Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion College choices

I was not online over the long weekend and have just caught up on all the discussion. I perhaps should have been more clear that the 200K figure was over and above the amount we have saved. HowlerKarma is correct that as an out of state student attending one of the top California schools, the debt would have been substantially higher than that without savings.

HowlerKarma is also correct that the University of Washington is expensive for middle income parents. Taken from their website today, incoming IN STATE freshman can expect to pay $27,112, while out of state students will pay $48,231 per year. Not a lot of aid available either.

Harvard has the best aid, truly generous, and if she had gotten in there DD would have gone.

Most other schools have gone to primarily need based aid for in state students and no aid at all for out of state students. Private schools treat everyone the same. Like many other parents, we saved, and the interest and appreciation did not keep up with the 10-20% annual tuition increases seen in the last decade.

Some estimates (see link https://www.massmutual.com/planning...df94531cb3a4a110VgnVCM100000ee6d06aaRCRD) estimate that public universities will cost $107,244 per year in 2030 if there is 10% inflation in price. Not many families will have upwards of $428,000 saved and this rate of growth seems unsustainable to me.

This is a difficult decision for most families, and I appreciate the thoughtful discussion.

I was reading through all this and wanted to add my commentary - My DH went to a state school for undergrad and MBA. He had gotten out of the service and state schools were free due to a veteran grant. Post MBA he ended up getting hired by McKinsey - hired straight from a state school MBA program!! He graduated with minimal debt and a fantastic job. Yes, there were many McK coworkers that had graduated from top MBA schools but he found a large group that went to his state school for undergrad.

According to http://trends.collegeboard.org/coll...ge-rates-growth-published-charges-decade college costs have been rising from 2% to 4% above inflation. If inflation runs at 2%, the target of the Federal Reserve, that would mean 4% to 6% annual increases in college prices. There exist prepaid tuition plans, which allow you to pay for tuition at today's prices. The MA plan is at http://www.mefa.org/products/u-plan/ .

A college degree does substantially raise expected earnings over a 40-year career. Although college is too expensive, its affordability should not be judged solely on whether a student or his/her parents can easily pay the cost from current earnings. Students should be willing to take on some debt for an asset whose average value is several hundred thousand dollars, and parents should be saving for a known future expense.

As a parent of an elementary age child this post is making my head hurt and my wallet;)!

My wife and I will very much "notice" checks of $65K (times 12, for three children), regardless of what we are earning, and I don't think we are unusual.

There are a couple of other considerations that I haven't yet seen in this thread that have made a difference for us (2 kids now in high school in the US midwest).

One is that we made a choice to send our kids to public rather than private school. Although the public schools have not been perfect, overall they have worked out okay for our kids and I don't think the value added by the local privates would have warranted the expense. (Here is a link to a past post about what we like about the public high school our kids go to.)

Early on, we did save for private school tuition so we could have private school as a back up plan if the public school got too bad. It helped me in advocating to know I could walk away from the public school at a moment's notice. We eventually took those savings and put them into 529 (education) accounts in our kids names. Earnings in these accounts are tax free if used for college expenses. Our 529 funds have been invested in the stock market and have grown much faster than the rate at which college expenses have increased, although we were quite lucky in making a big investment in 2009, when the stock market was at its lowest.

The upshot is that our 529s can now more than cover the state flagship and can come close to covering privates.

Writing such checks enables a person to recognize that they are truly contributing to the global financial hypereconomy, as well as creating jobs.

Without such economic activity driven by private economic actors, we would eventually slide back into recession and nobody wants that.

Didn't want this to get lost in moderation-delay-- it's a great point!




I think that Tom Petty says it best, really--


If you don't know* where you're going, any road will take you there.

* I'd argue that probably nobody really does, either, life having this persistently random quality about it.

Of course, Jon is perceptive as ever. In a completely random moment this morning I was pondering the fact that I could have chosen MUCH better if I were interested in Glory and showered with accolades and fame. And then I started humming-- and laughing.

Chilean government is thinking about making college/university free - in March 2106. I think they've been talking about it for a couple of years but it was posted on a ed tech blog (EdSurge) today.

(https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-05-2...m_term=0_0f1ec25b60-9dc2ae973e-292106585).

Other countries, such as Finland, are still tuition-free for students - including international students. While this may not be an option for all, I would not be surprised to see more and more US students look abroad for a degree.(http://www.studyinfinland.fi/tuition_and_scholarships/tuition_fees)

This article, "Why Finland and Norway still shun university tuition fees - even for international students" (http://sciencenordic.com/why-finland-and-norway-still-shun-university-tuition-fees-%E2%80%93-even-international-students) makes some valid points:

1. "Yet perhaps the most important difference between the Nordic countries and countries such as the UK is the ethos of education as a civil right and a public service rather than a commodity. Degrees are not seen as commodities to be exchanged in the marketplace."

2. "A high level of education is beneficial for the development of society including business and industry, making it a collective economic issue. With this argument, education is defined neither as a private investment nor a commodity, but a civil right. So, individual human beings should not have to pay for it."

Fundamentally, I think many in the US (and many other countries too) still view education as a private investment and not as a collective economic issue or civil rights issue, which some of here might contest. Ironically, though, many Nordic countries, including Finland, do not provide g/t services per se.