s value system. My parents funded my education. Without any thought, I knew we’d fund our children’s education and do not wish for them to pay for it or be indebted for it. It is what we wish to give our kids whether we can afford it or not…we are the ones taking out the college loans/aid. While someone said that parents don’t owe their kids an education…well, they don’t “owe” it, some want to, plan to, expect to and value paying for their kids’ education because they want them to be educated and this is what they want to give them in life. Others have written that they believe that kids should have to pay for part of the education themselves so that the kids will value it and/or take it seriously. Again, if that is how some feel and it works for them, that’s great. That is not my own point of view for my own choices. I am convinced that my kids value their education and are taking advantage of every opportunity and making the most of it and exceling and so perhaps I might feel differently if I had a kid who was hanging out, not doing well, etc. for four years on my dime. We pay for all of college (and grad school) and the related expenses for our kids, though we are on aid and did not have the funds saved up. My kids did save their own additional spending money (to supplement what we already give them) from previous jobs prior to college (they each saved up four years’ worth of college spending money before they began). They also work in the summers but that does not go to college tuition but simply to either support themselves for the summer (since they don’t choose to live/work at home in summer) and/or to save up more spending money for the future. By the way, this summer, both my kids are also each earning over the estimate that marite gave as an example. </p>
<p>I think that each family approaches this differently. For me, there is no question that as parents, we will put our kids through all of their schooling, at whatever sacrifice. I expect my kids to pass that onto their children someday. Perhaps it is ingrained in my culture to do this and I certainly realize that it is handled differently among other families.</p>
<p>In a lot of countries, college tuition is free because taxes are far higher than in the US. So parents do pay more than a dime for their children’s college education.</p>
<p>We have a pretty low EFC, so we don’t have to contribute a ton but I am getting a job during the school year and I’m working this summer. I’ll probably end up with 2/3 or more of what I need for school, but that’s only because of our low EFC.</p>
<p>If my mom was ABLE to help me and didn’t, my EFC would be insanely high and I would get undeserved loans. Even if people think the parents owe nothing to the kids after the kids turn 18, the COLLEGE thinks the parents need to pay. I couldn’t handle 48,500 dollars a year. Not even close. I want to be a teacher- I could never pay those loans.</p>
<p>well i know my parents can’t/won’t pay much so i’m not applying to schools that don’t give large merit scholarships or financial aid. I would never expect my parents to pay out 50k a year for college when i can attend my state school for free.</p>
<p>Is it just me or this debt for college education thing has been blown way out of proportion? </p>
<p>In every population, there will always be some outliers. Parents who have money but refuse to pay their child’s education are outliers. Most of the parents will be glad to help. </p>
<p>OTOH, there should be at least one college that is affordable to any student. It may not be the “dream” school, of course. Any one has any data about what is the % that college graduates having over $5K debt? I will guess that number will be less than 5%.</p>