As you know, our DD made a similar decision, cp-- forgoing the "Elite" school opportunities for the hometown option.
Still thinking she made a good, adult, well reasoned, decision.I think so, too.
A free undergraduate education means that one is then free to actually
explore (well, somewhat) and even to take some risks in terms of interests. Maybe you're free to follow your social justice leanings where they actually lead, rather than reassuring yourself that if you make enough to pay off your debt, you'll make good on all of that charitable inclination
then.
Being a social worker or a teacher is NEVER going to come with the ability to pay off 200-300K in student debt. Not and live independently as an adult at the same time.
My own prediction is that employers are eventually going to get savvy to the reality, which is that the SMARTEST, and MOST MATURE students from middle class homes are
opting out of crushing student debt-- it's not that they couldn't go to HYPS or other elite schools, but that they took a pragmatic look, took off the rose colored glasses, and decided NOT to do that.
Less pressure isn't an indicator that these students don't have the right stuff. In fact, maybe it's an indicator that they have MORE of it than those that buy what I like to think of as the hype of HYPS. (NO offense to alumni-- they are fine institutions, but there are many other fine institutions, too.)
It's not easy to swim upstream, however. Social pressure surrounding this circus is
tremendous. We have felt a lot of it this past two years. NOBODY understood when DD simply opted "out" of continuing with her applications (about $1K worth) to those elite schools-- but there wasn't much point when she decided that following through wasn't something that was going to be kosher with her to begin with.
DD refused to even participate in the admissions frenzy, in other words. Oh, sure-- she was "in progress" initially at HMC, MIT, etc. But once she thought about it, she realized that by driving admission numbers, all of those places were intellectually being-- well-- they
were part of the problem, and she wasn't going to help them with their strategy to look "exclusive" by even applying. Her odds of gaining admission were
very good. But she knew that she wouldn't attend, and the entire industry-- as it is now, I mean--
disgusts her. She finds it morally offensive.
We talked to her about the choice she was making, but honestly-- this went against my daughter's core values, and we as parents could not-- and would not-- override that.
We're happy that she earned a scarce "full-ride" merit scholarship at her current institution, and hope that she can keep it. We're happy that she has found faculty and graduate students, and some junior/senior classmates to be interesting peers, and that she seems to be learning and growing as a person.
We're BEYOND pleased that she has lived at home this year, and not thousands of miles away, with the additional pressure of knowing how much we're spending or that her dad and I are having to live apart to make it possible.
Remember, our kids are all intelligent enough to realize what kind of hardship a 60K tuition bill is for most of the families on this board. That's an ENORMOUS amount of pressure to "be worth it."
