@yourmomma re: post # 75. "Why should we pay? " For this scenario, I am assuming “we” means the parents. From my family’s perspective - We decided to have children, they did not ask to be born nor were they forced upon us by society. They are my responsibility. Just like the responsibility that I take on for owning a pet, or my responsibility to be a good steward of the planet earth. It would be irresponsible of me to, upon HS graduation, say “ok that’s it I am done, you are good to go” , that may have been true in the past, that may even currently be true for some families, but, for my family, circumstances today/child rearing practices are such that my kids, IMO, are not quite fully cooked and while they may have all the tools they need to succed, they need some more practice using them before I can responsibly let them loose on/in the world. It is not society’s responsibility to attend to my personal choices, unless I am unable to carry out my responsibilities (yes, I understand that there are a wide range of ways to define unable).
@labegg I agree with you emotionally and that is why we are funding our children’s education. I love them and their happiness is vital to mine. The statement that a parent is only as happy as her unhappiest child is really true. I am happy and grateful to be able to give them a good start on the futures they wish for themselves.
However, I do feel that society should bear some of the costs of education because society is reaping the benefits. My educated children will provide the workforce necessary to keep society going. For the most part, society depends on parent’s love and desire for children to keep the current system working. But that can only go so far. When the cost of raising children to fully functional adults becomes to great a burden to bear, people stop having them. Declining birth rates can be an enormous problem for a country. Look at Japan. I would love to see a system where a hard working, motivated kid could work his way through college. In some places, thats quite possible. In others, its not.
I also feel that its not wrong for children to bear some of the cost of their own education since they will also be benefiting tremendously from it. That could mean taking out loans or working part time or “paying” back in other ways.
@gallentjill All good points! Don’t get me wrong, we definitely build in some child responsibility, DD#1 just asked about taking a summer class…our response “Sounds great…how are YOU going to pay for that?”. They are responsible for their out of pocket spending money, fail multiple classes…well then they are going to have to figure out how to fund their escapades and that sort of thing. Society is “paying” for education in the form of taxes and the public school/university system. My youngest (17yo) just had an epiphany the other day about taxes “You mean everyone pays school taxes? Like old people too? Not just people that have kids attending schools? Gosh that hardly seems fair”. We have talked about taxes with our kids every year during tax season, they help when we fill out our returns, they go to the bank with me when we pay tax bills, it nothing new but it’s always fun to watch when the actual reality hits. “Yes dear, no one ever said life was fair”, lol!
There is a need for productive people in our society in every capacity, and there should be something in place to educate those that cannot afford it (more need based aid or merit money from enormous endowments). However, I am not in favor of free college for everyone and here is why. My cousin (in law) went to school in Canada. He is 20 years younger than I, but he made his argument that America should change its tax system so that “people like you (ie me) that have already made it” can be taxed at a higher rate to supplement all students who wish to attend college. I asked him why I would want to do that, aside from it being a nice thing to do, and he replied, so kids won’t have debt when they enter the workforce. I asked him how, in that scenario, would I be assured that the kids that would receive my tax dollars would actually graduate and work? What about all the kids that go to college for six years and never graduate or flunk out because they have no skin in the game? Should I be paying for that while I am paying for my own 3 children to attend? Should I go into debt to pay for my kids because my taxes increased? He really had no answers to my questions.
I know this ^^ is a bit off topic so I will stop here. No doubt, college costs are out of control as are student debt levels. We need a fix somewhere but unconditional “free college” doesn’t seem like a good plan to me (and I am not suggesting that is what @gallentjill is saying. Mine is more of an offshoot from the quote above).
@lastone03 I completely agree with you. I stated it in an earlier post. I am not in favor of free college. Students and their families need to have some skin in the game so they don’t treat college like a free four year vacation. My qualm is that the current system really makes it almost impossible for a student, without family money, to pay for a four year education at a state school, especially if that includes room and board. Some students simply don’t have the option of commuting. I would like a system in place so that college ready kids can combine work and loans to pay for their own educations at public institutions. I don’t know exactly what that would look like, but I am definitely NOT in favor of free.
I’m stuck on the post with the estimate of $90k a year in the future. Wow.
