If you have kids now. save 500K for college.

[Engineer]

I pay for my child's college (and food) but she pays her car payment, her gas, her clothing and her entertainment (sorority dues, etc). Of course, we're talking 10 grand (or less) per year on my part so not anywhere near $500,000 over 4 years. As long as she does well (currently 4.0 as a Sophomore) and takes care of her car payment, insurance, etc., I'm fine with it.

I came out with over $15,000 debt (not huge but lots for the day) and I would just assume that she start with no student debt (to a point - if she goes past 4 years or transfers to an expensive school, she would need to make up the difference).

 

[OutHouse]

Good for you. I'd be happier with kids that went to an actual good school and concentrated on their studies rather than half paying attention to their community college courses because they need to work a double shift at Micky D's after class.

why the community college hate? you believe that they dont or cant provide a good education? Or do you see them as ghetto and low brow? It sounds like the second one to me.

 

[OverVolt]

Yea i would invest as much into my kids as i could afford so they would have a good enough life to afford their own kids and so on. Thats how my family operates.

 

[mikegg]

why the community college hate? you believe that they dont or cant provide a good education? Or do you see them as ghetto and low brow? It sounds like the second one to me.

Community colleges are getting worse. Classes are flooded. It's extremely difficult to find open classes that you need to transfer. Many students take 3, 4, 5 years in CC just to transfer into a 4 year college. They get stuck there. Many of your classmates are not motivated like you'd find in top tier schools.

I'd definitely recommend a 4 year university over a community college.

 

[MetalMat]

What ass did they pull that $500,000 number from?

 

[OverVolt]

Community colleges are getting worse. Classes are flooded. It's extremely difficult to find open classes that you need to transfer. Many students take 3, 4, 5 years in CC just to transfer into a 4 year college. They get stuck there. Many of your classmates are not motivated like you'd find in top tier schools.

I'd definitely recommend a 4 year university over a community college.

I did the transfer route minus getting stuck because of closed classes. Anyway your chances of making connections with the actual important people at UNIVERSITY in 2 years are fairly slim. I'm sure it depends on the place but many programs it turns out are headed by awesome faculty that you never knew about until you transferred there and whoops! You need to be a sophomore to get into the program.

CC is just not equivalent to university, especially for getting to know people and setting up internships etc. although if you knew exactly what you wanted from the beginning it would be technically cheaper.

 

[dank69]

It's different when the children are minors. They have no ability to do anything for themselves nor could they legally even if they wanted to. During that time I'll do my best to arm them with the tools to be successful adults.

However, as legal adults, paying 100% of their college expenses may give them more free time and relieve them of student loan debt, but is it making them a better person? What about after college and they need a car? A house?

As a parent, how much would you recommend I save and for how long should I pay for their life expenses? Perhaps $1,000,000 so I can cover everything until they're 30? After all, how good would that look on their job history if they had to work a shitty job after college? What if they had to live in a small apartment with a roommate? They'd be unhappy! I want the best for my children so I'll pay their way until they can find a job they actually want.

There is an increasing number of "helicopter parents" that don't kick their kids out of the proverbial nest and force them to fend for themselves. I don't plan on being one of those. I'll provide some financial assistance and give them a place to live in my home as long as they're proceeding towards their college degree. They'll probably have to drive a shitty car and work about 20 hours a week at a shitty job while they go to school, but they'll emerge from college with an acute sense of satisfaction of having worked hard to at least partially get themselves through school. With my financial assistance, they'll likely emerge with less student loan debt than most, but at least their college education didn't come for free from mom and dad, which I hope will make them value it and keep them humble.

Anyway, different parenting styles. Hopefully all of our children will emerge as responsible, great adults despite how differently we may raise them.

Once again proving that the only way you can support your position is by extending paying for college to paying for everything.

I find it particularly hilarious that you have no problem with your kids getting federal loans for school as most conservatives rail against the government loan program, but I'm sure you're not one of them, right?

 

[dank69]

why the community college hate? you believe that they dont or cant provide a good education? Or do you see them as ghetto and low brow? It sounds like the second one to me.

There is no hate, but a community college education will typically be inferior to one from a good 4 year school, and more importantly, will be viewed as such on a resume in the future. That wasn't the crux of my post though. The main point was that working (full time) while going to school will only be a detriment to the education itself.

