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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,007
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As for tuition declines in the next ten years... look through the news today and you'll easily find an article giving sound financial reasons for NOT pursuing a degree. That says the current price point is not sustainable at current demand levels. Impressionable young people (and the parents who finance them) are reading those articles with interest, and that can lead only to a decrease in demand. The question is whether that will result in lower tuition or smaller (in terms of enrollment) institutions. Right now, law schools seem to be tilting toward smaller institutions, but we are really on the first stages of a possible economic shift toward a new equilibrium point. This is an absolutely fascinating process to watch.
Last edited by JonLaw; 07/22/13 01:21 PM.
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 553
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Many people said that about tuition rates 10 years ago, and it hasn't happened... what you will see are some lower quality colleges going out of business. The rates will stay the same and increase somewhat still for the colleges where you would actually want to send your kids to school. And I don't just mean the Ivies. Unless states step up and increase their funding levels for universities, costs will continue to rise at state universities as well. I don't sense the winds of change in state legislatures on that, either. There is whining and hand-wringing, but no actual appetite for tax increases that would be required to increase funding to the universities.
You make a basic assumption that the "brand name schools" are all overpriced. But if you have been reading HK's posts, you can also see the dilemma -- if you do want your kid to attend a school with a reasonable sized pool of their intellectual peers where the classroom challenges match their abilities, many of those schools are the "brand names" -- or charging the same prices as the "brand names". It is hard to find that fit with a lower priced school. It is easy to say when your kid is eight that you won't pay -- but much harder when you see what schools your kid would actually attend if you stick to this when they are 17.
I stick with my original advice -- start plugging money into a 529 now. You will be very happy that you did when the time comes.
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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The other thing is that just within the past 3-4 years (since '08), a fair number of top-notch private schools have reneged on a pledge to graduate students "loan-free" and to freeze tuition for matriculants, to slow tuition increases to no more than 150% of inflation... all those things that kept the increases somewhat in check. I honestly missed this one. The reneging, that is. Any good articles on this lately? Let me see what I can dig up for you. I may need to use Wayback to find cached information to compare with current data-- because (naturally) many colleges have been curiously quiet about this type of change (as opposed to the press releases that accompanied the original promises 8-12 years ago). Funny, that. Here is a pair of data-points on the subject, though it may not adequately reveal how determinations of 'need based' versus 'merit' aid have changed. It's shocking how few tier 1 and even tier 2 institutions even offer merit aid officially at this point. The other problem is that this fails to capture the point at which endowments crashed for private-not-for-profit institutions. But it's good data nonetheless. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_357.aspThis one gets at the "why" of some of this, and the notion that tuition increases are "price gouging" (well, they are, but maybe not quite in the way we think): http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_366.asphttp://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_370.aspWouldn't it be cool to know what THIS looked like from year to year: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_376.aspHere's a glimpse at what I was referring to-- take a look at Private, not-for-profit 4y institutions and the percentage of loan aid-- the rate jumps almost 3% from '08 to '09, which is several times the rate of increase up to that point. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_354.aspOf course, for a glimpse at part of the system which is most problematic, check out the loan rates under FOR-profit schools. Ai yi yi.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,007
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I stick with my original advice -- start plugging money into a 529 now. You will be very happy that you did when the time comes. Since financial returns are trending toward 2% to 4% over longer term time frames, I'm utilizing standard taxable accounts because there's little loss from taxation and I have increased flexibility. And *this* gets to my complaint about the entire issue of tuition discounts. If you save for college, you get punished by not having access to these discounts. Granted, I'm using the intparent approach, except that I'm not using the 529.
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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If you save for college, you get punished by not having access to these discounts.
Granted, I'm using the intparent approach, except that I'm not using the 529. Which is precisely the advice that our financial adviser gave us ten years ago. You can't possibly invest the money SAFELY in an investment that has the kind of return to make it worth doing, basically-- every dollar is losing purchasing power every year in the current climate.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 2,856
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You make a basic assumption that the "brand name schools" are all overpriced. But if you have been reading HK's posts, you can also see the dilemma -- if you do want your kid to attend a school with a reasonable sized pool of their intellectual peers where the classroom challenges match their abilities, many of those schools are the "brand names" -- or charging the same prices as the "brand names". It is hard to find that fit with a lower priced school. HK's kid is on a whole other level from my kid. I'm confident that my DD could find a large-enough cohort of her intellectual peers at any reasonably-sized public university. I stick with my original advice -- start plugging money into a 529 now. You will be very happy that you did when the time comes. The money I would have paid into a 529 is getting sucked up by increasing costs of living... medical expenses, gas and grocery prices, etc. I suppose I could always not eat...
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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The thing is, we didn't think we were dealing with "that level" of kid until pretty recently, either.
She'd been coasting in spite of a 3y skip and pretty high levels of differentiation that we've worked hard to get her. At the same time, though, she seemed to be doing okay doing that. Until very recently when we started noticing signs of stress from lack of challenge again.
We have very little saved, either. We were saving, and then got told-- "You're not funding your retirement, and that's the goal you CAN realistically reach."
No way to max a 529 annually without me working, and no way to do that and get DD through K-12 with appropriate academics and reasonably safety. Besides, a 3y skip really takes a bite out of your compound interest.
Catch-22, but there it is.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 553
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For us it was cheap vacations -- my kids know their grandparents VERY well :), buying relatively inexpensive models of used cars and driving them til they dropped, rarely eating out (and only at inexpensive places when we did), renting most movies, heavy library use, living in less house that we could afford for many years so our mortgage (and interest payments) were still pretty small when we finally upsized, both parents working, rarely hiring someone to do things like housework or yardwork, etc. Can't remember the last time we ate steak... All of this was done with education savings as a top priority for a lot of years. HK is at the brink now and can't really make up ground, but parents of younger kids have an opportunity to prioritize and figure out what situation they want to be in when the college bills arrive.
Last edited by intparent; 07/22/13 02:15 PM.
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,007
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For us it was cheap vacations -- my kids know their grandparents VERY well :), buying relatively inexpensive models of used cars and driving them til they dropped, rarely eating out (and only at inexpensive places when we did), renting most movies, heavy library use, living in less house that we could afford for many years so our mortgage (and interest payments) were still pretty small when we finally upsized, both parents working, rarely hiring someone to do things like housework or yardwork, etc. I'm still very resistant to the idea of upsizing, since I prefer to have no debt, having already gone through the joy of paying off six figure student loans.
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,453
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JonLaw's plan is beginning to sound sensible to me. The terminal degree is the most crucial one. With the right research and a good dose of luck I can see how this might work. Paranoia being the only the keeping me sane, though, I am still going to save as well, though...
Last edited by madeinuk; 07/22/13 03:15 PM.
Become what you are
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