Some schools, like Cornell, are worth the price of tuition. However, if the best your kid can do is an unranked private school, most people would be doing them a favor by saving the private school tuition money and sending them to whatever the best public option is.
“The problem is for the involved students who are good and inspite of them being good and capable of contributing to the system are getting under the burden of debt.”
@nmc2015 – If they’re really involved and good students, they will get a fine education at the state U, possibly with FA which will limit the “burden of debt.” As will part-time jobs, full-time summer jobs, and actively looking for grants available within the university.
No one NEEDS to go to an expensive private university, Ivy or not. You seem to be saying that if you’re a good student and have high-income parents, you’re somehow owed an “elite” education. That’s clearly not how many families think, even if they can afford it. Reasonable – and even well-to-do (!) – people know that the path to a good job can easily start at the regular state U.
Someone mentioned they would not expect that income to generate a lot in savings with 2 in college. Exactly. That is why saving for college needs to start when your kids are very young. It is not the college’s financial responsibility to give aid to families who have not planned accordingly
So is Tufts.
One April a very long time ago, I had the extreme good fortune to be able to choose between those two schools. I chose Cornell because the financial aid package was better, but I know I would have had just as good an experience at Tufts.
This scenario played out exactly for a good friend of my kiddo.
Father is in STEM and mother is a stay-at-home mom. I am guessing that the father is making good money (I believe he has an advance degree from S) and most likely the family will not qualify for financial aid at elite schools. The kid is very smart and hard working. Father made it clear that he was only willing to break the bank for H and P knowing that the kid can get into our various state schools (they are quite good) for sure.
The kid got waitlisted at the ivies and ended up at our flagship state school with Regent scholarship. Last I heard, she was doing very well there.
I think if you are upper-middle class, you really need to consider whether paying $65K a year for a private college is prudent. YMMV
Both the kid who went to Cornell and the one who went to Tufts did extremely well post graduation. The SUNY grad took longer to figure out what he wanted to do but is quite happy now in his chosen profession.
The Cornell grad got a great job offer before he graduated after turning down a job offer from Goldman - where he had interned the summer before. The Tufts grad went into the graduate program at Sloan Kettering.
"This scenario played out exactly for a good friend of my kiddo.
Father is in STEM and mother is a stay-at-home mom. I am guessing that the father is making good money (I believe he has an advance degree from S) and most likely the family will not qualify for financial aid at elite schools. The kid is very smart and hard working. Father made it clear that he was only willing to break the bank for H and P knowing that the kid can get into our various state schools (they are quite good) for sure.
The kid got waitlisted at the ivies and ended up at our flagship state school with Regent scholarship. Last I heard, she was doing very well there.
I think if you are upper-middle class, you really need to consider whether paying $65K a year for a private college is prudent. YMMV"
OP’s original question seemed like it could be phrased a few different ways with a different meaning each way. If the question is, “should reasonably well-off but not mega-rich parents pay for whatever college their kid wants to go to?” my answer is similar to the family above… we have told our kids that we can afford around an in-state (CA) level for them and if they want to go private, they need to get scholarships to make up the difference. But that said, if one of them really really wanted to attend something like MIT and actually got accepted, we might be able to come up with the difference. Maybe.
One could also read that question as, “what do you think about families who will only pay for college if it’s a top-20 school?” In which case my answer would be, “that’s crazy and part of the problem of why kids these days are so stressed out trying to get into top-20 schools.” Or another way to read that question was, “It seems unrealistic that a family with this income could actually afford to fully fund their kid’s college tuition… what do you think?”
@washugrad - totally agree - the latter case is border-line abusive.
Talking about MIT - my spouse’ old boss from years ago went to MIT.
She said that her parents ended up reverse mortgage the family home to come up with the money.
She did not realized this until years later when she learnt that they were still paying mortgages into their late 60’s.
That is a horrible story, but plenty of schools are more than happy to put parents in that situation.