@gallentjill Sorry I missed your earlier post. The room and board, in many cases, is as expensive as the tuition at a state school. A former co-worker of mine told me she wasn’t concerned with college costs because she and her husband had taken advantage of the prepaid tuition contracts Virginia used to have. I made a comment about how great it was that she’d only have to cover room and board for 4 years. She looked puzzled and then realized that her prepaid plan was only for tuition. She had assumed all those years of savings were for both tuition and room and board. Since I have an older child, she asked how much R&B was - and when I told her, she was stunned. She eventually worked it all out but they had to take loans they hadn’t anticipated.
@labegg “We” would mean anyone. It’s more of a “what value is college anyway” question.
But yeah. We are paying for the kid. We had to start our life with school loans and would prefer he didn’t do the same. Although there are days we want to tell him “ok that’s it, we are done, you’re good to go.” 
I don’t necessarily think that college is the only way to be successful/self sufficent. But seeing as my kids are slightly pampered, scared witless of guns and we are sort of cookies cutter, follow the herd, kind of people and I actually do value book learning/academics its own sake, College as the next step was the right answer for us. Sometimes I wish my kids were out of the box thinkers, but they are not and that is OK too, the the world needs hamsters to keep the wheel turning too! 
Guns has exactly what to do with this discussion?! I’ll assume you are just pushing an unrelated agenda here.
@doschicos No agenda, in my prior post #68 I mentioned that some families find military service as an outlet to self sufficiency for their kids. Mine are afraid of guns whether firing them or being fired upon, so military service is not a viable option for them. No agenda. Love our people in uniform, it just isn’t something my kids are capable of for whatever reason!
H and I believed we should pay for college for his kids and ours, which is what we did. Both of us have gone far beyond our parents in terms of economic status and it was due to the fact that we got college/graduate degrees. As such, we both value education and were lucky enough to be able to cover the costs for all four kids to attend and graduate from college (all private schools). I’m really surprised at how much the cost of tuition at private colleges has increased in recent years. My oldest D (in her early 30s) graduated from Tufts–tuition was about $25-27K. I just looked up Tufts tuition for 2018-2019–$50K.
My husband’s parents and my parents paid for our college educations. None of us went to grad school. Paying for our child’s college education is something we were committed to doing (we only have 1, so it maybe slightly easier to think about) because that’s just how our families were run. To us (whether true or not), have a degree will help our child’s future, so we should support that. We don’t qualify for any aid. We pay for housing (and things related to housing), we pay for dorm food/groceries (now), and tuition. She works during the summer/Winter Break (makes $2K), which pays for eating out, movies, gifts, road trips, etc.
Her plan is to go to grad school, and we would also pay for that, but that’s also because we have the means. I’m not sure what we would have done if we didn’t.
@Mathmom, we were shocked and didn’t really believe it, but we knew we had to save and invest wisely no matter what happened. Like you, we were fortunate, but I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who can’t save enough their loans. My kids were no more deserving of a college degree than anyone else’s. And even if the parents are selfish idiots who have huge incomes, but choose to spend them on vacation homes instead of investing in college savings, it’s still not the kids’ fault.
I wrote the following in another thread.
As a kid growing up in a Jewish family, I absorbed a few values. The first value was the importance of education. This was the most important investment that parents could make in their kids. (Makes sense if they are always kicking you out of countries – human capital is the only kind of capital you can take with you). My parents were not rich but paid for four kids to go to college. Two got PhDs. Mine was in a math-y field and so I had fellowships for all four years to cover tuition, room and board (not living high on the hog). My sister’s was in clinical psychology and I believe that she had assistantships to cover her tuition and expenses, though my parents may have covered some stuff. But, a younger sister went to law school and they paid for it in full. They would have paid for a masters in education for my brother, but he was able to use an apprenticeship program in our state to get certified. The second value was the importance of putting your all into school (and into success at work after school was over).
As a consequence, I think I considered it something of a moral imperative to help my kids with their education. I don’t remember saying this, but apparently I told my wife at our wedding that we should start saving our cash wedding gifts for the kids’ college educations. She was baffled as there were no immediate plans for kids and we didn’t have lots of household stuff. I’m making no moral judgment about others who do differently, but it feels like something I really must do if I can. And I have been able to do so.