 

[Exterous]

So you believe the ONLY way to teach the lesson I bolded above is to not pay for their college? I've asked this question already in this thread.

Certainly not the only way but that is the way that, studies show, leads to poorer student performance in college.

http://asr.sagepub.com/content/78/1/70
(It would be interesting to know if any studies looked at those who received complete parent college payment with notable restrictions vs those who received payment without restrictions but I couldn't find any)

I won't go so far as to say ONLY as I dislike absolutes esp when dealing with personalities but for a large number of Americans it is a very bad idea.

For those who say you wouldn't pay for their education - why not hold them to strict GPA\attendance\degree standards to get the money or consider a hybrid approach? (You don't tell them you'll pay and let them make their own way through college so they (hopefully) get the idea of value and hard work - let them make some payments on the loans for a few years and then you swoop in and pay off the rest of the loans. Sure you'll eat some interest rate costs but you get to help them out and they aren't struggling with a huge debt load)

 

[Exterous]

Anyway your chances of making connections with the actual important people at UNIVERSITY in 2 years are fairly slim. I'm sure it depends on the place but many programs it turns out are headed by awesome faculty that you never knew about until you transferred there and whoops! You need to be a sophomore to get into the program.

CC is just not equivalent to university, especially for getting to know people and setting up internships etc. although if you knew exactly what you wanted from the beginning it would be technically cheaper.

I very much disagree that the chances of making a connection in 2 years is slim - well, maybe at some snobbish schools but a lot of time you won't be taking the core classes of your degree enmass until the start of your 3rd year. For the first two years at a major university you'll likely be trying to make a connection to the low level prof who got stuck teaching intro to widget theory along to the 120 other students in the class. Get your gen-ed classes out of the way at a CC. Chances are that connection you lost out on from the English 101 prof wasn't going to help you in your Engineering degree anyway

Also - obviously not the case everywhere, but many major universities are partnering with CC to make transferring easier

 

[actuarial]

Better to have smart people go against every sane cell in their brain and have kids? I sure want to live in a world where people, smart people at that, are having kids just for the sake of competing with the lower (read idiot) class. Oh wait, no I don't.

You can blame idiot liberal lawmakers for making idiots having children a viable endeavor, at least in this country. The road to hell is paved with good intentions afterall.

People have children regardless if its a 'viable endeavor'. Throughout history, and continuing today, the poorest and least educated have always had the most children.

The most liberal countries also have the lowest birthrates.

 

[child of wonder]

Once again proving that the only way you can support your position is by extending paying for college to paying for everything.

I find it particularly hilarious that you have no problem with your kids getting federal loans for school as most conservatives rail against the government loan program, but I'm sure you're not one of them, right?

Let's see... I'm in favor of gay rights, pro-choice, was against the war in Iraq, an atheist, voted for Obama twice, etc. What do you think? I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative in that I want the government to balance the budget and invest more money in its citizens versus spending it overseas.

How is arguing against the whole point of this thread (parents should save up $500k to send their new child to college in 18 years) hilarious?

Assuming you have children, don't you see how carelessly they play with toys and how frequently they break them? One year I had my son pay for half of a big birthday present he wanted and he has taken far, far better care of that toy than his others. Why? Because he's invested in it; he has skin in the game.

A point you so conveniently seem to ignore is that I'm not advocating tossing kids out on the street and not helping them with school. My point is paying for all of a child's college expenses may make them value the education less and may ultimately do them a disservice. I fully expect to offer assistance to my children by paying some tuition, giving them a place to live if they go to college nearby, food when they're at home, and so on.

What I won't do is say "oh you'd like to go off to <insert out of state college name here>? Sure son, I'll pay all your tuition, buy you a car, pay your room and board, and constantly keep a checking account loaded up with money for you while you're there." If they wanted to go to school out of state at a good school, I'd be happy with assisting them but I'd also expect them to work a part time job while there, not rely solely on me.

You also seem to hold a low opinion of community colleges and, I would extrapolate from there, technical schools. Despite being a fuck up and having only an associate's degree from a tiny tech school in South Dakota, I somehow managed to be in the top 2% of wage earners in the United States. Aside from some grants, I had to take out loans for my worthless degree (or so everyone told me while I was pursuing it) and ended up just fine.

Going to some prestigious school may help you get in the door at your first job or give you a better chance if a hiring manager is an alumni, but that's about it. What I plan to teach my kids is it's what you do with the education, how hard you work, and how you identify opportunities and have the ambition to pursue them that matters, not a school name on a resume.