^^ except that in order to do a reverse mortgage, you have to be 62 so either this was more of a HELOC situation or the age of the parent/repayment timeline/discovery ‘years’ later is incorrect.
Going back to the OP. What makes sense does not only depend on the school. The students major can be even more important in determining whether the more expensive school is worth it.
This is no longer the case. at many schools if you start as a dependent student, you remain a dependent student, even if you have a life event that may make you independent for federal aid (marriage, a child). In addition at many deep pocket schools, you now have to be 27 or show 5 years of self sufficiency, before the school will consider you independent for institutional aid.
My parents are Japanese, both with PhD’s. That’s no small thing, especially for my mother, who was 15 when Japan surrendered. They are firm believers of “the best education possible, at all costs” because their families lost everything in WWII and their education was one of the few things no one could take away. My mother tells the story of how, being the oldest and a girl, she was forced to drop out of high school and get a job. She ended up taking a civil servant test and got a government job because she placed first and that job allowed her to pay the fees to finish high school at night and go on to college. They also believe in self-sufficiency; saving for what you need. Whether this is “right” or “wrong” with respect to the American education system, it’s how they have lived.
I don’t know that they would have ever refused to pay for a school that they didn’t think was good enough – I certainly didn’t have the guts to test that premise – but I’m sure they would have taken out second mortgages, liquidated investments, whatever it took, to send me to the best school I got into. For them, being the “top” is something worth striving for, because it obviously made a difference in their lives. And “best” from their perspective would have meant the most selective. Of course, big sacrifices weren’t necessary because they saved diligently for my college expenses; it wouldn’t have occurred to them to expect financial aid.
I don’t have quite the same guiding principles… I’m definitely “American” in this. But obviously, my upbringing has had significant influence. I’m puzzled by those who seem to resent the fact that others get more financial aid than they do; that those able to pay are “penalized” for saving. I feel the complete opposite. We’re not wealthy. I’m a single mother, my annual income is just over $100K, my ex has never paid child support. I’m damn proud of the fact that I can afford to encourage my son to shoot for his dream school. We’ve applied for financial aid but are realistic in our expectations. I’ve saved money and I drive a nearly 10 year old car with well over 100K miles on it. I’m perfectly OK with that.
However people evaluate school choices and whether the costs are worth the value is really up to them, and it’s not up to me to criticize their priorities. But I do think you have to take ownership of your own priorities.
That’s why I love playing tennis, you learn so much 
Seriously, though, I can understand where she is coming from. You have one kid who works their butt off to get into a great school, and one kid who does not. I’m not so sure it makes sense to throw our hard-earned money at the kid who isn’t working hard. (and let’s assume for the sake of argument that the kid mentioned above is capable of doing all their homework and getting A’s, but simply isn’t driven, rather than an undiagnosed whatever).
Sorry for being such a financial noop. I guess I mean taking out home equity loan instead of reverse mortgage - apparently they are different things. :o)
^ I would understand it more if I didn’t know she is notoriously cheap. It’s not like the kid was a total loser. He was simply average while the other two - especially the Cornell kid - was a superstar. Hard to compete when much younger sibling in elementary school is taking high school math at a higher level then the one in high school.
I have had to hear about “genius” boy - who is the same age as my S - for 20 something years, so I empathize with the oldest son.
We were all secretly thrilled when the kid was rejected from MIT. She actually told us she thought MIT didn’t even read his app. Eyes were rolling on the court that day.
^^Well there’s the argument that does it make sense to send the superstar to a superstar college because the return on investment is going to be better, whereas the average kid would just dig himself into a huge and expensive hole at a private LAC?
Why would an average kid “dig himself into a hole” at a private college? I would think a small, private college with small classes would benefit him more than it would his siblings. Superstar kids will do well anywhere.
Dig himself into a financial hole. If he’s not motivated to get into a challenging school, he may not be motivated to pay off $250k in debt by getting a job that’s going to be super grindy and high paying.
Certainly food for thought. I don’t know the right answer (if there is one).
Especially when the original question was not well defined and could be interpreted many ways.