<p>Just curious, has anyone considered having their kids go to a community college during their high school years and try to get their 2 year degree by the time the graduate so it saves money and their kid can go to their dream school? Also, what about the military for money for college?</p>
<p>*Also, what about the military for money for college?
My brother joined the military to pay for college.
I thought about it, as an acquaintance had, but I didn’t have enough info to even know where to go to find out more.</p>
<p>Re: Savings. </p>
<p>We probably could have saved a lot more if we had had a six figure income beginning 20years ago rather than for the past few years (during four of which one child was in college).</p>
<p>Has anyone looked at how much CC costs these days? I thought about taking a ceramics class at the one down the street from my house. It was $49 per unit and there were tons of fees, and add’l classroom fees. I think the price was above $250 for a 1 hour class that met twice a week. I mean in the grand scheme of things thats cheap. But CC isn’t that cheap now a days either.</p>
<p>And to the parents that say send you child to a cheaper state unverisity with merit aid. What if no merit aid is offered at any state university. Which is the case in CA. My local state university was ranked last for all public schools in CA. I personally went there and would not like my child going there. It’s horrible for the sciences.</p>
<p>hudsonvalley if you had $100k 20 years ago and your bought property even with the down turn you would have made off like a bandit. 20 yrs ago $100k is like making $384k at this point in time. I remember an article that did that math.</p>
<p>
And just as many regulars have been saying (and still say) that the high-priced schools ARE worth the money (and in spite of copious evidence that they’re not). </p>
<p>
Hard though it may be to believe, a lot of us make do with far less.</p>
<p>Quote:
And down the street, those kids can get the same education with me (as a taxpayer) once again paying.
[/quote]
Actually, it is very true; I speak from experience. Maybe not true in all states, but it is in mine. I life less than a block from our public housing, and my kids go to school with the children that live there. I don’t begrudge them the help they get, but in an effot to balance things, we perhaps go overboard. These families know any extra income works against them. There are some that want to move on to bigger and better things, but others that do everything to maintain the status quo. If they earn too much, they lose benefits, plus have higher rent (it’s based on a percentage of income), so why work extra? They are not really encouraged to save, because they’re dinged for a percentage of assets above a certain level (sound like FA calculations?) </p>
<p>The only reason we can afford our family contribution (and only at FAFSA schools - forget most of the profile schools), is because we structured our mortgage to be paid off before DD graduates, so that portion of our income can go toward her tuition. Most of DD’s classmates are younger than us, and bought their houses when the kids were very young - they still have 8-10 years left on their mortgages. Where do they come up with the money?</p>
<p>A family making $100,000 is in the federal 28% tax bracket, and 6.5% state, and add another 7.65% for payroll taxes. If I had to earn more to pay the tuition bills, it would all be taxed at 42%. And since you’ve already used up your exclusions in the FA calculation, you can expect 47% of that to be added to your EFC. Thus for every extra $10,000 I earn, $4,200 goes to taxes, EFC increases by $2726, and I have $3,074 left to make the existing tuition payments. (assuming there’s anything left over after the costs associated with working more) . And, with the increased income I risk losing tax credits, and seeing my tax bill rise even more.</p>
<p>
Really? Maybe in some parts of the country. Do you know what scores are needed to “rock” the SAT? Around here about 0.5% of students qualify as National merit finalsists, and that’s one of the few ways to qualify for merit scholarships (but they’re competitive, not guaranteed). If the upper middle class comprises 15% of the population, then only 1 in 30 of these kids will qualify. The same kids all go to the same schools, and there is only room for 5% of the kids to be in the top 5%. Again, if the demographics match the rest of the country, 15% of these kids will be competing to be in the top 5% - doesn’t work, and the demographics are not the same. More like 30-40% of their classmates are likely to be upper middle income, just like them (and maybe more).</p>
<p>
First, it might not be a matter of a dream school, but of a school that offers the program that interests you. If they don’t you end up paying for Grad School to work in the field of your choice - it still costs more.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t one of picking a school you can afford, but in how that is determined. If you have low income and do well in school, doors are opened. If you have high income, you can afford your choice of schools. When you’re stuck in the middle, you simply have fewer choices. How is that fair?</p>
<p>We have saved for college, but it seems like we are penalized for doing “the right things.”</p>