 

[dank69]

Let's see... I'm in favor of gay rights, pro-choice, was against the war in Iraq, an atheist, voted for Obama twice, etc. What do you think? I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative in that I want the government to balance the budget and invest more money in its citizens versus spending it overseas.

How is arguing against the whole point of this thread (parents should save up $500k to send their new child to college in 18 years) hilarious?

Assuming you have children, don't you see how carelessly they play with toys and how frequently they break them? One year I had my son pay for half of a big birthday present he wanted and he has taken far, far better care of that toy than his others. Why? Because he's invested in it; he has skin in the game.

A point you so conveniently seem to ignore is that I'm not advocating tossing kids out on the street and not helping them with school. My point is paying for all of a child's college expenses may make them value the education less and may ultimately do them a disservice. I fully expect to offer assistance to my children by paying some tuition, giving them a place to live if they go to college nearby, food when they're at home, and so on.

What I won't do is say "oh you'd like to go off to <insert out of state college name here>? Sure son, I'll pay all your tuition, buy you a car, pay your room and board, and constantly keep a checking account loaded up with money for you while you're there." If they wanted to go to school out of state at a good school, I'd be happy with assisting them but I'd also expect them to work a part time job while there, not rely solely on me.

You also seem to hold a low opinion of community colleges and, I would extrapolate from there, technical schools. Despite being a fuck up and having only an associate's degree from a tiny tech school in South Dakota, I somehow managed to be in the top 2% of wage earners in the United States. Aside from some grants, I had to take out loans for my worthless degree (or so everyone told me while I was pursuing it) and ended up just fine.

Going to some prestigious school may help you get in the door at your first job or give you a better chance if a hiring manager is an alumni, but that's about it. What I plan to teach my kids is it's what you do with the education, how hard you work, and how you identify opportunities and have the ambition to pursue them that matters, not a school name on a resume.

There you go again with all these extras you need to add in on top of just paying for tuition in order to support your position. You are like a broken record in here.

I don't have anything against community college and if that is where my kid chooses to go they are free to do so. Same with a trade school. That isn't the point. The point is that I am confident in my ability to teach them to value their education without forcing them to pay for it. If they haven't learned to value education by the time they are college age there isn't much that college is going to be able to teach them anyway and they will already be starting in a hole.

 

[lilrayray69]

I pay for my child's college (and food) but she pays her car payment, her gas, her clothing and her entertainment (sorority dues, etc). Of course, we're talking 10 grand (or less) per year on my part so not anywhere near $500,000 over 4 years. As long as she does well (currently 4.0 as a Sophomore) and takes care of her car payment, insurance, etc., I'm fine with it.

I came out with over $15,000 debt (not huge but lots for the day) and I would just assume that she start with no student debt (to a point - if she goes past 4 years or transfers to an expensive school, she would need to make up the difference).

Does she go to UK? Just saw your from Lexington and have the Wildcat as your avatar...I'm a senior at UK currently

 

[CountZero]

I think many of you that are rallying against paying for your child's college are missing the big picture here.

College students taking out loans don't learn the value of an education while in school any better than someone being supported by their parents. If this was true you'd never read stories about a kid with $150k in loans and a degree in art history with the only work experience they have being the menial jobs they worked in college. Instead they learn the value after the fact, when the money is due and at that point it is too late.

Your kid should know the value of an education when they enter school, not when they leave and have a debt to pay back.

 

[Zaap]

I'd rather my kid know the value of having bankable skills that are valuable and in demand by his fellow man- not whatever value there is in me or him going into massive debt over someone else's definition of an education that they're charging way too much for.

It might be different if all the colleges were turning out Einsteins or something. Instead I see too many of them just turning out debt slaves with no better job prospects than anyone else, and quite frankly, not necessarily better educated than anyone else.

 

[Engineer]

Does she go to UK? Just saw your from Lexington and have the Wildcat as your avatar...I'm a senior at UK currently

No. She was going to go to UK but her roommate backed out on her and she was so pissed that she decided to look at EKU. She loved it so much that she found a roommate and decided to go there (good for me - about $7,000 per year cheaper after factoring in scholarship money! :biggrin: ).

I graduated from the UK College of Engineering with a BSEE in 1993!

Go Big Blue!!!

