Many working class folks (as you define them) make well into six figures in my area (plumbers, electricians, contractors, etc.)
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There are also those who pour their savings into opening a small business, grind through years with lower income, then finally the business grows and income increases. Now itās time to rebuild savings, pay down debt, save for retirement, and oh by the way the kids are now heading off to college.
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i didnāt mean for this to come across as insensitive!!! I just assumed that people who make a lot of money but happen to work service jobs would just call themselves middle/upper middle class
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I think it also depends on the state you are from and the quality and affordability of the public universities. In Florida where we are almost nobody goes to private school unless they receive substantial scholarship or financial aid given kids have the options of UF, FSU, USF which are super affordable and free for many kids through the state Bright Futures Scholarship program.
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Note that a large percentage of jobs in the US are service jobs. Some of them are well paid:
- Physician
- Other health care jobs
- Lawyer
- Engineer
- Tenured college professor
- CEO and other upper management of large businesses
- Many jobs in government
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No offense to anyone but I find the semantics in this thread hilarious.
Letās get three things very clear: Scenario - a college tells three families the price is $X/yr, the same for each family.
- Family Q realizes that no way in the world can it afford $X/yr, not even if they sell their cars, their kidneys, and their pride. They have no choice but to send their student to a less expensive option. The parents have lower than average incomes, little to no savings, and probably couldnāt qualify for PP loans of $50/yr even if they applied.
2)Family R realizes it might have been able to afford the cost if they had made different choices, like maybe a less expensive home in a non-upper-class neighborhood, being a dual-income household, saving more money earlier, raiding substantial savings accounts allotted for things other than education. Although this family could qualify for PP loans, they decide against that option. In the end, this family decides those are not acceptable options and chooses to send their student to a different college at a more affordable price.
3)Family S grouses but pays $X/yr for their student to attend the college. That means Family S can afford the price and made the decision to pay it.
Put very simply, that is the definition of need-based aid. It goes to students whose families who can not afford $X/yr ā i.e. those who need it. Not those who want it, but who need it.
/ignore me and carry on.
PS: Many families pay full price to send their student to the college of their choice/dreams/wish. Many who could afford full price choose to send their student to less expensive options.
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Eh, not complaining at all - just presenting another point of view that may apply to other families. Itās never just cut and dry.
I donāt think our family is any of those options. Our family of 7 lives in a 100 year old 1800 square foot home ($500,000), 1 1/2 baths, 1970ās kitchen, no a/c, no garage, purchase 10 year old cars and drive them into the ground, vacation every 4 years. We saved about $200,000 for college. Our retirement savings is on track, we are easily eligible for loans. Our kids have two choices, in state public, OOS with merit bringing it down to in state, or private bringing it down to in state. Our state offers free CC to top students, our CC is pretty bad. The cost of in state with R/B is over $30,000 a year. After the first year, our kids get loans we co-sign for, and are expected to work PT and full time summers (all have had jobs since 14). Two graduated a semester early, the next one will be a year early. We also pay loan interest. The median household income here is close to $100,000.
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I recently wrote the final full-price check for my D21ās education at Purdue and took the final withdrawal from the 529 we established when the exemption became permanent in 2007.
I expect to do the same for my younger D, though the schools she is looking at are considerably more pricey.
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From some stats from collegenavigator, it looks like University of Chicago has 57% received some sort of financial aid. that means 43% didnāt. does that mean 43% students paid sticker price? If thatās the case, thatās very high. Iām not sure thatās the right way to look at the data.
I keep reading in difference places or hear from podcast where people keep saying students rarely pay sticker price. kind of confusing.
Has anyone had this kind of experience? Parents make too much money and have to pay sticker price. But they ācanāt afford itā and then send kids to a public school. Then kids will complain. Think about it! If the parents didnāt make enough money, they would have got a discount to go to top private school. That puts parents into a real bind sounding selfish by not paying full price to to go a private school (if itās much better than a public school).
First, 
Second, the fact that your family has so much saved for college says a lot about about both the parentsā commitment to their childrenās education, and about your financial situation.
The vast majority of Americans will never ever ever ever have $200K saved in any account. The fact that you were able to do it while raising 5 children, saving adequately for retirement, buying a half-million dollar house, etc, is GREAT. But again, being able to save that much means earning enough in the first place. And earning enough to save that much paints a pretty clear picture of the approximate income level - colleges have an idea about what constitutes true need and what is simply a desire to spend available funds elsewhere. This is not a criticism in any way and I hope you donāt view it that way. I think your family is in a great situation that probably 80% of other HS parents would love to be in. Maybe not on CC, but in real life.
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Thank you. You are an amazing kid. for a first-gen, itās incredible that you have so many choices. Your family and friends must be so proud of you. best wishes. you will be successful regardless what school you go to.
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did you use EFC calculator? Did that tell you you would pay full price? I used EFC calculator from college board and didnāt bother fill out any forms after seeing the numbers there.
Or Itās possible your kid is so good the school really wants him/her for fear of losing him/her.
I agree with everyone saying this is all semantics and stupid to argue about but those arenāt service jobs.
Why wouldnāt providing health care, legal services, engineering services, teaching, etc. be service jobs? (versus manufacturing, agriculture, or resource extraction)
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I was going to pay 100% for my daughterās college cost. I did not want her to be saddled with debt. I also felt that it was my responsibility to pay for this.
Now I am hearing that the government will pay off your student loans (rumor). I am thinking that she may go ahead and take out a student loan since it maybe forgiven shortly.
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Our kids took the undergrad Direct Loans. It just helped up with cash flow while they were in college.
We gave them the loan payoffs as a graduation giftā¦and we just made last payment this week. DD graduated from undergrad in 2010 but she spent five years in professional school and 27 months in the Peace Corps during which her loans did not have to be paid. So reallyā¦it didnāt take us that long to pay off!
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Didnāt think you were insensitive 
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One situation I have seen is people who own a small business or rental property. In many cases they have worked for decades to build the business, and are making a working class income. However, schools consider both the income that they get from the business, and the apparent value of the business. However, the parents cannot get the value out of their business without either selling and losing the business (and therefore losing their income), or taking on loans that they cannot afford to pay back. Having a business which is alleged to be worth $X is not the same thing as having $X in the bank.
I know of two cases of farms which have never been sold ā they have been in the same family since homesteaders in 1600ās in one case and 1700ās in the other case. If the parents had chosen to sell the family farm the entire family would never have talked to them again. One person I know said that he knew when he married that he did not just marry a woman, he also married a farm. The alleged value of the farm means that they would be full pay if they went to a private university, but they do not get much if any money from the farm.
Another case that I have seen is people who are retired. It is entirely possible to reach retirement age before your kids reach college age. At least for those of us who have worked in high tech it is not unusual for a significant percentage of your entire lifetime earnings to have showed up in a 6 month or even 1 month period, which means that it is not in retirement funds. If it is not in an official retirement funds schools expect you to use it for university. However, when it is 50% of your total retirement funds, you do not want to use it all up in four years, or even in four years per child for two or three children. They say that retirement funds do not count in financial aid calculations, but this does not appear to be true when you are already retired and the money is sitting in the bank. People who are already retired need money in the bank to pay the bills.
We would have been full pay at top ranked private universities. The kids just did not attend private universities. One was the top student in their high school (and is doing even better in university) but we just could not afford the top private universities.
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Your assets (farm or funds in your bank accounts in your examples) arenāt treated the same as income. My understanding is that only a relatively very small portion (about 5%) is treated as income for the purpose of financial aid calculation. For some colleges that donāt consider equity in primary residence, the value of the farm, if used as primary residence, may also be exempted.