<p>Sybbie719 –</p>
<p>I think you may have missed the point of this thread… my daughter is not the issue, actually she is graduating on May 8 (which she did in 3 years at a private institution)… my point was about Rebecca.<br>
By the way, I couldn’t work the last four years because our income would have gone up and my daughter would have lost her $10000 calgrant… thanks… but I was able to go back to school myself during that time… I made use of having those two people in college! =)</p>
<p>busdriver11 – I agree with you completely, I simply have problems with the way the $ that is there is distributed… ie. non-tax payers!</p>
<p>Sybbie719 – yes you are right about the Pell … but I wouldn’t know because we never qualified for that one!</p>
<p>mclaxton,</p>
<p>Point taken. While this may not be your “shoe”, I am still standing behind what I wrote whether it is Rebecca’s situation or anyone elses.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, a student is going where their grades and money will take them.</p>
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<p>Good luck to her succeeding with 75K in debt. </p>
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<p>Not for an 18 year old they don’t. To saddle an 18 year old with that much debt is not fair to the student. It takes an adult to provide the perspective and life wisdom. Saying “yes” to that much debt is saying “no” to so many life choices four years down the road and decades after that. </p>
<p>Also, most parents who are basking in the glow of their students happiness at co-signing the loans are in for a wake up call in a few years. The friends of ours who applauded our decision to not co-sign for anything over 20K total were the ones with the most student loans.</p>
<p>sybbie719, Post 76 is really good.</p>
<p>I just think that the issue of financial aid and debt incurred is a personal choice and a complicated one as many, many variables go into the process!
What is good for one, may not be good for another.<br>
I wish anyone making this difficult choice the best of luck, and if you decide to follow your dreams, don’t let others make you feel bad about that decision, you will find a way to pay off the debt, just keep your eye on your goal and don’t stop until you achieve it! However, if you have the slightest doubt, or aren’t completely sure about your path, then you might want to take some time to really think things out before you make your choice!</p>
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<p>Yes, but all debt should be reasonable. In this particular case I think Rebecca needs to go to a school that her parents are on board with. It’s one thing for a family to all agree and then really stretch themselves, but it is another for a student to try to finance an expensive school if his or her parents aren’t on board.</p>
<p>I think it is good to dream big but those dreams need to be tempered with a healthy degree of realism.</p>
<p>This is the problem, though:
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<p>She is eighteen. All sorts of eighteen year olds are completely sure about all sorts of things they will have more than the slightest doubts about later on. There are any number of pre-med pre-freshman who are econ or english majors by the start ot sophomore year. My .02c</p>
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I’m kind of confused by this. Federal grant money like Pell goes with the student. State grant money stays (surprise!) in state schools. University grant money stays at that university. What other grants are you talking about?</p>
<p>I really, really hope that some entity steps in and stops schools and lenders from allowing such insane amounts. Make student loans dischargable in bankruptcy and you may see huge changes in loans, debt at graduation, and even (can we hope) the ever spiraling cost of college.</p>
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<p>That makes a lot more sense. Thank you for your clarification. Isn’t that how most grants work? Federal financial aid (grants and loans) don’t discriminate between public and private schools, and in my state at least (Virginia) we have the VGAP and VTAG program for both public and private schools. The only reason why these programs are less effective for private schools is because they tend to cost a lot more, but that’s hardly the General Assembly’s fault. </p>
<p>I don’t think that it is realistic to expect any government to subsidize a private school. Even if we could get everyone on board for a tax hike to support this – and that supposition alone is venturing into the realm of science fiction – without other cost controls all it would be is a government giveaway to pricey private schools, which helps no one. They would just jack up their fees to absorb the value of the new grants and people would still end up going into debt if they couldn’t pay the difference. I don’t think I could approve of a grant like this unless the government also did something to hold down the costs.</p>