In the other thread, someone took offense that I was saying that Jews are somehow more interested in education than others. I was not saying that. I just took that from my upbringing.
As mentioned above, we started saving for college before we had kids and I am getting ready to put away money for currently non-existent grandkids’ education.
I wanted my kids to start their careers with no debt but with a strong sense of the importance of embarking on career paths that create value in the world, enable them to support themselves (and families), are are personally fulfilling and that they put serious effort into being successful in their careers. Both kids are now following very different career trajectories that play to their strengths and interests. Both are working hard and doing well. I’m proud of both of them.
As the cost of universities continues to escalate much faster than the rate of inflation, I think most universities will fold or find alternate, cheaper methods of delivery of education. I don’t think Stanford or Princeton or Amherst or Williams will go away, but I think the current trends are not good for a) many LACs and lesser universities; or b) job opportunities for professors 10 or 15 years hence.
I funded my retirement first, planned on my D winning a scholarship, and if not I knew I’d be able to cash flow our wonderful flagship. My plan worked. D will get a 6 figure graduation gift in stock and I’ll help with grad school living expenses (she’ll be trying for merit)
Stop worrying about other people’s money and college funding plans. I don’t see why you care.
3 kids (now 18 HS Sr, 19 Coll Soph, 23 Coll Sr)
Both of us (parents) are college grads, I paid my own way, my wife’s family paid for her.
As soon as our kids knew what college was they knew that
- Community College is first - allows you to learn, explore and get an idea of what you want to do
- If you do well at CC, your options will be greater
- We would be paying for their academics
- If they wanted to live on campus and “have the college experience” that the extra expenses would be on them
Grad school is 100% their costs.
If we had one kid (or spaced them out differently) and lived in a very low cost of living area, the answer might be different.
My daughter is a tour guide and an OOS student at a high ranking public. Last week, a parent on a tour kept pressing her about how she paid for school. The conversation went something like this:
Parent: So you’re from out of state, how can you possibly pay for the tuition
DD: If you have questions about financial aid I’d be happy to guide you to our financial aid office. They really can provide you with great info.
Parent: well we are instate so it’s not that expensive for us. But I know the school doesn’t give much aid to out of staters. How do you pay, like more than 50 grand. How could you think that’s worth it. You know you’re spend years and years paying off those loans. Do you really want to spend years paying off loans?
[ by this time it’s getting uncomfortable and everyone is just frozen in place according to DD. All the other students on tour are from OOS. ]
DD: Did you know the university has made new commitments to gibe need based aid to OS students.
Parent: How much need based aid do you get?
DD: [What she said]: Every situation is different but the FA office can provide you with some great information
[What she said she kinda wished she said] : I don’t get aid. My parents are rich AF!
@maya54 After seeing a school that is notoriously bad for giving aid produce the best financial package for a student they obviously really wanted, I’ve modified what I tell students from “no sense applying to X” to “if you really want to go there you can see what happens, but understand that most applicants don’t get much in aid” (aka be careful dreaming).
The latter is much better advice even if the unexpected is rare. Rare comes through for some, so those few are sure glad they tried. They’d have had no chance if they didn’t try (and for some, would have had to pay more at other schools).
I think your DD handled herself very well.
I suspected very early on after having kids that we would be “full pay” but also realized, with four kids, paying for the full price of private colleges would be impossible along with life’s other expenses (retirement planning, mortgage, braces, etc.). So, we targeted saving enough to pay for our in-state school. Every month money went into the kids’ accounts (mostly 529 plans) and when I received a bonus, a chunk of that went in too. Through helpful websites like this one and even more helpful folks like all of you, I learned a TON about applying to colleges and helped my kids develop a “funnel” of possibilities - but no applying to schools that didn’t offer merit - so that wiped out the tippy top of the US News rankings. If they wanted to go to a private LAC, they’d have to get merit along with what I was able / willing to pay. It’s worked out so far as I’ve got enough to fully cover the first half of the brood - and both are or will attend private LACs. I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given to provide for my kids education.
Grad school? Now that’s on them!