<p>There are lots of schools that give significant merit scholarships to kids with far less than NMSF-level stats. They may not be the schools that cause oohs ans aahs among the CC set, but they’re schools where a motivated student can get some fine education.</p>
<p>
It’s not hard to believe, but must be taken in context. The median income for a houshold of 5 people in CT in 2011 was $99,625, while most states are in the 60’s or 70’s. Our cost of living is much higher too.</p>
<p>And as for merit scholarships, it’s only useful if they offer the appropriate program - and many don’t offer those scholarshipt to OOS students.</p>
<p>In response to BCEagle91 post #9
</p>
<p>Where’s the money come from? I bet a lot came from home equity loans. Now with the housing crash the parents can’t tap the house, so you’re seeing dramatic increase in loans which can be detected and measured as “education loan”. I’m sure the percentage of this demographic with student loans will be significantly higher over the coming years.</p>
<p>Most of a full financial aid package offered to a smart poor kid is not taxpayer funded, it comes from the college itself via its tuition, investments, alumni, whatever.</p>
<p>Most poor kids have to work a lot harder to get to the point that they can earn something like that, not normally being in great public school districts, tutors, SAT help, good college counselors, etc.</p>
<p>I definitely understand the frustration of the middle class, but the resentment of poor families and their supposed advantages rubs me the wrong way.</p>
<p>If it looks that awesome you can easily go there yourself and enjoy those advantages too.</p>
<p>To be fair, the impoverished started the derision on this thread. So, I’m not suprised to see people fighting back.</p>
<p>The problem, really, is the fight. We keep turning on each other and ignoring the “real” issues, which is that the price of a college education is artifiicially inflated, and not that some people have no money and others have some money.</p>
<p>The whole thing is a catch-22. Nobody is doing well in this game except the college administrators who hire increasingly large numbers of adjunct professors they do not have to pay well or offer tenure and, thus, keep their salaries and pensions quite high. </p>
<p>In the meantime, the middle class parents resent the impoverished. Look. Forget about whether that is “right” or not, and ask yourself how bad it has gotten when that is the case. Pretty bad.</p>
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<p>And what happens when the rich, those that can easily afford full pay realize that the institutions to which they write their checks are accepting more and more of the socially “other abled”? Part of what makes elite and expensive institutions so attractive is the potential for networking, connections and the social/business leg up. If a larger and larger portion of each class does not bring with it the possibility for those connections and side benefits…will the rich go elsewhere? And simply inject those excess funds into another area of Skippy and Buffy’s lives?</p>
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<p>What’s your source? According to the Hartford Courant, the median household income in Connecticut in 2010 was about $61,000. It may have been higher for a household of 5, but THAT much higher? </p>
<p><a href=“http://articles.courant.com/2011-09-22/business/hc-census-income-uninsured-0922-20110922_1_median-household-income-richest-state-capita[/url]”>http://articles.courant.com/2011-09-22/business/hc-census-income-uninsured-0922-20110922_1_median-household-income-richest-state-capita</a></p>
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<p>Of the several thousand colleges in the United States that offer merit scholarships, can you not find any that offer your program? What is the program? </p>
<p>And private schools, which generally offer the best scholarships, pay no attention to state residency.</p>
<p>Private schools cost more in the first place.
Merit can also have lots of strings attached.</p>
<p>
Our news station had a story about that this morning. Most of this money is coming from home equity loans, because the rates are much lower. They’re also forgivable in case of bankruptcy. </p>
<p>
It’s not that we resent the impoverished, but that we resent a system that seems to encourage the impoverished to stay where they are. Many still do, but there are too many facet of the current system that make it easy (at least in our area) to maintain the status quo.</p>
<p>Home equity interest is deductible too, isn’t it?</p>
<p>
Yes, THAT much higher, according to the Census Bureau: <a href=“http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/2010/H08A_2010.xls[/url]”>http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/2010/H08A_2010.xls</a></p>
<p>What you were looking at is a 3-year average for all households. The average household is a little over 2 people.</p>
<p>There’s several different ways to borrow for college which won’t show up with the current data mining techniques.
- Borrow from home’s equity
- Borrow against 401K
- Charge on credit cards
- Borrow from relatives</p>
<p>Given parent plus loans are fairly expensive (relative to this low rate environment) parents might be finding cheaper ways to borrow.</p>
<p>Only true way to know how prevalent borrowing for education is would be for anonymous surveys of students families.</p>
<p>MD Mom - in most cases, yes.</p>