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<p>Exactly. What we’ve sort of been skating over is the assumption that it’s even possible to borrow these insane amounts. Whatever Bedoin might pretend to believe, borrowing power is not infinite. Once you’ve maxed out your Stafford loans, you have to rely on Parent Plus and private loans. And there is no guarantee that you will qualify for those loans for years 2, 3, and 4 (in the case of the Plus loan) or without a cosigner (for the private loan). </p>
<p>Sometimes it’s not even the quality of life issues involved in repaying those loans. Sometimes you don’t even get that far; you end up having to drop out or commute to a cheaper, less desirable school because you just can’t qualify for those loans any more. Remember, for those you don’t just have to qualify once, you have to qualify every year and if you haven’t been paying them off it becomes increasingly likely that you’ll be rejected. Most kids don’t have jobs that will convince a bank to give them all that money, and most parents don’t have magical elastic credit ratings that will absorb the blows of cosigning unpaid student loans.</p>
<p>Never mind.</p>
<p>Rebecca unfortunately typifies an all-too-common phenomenon and is an excellent illustration of the malevolent phenomena that has become so prevalent and overtaken the basic values systems of today’s society, particularly within American culture. Make no mistake, Rebecca is not an exception, she is far-and-away the rule.</p>
<p>Rebecca is a troubling example for many reasons. So deeply-ingrained had her desire to attend a private school become that it had already become a full-blown expectation to such an extent that being told her expectations were both impractical and unreasonable provoked a visible physical reaction. So very common in this post-Millenial generation where so many parents are eager to indulge every “want” as a fundamental right (and instilling an abject lack of any appreciation whatsoever for any the many responsibilities that come with them), not only are Rebecca and those like her basing their entire adult lives upon a “want based” foundation without any care or concern about the fundamentally impractical course they will have set for the rest of their lives, any parents who may not be willing to pledge their own security to further indulge their children’s wants risk the Rebecca-like reaction of having been denied a fundamental expectation.</p>
<p>The problem, and the resulting danger, are two-fold. First, perpetuating the kind of consequence-free absolute indulgence without any practical consideration whatsoever will only further hasten Americas societal decline at a time when she has never needed more measured, more principled and more considerate leaders more. Second, Rebecca (and the millions of young Rebeccas of both genders) seem to have absolutely no internal self-regulating mechanism and furthermore not only seem to have absolutely no appreciation for the potential consequences of their life choices, they don’t even seem to be equipped with the most basic fundamental skill sets that enable a person to weigh opportunity cost or consequence.</p>
<p>The first exists within an abject lack of the most basic kind of “1950’s” virtues of self-sacrifice and that society’s cohesion requires that individual rights can and should not exist without first having personally embraced the responsibilities that make them possible. The second shows how completely wrong the focus of the entire K-12 educational system happens to be. Not only are many students unable to spell properly or understand the most basic principles of mathematics that make sound judgment possible, any teacher who dare attempt to instill a sense of meaningful context for applying those choices risks summary dismissal for impinging upon the parental prerogative (which has regrettably trended irreversibly toward not only ignoring providing their children with any necessary life skills, but also eliminating the need to have them by indulging a consequence-free existence that, rather than ending with adulthood, only seems to be beginning).</p>
<p>Of course, stating, “Rebecca needs a swift kick in the expectation and her parents along with her for not having emphasized the values and skills that would have never allowed her to develop such a sense of entitlement in the first place,” would have been a FAR more succinct way of saying the same thing. Unfortunately, for every parent who is doing everything he should to ensure he never face his own “Rebecca”, there is likely to be a thousand more who will unfortunately be endeavoring to make sure their “Rebeccas” are never faced with such a difficult choice… today, tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives until the basic skills of self-reliance evolve into the same kind of uselessness as fingernails and the appendix.</p>
<p>I don’t always agree with Suze Orman’s oversimplified one-size financial advice for all; but she certainly deserves kudos for giving Rebecca a much-needed wake-up call, although she loses 1/2 point for not actually kicking Rebecca (or her father) in squarely in the backside.</p>