 

[lilrayray69]

No. She was going to go to UK but her roommate backed out on her and she was so pissed that she decided to look at EKU. She loved it so much that she found a roommate and decided to go there (good for me - about $7,000 per year cheaper after factoring in scholarship money! :biggrin: ).

I graduated from the UK College of Engineering with a BSEE in 1993!

Go Big Blue!!!

Oh ok, was just asking on the off chance maybe I knew her if she did. I'm going to UK because I got a scholarship there, did my first two years at the community college right next to it. My high school grades weren't very good so I didn't have much of a chance at a scholarship, so I went to community college (where most of the professors are also professors UK which is literally on the same campus) which was maybe $1,500 a semester and got a 4.0 GPA which got me the scholarship to UK. Thus far I have yet to go into any debt for my college education. Plan to go straight for my masters degree via a 1 year program.

Community college was definitely a smart move, I was surprised how good some professors were. They even had a physics professor who also teaches at the main university, he's a nuclear physicist who used to work at CERN. Pretty neat guy to be teaching intro physics

 

[Acanthus]

The bubble will burst before they reach college age.

 

[dank69]

I'd rather my kid know the value of having bankable skills that are valuable and in demand by his fellow man- not whatever value there is in me or him going into massive debt over someone else's definition of an education that they're charging way too much for.

It might be different if all the colleges were turning out Einsteins or something. Instead I see too many of them just turning out debt slaves with no better job prospects than anyone else, and quite frankly, not necessarily better educated than anyone else.

College isn't going to turn a kid who hates education into an Einstein. As a parent you need to get your kid interested in learning and then college can help turn that kid into someone ready to become an expert in their field.

 

[mizzou]

I understand why medical costs soar (new tech is complicated and extremely expensive, and it's dangerous as fuck)

I don't understand why education costs soar (teaching is teaching, even new teaching technology is relatively simple)

Pretty soon, private schools will get wiser of public schools or vise versa, and someone is going to have a monopoly on having all the attendance.

15 years ago, people balked at lesser known institutions (you know, the small ones nobody wanted to go to unless they were a 'loser')

Nowadays, EVERYONE is considering going to that school because it's not cheap, but affordable.

The landscape is already changing.

 

[Zaap]

College isn't going to turn a kid who hates education into an Einstein. As a parent you need to get your kid interested in learning and then college can help turn that kid into someone ready to become an expert in their field.

I agree.

Key word here is 'can'. Or, as I said, it could just turn him/her into a debt-slave that's not particularly qualified to do anything. It can go either way. I'm not against a good college education. It's just that no mere mortal need spend 500k on that, and most anyone who ( supposedly will be) probably won't be getting anywhere near their money's worth out of it.

 

[Acanthus]

I understand why medical costs soar (new tech is complicated and extremely expensive, and it's dangerous as fuck)

I don't understand why education costs soar (teaching is teaching, even new teaching technology is relatively simple)

Pretty soon, private schools will get wiser of public schools or vise versa, and someone is going to have a monopoly on having all the attendance.

15 years ago, people balked at lesser known institutions (you know, the small ones nobody wanted to go to unless they were a 'loser')

Nowadays, EVERYONE is considering going to that school because it's not cheap, but affordable.

The landscape is already changing.

Yup, colleges are pricing themselves right out of the market.

The bubble burst is going to come when FAFSA rules change and over-leveraged schools start going belly-up because students cant pay for fancy architecture, 20 fountains, and $400 math books anymore.

 

[jpeyton]

Because 18 years from now, homes will cost more than $300K? Hell, homes cost more than that now! A basic starter home in the SF Bay Area is something like $600K. That will grow to more than $1M easy in 18 years.

House prices in CA are not the norm. $300k will get you a very nice home in most of the country.

Buy the house now; take out a 15 year mortgage. Instead of a college fund, give your kids a house when they graduate. Not only will they have the title to their own home about 30 years before most of their friends, but according to you they'll have a few hundred grand in equity as well.

Again, anyone thinking about putting aside $300k+ in a college fund needs a basic lesson in math and finances. At some point, the cost/benefit ratio of going to college doesn't make sense anymore.

 

[brianmanahan]

relevant: i just saw that a local university (ashland) cut its tuition by 10$k per year today

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/public/2013/08/27/Ashland_University_lowers_tuition_.html

maybe this is the beginning of some price corrections?