Well, there is a private school with very good need-based financial aid and a few engineering majors in New Haven, but good luck getting admitted there…
Sure, today. But look at the actuarial reports…
P.S. Medicare Part B and Part D are supplemented by the General Revenue fund, i.e, all federal taxes, not just payroll.
You can easily work your way through college. I did that for my master’s degree. You get a job at a college, and you get tuition remission. Check the college websites - be a security guard at Harvard, be a secretary at MIT.
Or a janitor at Columbia:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/05/columbia-university-janitor-graduates-with-honors/
The article really should be about why people are so bloody stupid, why magical thinking is the rule not the exception for some. You do not work your way through college unless you are going to college part time, period.
Rule for college classes is for every 1 hour in class, you spend 3 hours outside of class. That is 48 hours per week for a 12 credit courseload. There is no way on Earth anyone can do that and hold down a full-time job.
How many 18 year olds will be hired as janitors, seriously?
What you did isn’t “work your way through college”. it’s find a way to pay for your master’s degree when you were considered an independent student, which is VERY different.
I did the whole Military Service in order to pay for College route and thanks to the GI Bill I could afford to look at a vastly expanded list of colleges that I could never hope to attend without funding from the GI Bill…However, I do not recommend this road to anyone who doesn’t truly understand what they’re getting as I ended up having to do two long term vacations in Afghanistan courtesy of Uncle Sam for that opportunity.
Note that 70% of 17 to 24 year old people in the US are ineligible for US military service anyway, even if they want to enlist.
First of all, not all colleges offer tuition remission for employees. Second, where available, tuition remission is usually only available for full-time employees, and often for only one or two classes a semester. Third, tuition remission generally doesn’t include fees, which can be in the thousands of dollars, beyond the reasonable reach of many higher-ed staff salaries. Fourth, most higher-ed jobs—even clerical ones—require at least baccalaureate degrees, and those that don’t are often outsourced and thus ineligible for benefits such as tuition remission. Fifth, there’s a whole lot of competition for these jobs, making them rather difficult to land anyway.
TL;DR: @rhandco, please define “easily”.
Yes, the military is an option if it’s something you are able (AND WANT) to do. My brother-in-law did it. Ended up coming home in a box (well, whatever they were able to find of him after the roadside bomb hit him). Somehow, I don’t think the tuition benefits were worth it.
I despise when people offer the military as a solution. Scholarships through that path are hard and you shouldn’t have to put your life and sanity on the line in order to afford college. (Note: I have nothing against the military. I come from a military family and most of my relatives have served in some capacity. But they did it because that was what they wanted to do, not so they could get an education. There is a difference.)
@ucbalumnus why is that?
Something like
1/4 obesity
1/3 other health problems (e.g. taking drugs for ADHD mentioned in some articles)
1/4 no HS diploma or GED
1/10 criminal record
some articles mention tattoos in excess of those allowed
(some may have more than one of these disqualifiers for US military service)
“The closest 4-year college is a 45-minute drive, and is out-of-state. My son spent 2 hours a day commuting, parking and walking to class. After his 4th car accident in a year, I put him on campus for his safety (the roads around here are winding and horrible, and we’re dealing with young, inexperienced drivers whenever a young college student is driving). I’m not sure commuting would be any safer if we lived in an urban area, because that heavy-traffic driving is probably even more dangerous.”
Sounds like your kid needs driving lessons. : )
I drove in NYC rush hour traffic one hour each way every single day of college. So did most of my classmates. Somehow I survived and so did my classmates. Never had an accident. Graduated with a 3.9 GPA while also working part time jobs every semester.
Not EVERY kid can shave $10-12k off their annual tuition bill by commuting. But most can. the majority of college students in the U.S. have always been commuters fyi.
Those of you who are taking the rhetorical route of saying “I did X, therefore nearly every other person can do X”, can y’all please just step back a bit and recognize that that isn’t really the strongest of logical paths to take?
Of the many posters in this thread, could you enumerate the ones which have said “nearly every other person can do it, too”?
There are many helpful suggestions here. On the flip side of what you said, some posters specialize in finding excuses, but that doesn’t apply to everyone, either.
Bay Area minimum wage is now at $15+ dollars in certain areas.
Commuting will be a viable money saving option for MOST students. Not ALL students.
Doesn’t work if you family is homeless. Or lives in a very remote area. Or if you have to major in an obscure academic program.
But MOST kids are not in those categories. MANY could do it. As evidenced by the fact that the MAJORITY of college students today are commuters. And always have been.
Just pointing out that what some people say “isn’t an option” is something that I myself did. As did most of my college classmates. Just sayin.
No.
There have, however, been multiple, including the one immediately above my post.
That poster refers only to commuting and presents facts to support their claims.
I didn’t mean “every other person can do it too!”
I meant that it is EASY compared to many other options, BUT you have to take a job. It was far easier for me than other options available; all were too costly. So maybe “easy for you” vs. other options.
Yeah, if the university doesn’t have tuition remission, that would not work. But many colleges do, even state schools like where I work. And the university I worked at had tuition remission also so I took courses for free, eventually getting a degree.
Federal jobs tend to have tuition benefits as well, as many large companies do.
And yeah, you can’t go to college full-time and work full-time. Few people used to do that at expensive schools, very few do it now and succeed.
I agree that there seems to be two sets of posters on this thread, the ones who find every excuse to say “me/my child was screwed out of my/their specific (read: any) college education because of reasons beyond our control and it’s everyone else’s fault” and those like me who say “I went to college for cheap/free and you can too!”.
The real answer is:
- what do you or your child want in terms of a degree - does it have to be a private college, does it have to be a four-year college?
- what timeline is realistic for the situation - is a four-year degree in four years necessary? Is it possible (where I work, only 25% of freshman end up getting their degree in four years, 50% in six years)?
If you or your child is homeless, you’ve got MUCH bigger problems than going to college within the next year. If you are homeless, is your food situation stable? If you are homeless, do you have enough money for medical care? Are you safe on a daily basis?
We love to hear stories about the homeless kid who gets into a top college, but we don’t love to hear that realistically that may not work out. Things like dorms closing over break can be significant to a homeless student.
Why do people kvetch over “when is it the right time to have a baby?” and worry about things like money and home environment, but when it comes to going to college, there is some kind of inalienable right for someone else to pay for it three months after every child graduates high school?
Let alone “majoring in an obscure academic area”. Since when is that some kind of right?
Why not, and this is a HUGE stretch, learn about your obscure academic area another way? On the internet. At museums.
Do you really need a college degree?
I really feel that it is a privilege to go to college, and that although everyone should have access to college, they should not have access to college exactly as they want. That’s just not possible. You’ve gotta have dough to go get a fine arts degree and not go broke.
The trope from the 1930s - 1950s is the “really bright but poor kid goes to college while working full-time as a bus boy”. The reality is more like my dad, where he worked when he could but also he slept at the YMCA instead of the dorms, and he sent home money to his family so they wouldn’t lose their house. And he had the GI Bill. The other reality was kids that were rich and they were “working their way through college” by getting a cushy job at their father’s firm in the summer.
It is $2,000 for one semester at our local community college. If CC is not good enough for you and your parents have the money to pay for a four-year college and won’t, that’s your problem not the rest of the planet’s…
Having a baby is much cheaper than college.
Well, depends on what family the baby is born into, I guess…