<p>I think this is interesting reading: Salle</a> Mae survey finds families unwilling to pay more for higher education | Inside Higher Ed.</p>
<p>Am willing to pay 1 arm & 1 leg, and no more. ;)</p>
<p>^1 arm & 1 leg per kid?</p>
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<p>Fortunately I only have 2 kids. </p>
<p>“Just a flesh wound!”</p>
<p>My personal favorite line: Families that make more than $250,000 a year said they should only be expected to contribute between $21,000 and $25,000 a year. </p>
<p>I can see “wanting” to pay only that … but thinking that is all they “should be expected to” pay is a bit mystifying to me.</p>
<p>This is great - the only way the costs can be controlled is by families refusing to pay.</p>
<p>There certainly is logic to that.</p>
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That’s essentially what the nondiscounted price of the most expensive schools in the country would be if college costs had simply tracked the inflation rate for the past 30 years.</p>
<p>And they weren’t cheap back then, either.</p>
<p>I’m glad that some people found the $250,000 income - $25,000 “should” figure so amusing.</p>
<p>I, on the other hand, find it spot on.</p>
<p>If others feel they should pay more, they are free to do so.</p>
<p>I think 10% of a family’s income is reasonable. Most of us are paying far more than that and it is just not that doable for a lot of families.</p>
<p>“That’s essentially what the nondiscounted price of the most expensive schools in the country would be if college costs had simply tracked the inflation rate for the past 30 years.”</p>
<p>Or if the taxpayers had not decided that we aren’t subsidizing public education anymore. </p>
<p>Like the recently posted article, said, as soon as we all got ours, we decided to cut off our kids’ generation (an attitude which has now come back to bite us in the keister)</p>
<p>Actually $25,000 per year is pretty much my tolerance level for higher education. That is $100,000 for an undergraduate degree. My income level or ability to pay more really has nothing to do with it as we have retirements to consider and the rising taxes and costs of living so I tend to agree with Golffather. $25,000 a year were the projections the financial planners were making in 1988 for our first born. My income has not been rising greater than cost of living for over a decade. I find it “fearless” of colleges to expect that families will continue to pay more each and every year. More power to them if they can get it from families. We managed to stick to that budget for number 1 and number 2 because of three factors: the cost of textbooks is decreasing as more and more profs use on-line materials at a nominal charge and moving the kids off campus where housing costs and food tend to be lower than housing them 2 to a room and eating on campus and finally being well aware of the value equation of cost vs. output. 3’s education is going to be slightly north of $25,000 for the first year, but I’m hoping once we get him out of the dorms costs will stabilize and we will have met our budget for the 11 years we’ve been paying tuition. $25,000 x 11…well I think that’s quite enough to give 3 kids a bachelors degree.</p>
<p>My private education cost $3500 my senior year - tuition room and board. That is the equivalent of roughly $12,500 in today’s dollars. My third child is getting a public education that is roughly 2x the cost of my education in today’s dollars. A dear friend went to Bennington…at the time the most expensive private school education in the country at $8000 a year - or roughly $28,500 in today’s dollars. Bennington is at least $58,000 today. Enough is enough.</p>
<p>Note that Figure 2 in the article indicates that the variation in the amount of money paid by family income level (“low”, “middle”, “high”) is not that large. For example, “low income” families paid about $18,034 and “high income” families paid $22,913 in academic year 2012-2013. That difference is much smaller than the differences one can find in EFC for various family income levels.</p>
<p>My last son is coming up to college age in a couple of years and I feel completely comfortable in paying only one of my husband’s kidneys for son’s education!</p>
<p>Seriously, though, I think $30,000 is about our upper limit per year.</p>
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<p>Way to go all in with the SELF sacrifice. 
Am sure your husband will appreciate it as much as your son.</p>
<p>The sticker price of “expensive” schools is not funny at all. But in the middle class you have to laugh to keep from crying. Keep plodding on as you get squeezed from all sides. Hopefully, with 1arm, 1leg + 1kidney intact. ;)</p>
<p>My take on the “should” part is that families think that is all that a school should expect them to pay. What a family WILL pay is completely different, and it is absolutely good & fine to say we don’t want to pay more, to refrain from sending our kids to schools where we would be expected to pay more. My interpretation of the “should” was that these families felt the schools should only expect them to pay that much. To me, there is a distinction here. Maybe I am not expressing it properly. It’s not that I think people shouldn’t set an upper limit — I most certainly did, and my upper limit was less than my EFC. However, I certainly did not think the schools that did not provide aid that brought my costs down to my upper limit “should” have given me enough aid that they matched my upper limit.</p>
<p>better question is how much are parents willing to save for their kids college education.</p>
<p>I agree Kelsmom there is a distinction. My friend’s parents said OK to $8000 for Bennington in 1974, my parents groaned about $3200 with very little difference in family income/assets between the two families. The colleges can price themselves however they want to, the driver’s seat belongs to the person who is writing the check. That distinction has always been and will forever be. The difference today is the public schools are getting pretty pricey comparable to the adjusted cost in the 70s and the privates want “everybody” to add social economic diversity and have also become pricey in adjusted dollar value.</p>
<p>Back in the 1980s and before, public universities were low cost enough, and entry level jobs for high school diploma holders paid well enough, that students were more likely to be able to “work their way through college” without unreasonable debt even if their parents wouldn’t pay anything but were wealthy enough to preclude financial aid grants.</p>
<p>These days, that is less possible, so parental unwillingness to pay (or contribute financial aid information) is more likely to become a veto against a student’s college plans.</p>
<p>I think they still can live at home and work their way through college using the federal direct loans. My H paid for his university education by living at home which was supplemented by social security payments since his father was deceased and his mom barely made ends meet, a smallish student loan that we finished paying just before age 30 ($50 a month) and his job. My kids have plenty of friends who are driving to a nearby university and paying their way through. Most kids (and parents) on here expect their kids to go to a sleep away college and are worrying about rugs, microwaves and refrigerators and the condition of the dorm that is the difference between the 70s and today - expectations.</p>