<p>I explained to my kids early on that they might not be able to attend the school of their choosing, but rather, the one that chooses them. I further explained that doing their best work would not guarantee, but would at least create the possibility, that the school they chose would also be the among those choosing them. </p>
<p>The context was not about admissions. It was about affordability. They bought into the concept, and in so doing, eliminated a number of potential pitfalls for themselves and for us as parents.</p>
<p>What we have done with our kids is to try and find schools that would be a good fit for them at every level. My eldest applied to thirteen schools and he would have gone to any of them (maybe except for one - out state flagship). He applied to in and out of state publics and well as privates at all levels. My youngest - a sophmore in high school has already displayed an interest in being an actuary, so yesterday he spent three hours on the computer to find schools that offer that major and support through the array of actuarial exams. Luckily, once again there are schools at every level so we will start to visit them and see where he feels is a good fit for him. For us, it was always about the money. Apply to schools that offer the coursework that you want, visit, make sure the school “fits” and then apply and follow the money.</p>
<p>mclaxton
yes there are people in OC who finance $60,000 cars and that is part of the reason that the foreclosure rate in So Call has been astronomical the past few years. It is that sense of entitltement that so many people seem to have in having to keep up with their neighbors. We also live in a area with a higher cost of living in So Cal (VC) and can’t believe the number of people we know who have always had expensive cars and life styles and who have recently lost their homes- we kept secretly wondering how all these people could afford to live like that only to find out that they can’t. We live within our means. We drive old cars and do not take expensive vacations because we refuse to live in debt and because we actively plan for our retirement years. We also do not feel it is fair to us or our children to saddle ourselves with huge debt to put them through expensive schools. We let them know early on what we could afford without loans and that if they wanted something different, they would have to do well in school and get scholarships. We also told them we would not co-sign for loans as we didn’t think they could totally understand at 18 what it would be to graduate from college with debt. So far, we have 2 thru w/ no debt. Our D chose a cc in order to save money, finished at a state college, and then chose a more expensive private school for her grad work. Our son went to a cc because he had no choice after being less than enthusiastic in high school about grades, spent 4 years messing around, then got very serious and went to state school and finished in 2 years in engineering. He got an internship his last year, and was hired by the large consulting firm on graduation (over an intern from a very prestigious private school.) Neither has any debt including cars; our daughter got married and at 25 has already bought a house in VC while our son is contributing heavily to his 401K and saving every cent he can for future endeavors. We resent people who refuse to live within their means and saddle the rest of us with their debt and with having to bail them out. We also feel it would be unfair to our children to underfund our retirement in order to take on debt for school, only to have them have to worry about supporting us in our old age. If you are not working and your H is truly making $75K while you live in OC, I can’t imagine how you will ever pay back $120,000 school debt and save for retirement at the same time. I am not judging you, but since you are justifying setting no financial limits for a “good” education while telling us your financial situation, I feel Ok in questioning how you can possibly take that position.</p>
<p>Rebecca was talking about taking communications in college and Suze Orman was saying Rebecca may start a job making $20K to 25K a year. That isn’t much money.</p>
<p>^^Yes shayanne, I think the number one “mistake” kids make (and parents, too) is to not understand what are the starting salaries for newly minted BA/BS/BFA students and to somehow think if you pay more for college it will garner more starting salary.</p>
<p>I just thought I would bring this discussion back to reality:-)</p>
<p>“I explained to my kids early on that they might not be able to attend the school of their choosing, but rather, the one that chooses them.”</p>
<p>I like this way of explaining realities of not just college admissions, but finances as well. My D applied to a number of elite LAC’s. Two of them gave her significantly better financial aid than others (over a 12K difference/year) and there seemed no correlation with endowment size. My conclusion was that those two schools wanted her more and we eliminated the rest from consideration even though her top choice school (and possibly her second choice) was in that eliminated group.</p>