Should we be letting kids handle more of college costs?

[marinauser]

Whether the CC route is a good idea depends greatly on the child's committment to a major. If you want to be an engineer or scientist, it is a waste of time. First, those majors don't necessarily spend a lot of time on "common" courses. Further, they require a great deal of lab work even early in the college experience and CCs don't usually have that available to the degree needed. Now, if a child has no clue what they want to do, then it is a different story. Also, if the desire is to be a teacher, then it is probably a good route.

 

[fosterscik]

We are another family that "paid it all" - or just about all. DD went to a highly-ranked private school with a work-study and loan requirement ($2.5k per year for 4 years). She worked hard, got a CS degree last year, and was immediately employed - a win! We gave her $10k as part of a family bequest so in reality all she "paid" was a few years of work study (completed with a prof working in her area so in reality a paid internship).
DS went to a large out-of-state public, graduated as an engineer. No cost to him, no loans and got a job (left that job after 6 months but that's another story...).
I and DW had free educations and it was extremely important to us that our kids had the same start in life. If we could not afford the private we would have paid for state school. In this case our DD's education was less costly than a state school (thank you all past donors to this school's huge endowment!!). We try to contribute a little each year. Perhaps if we live to 100 we'll repay them

 

[user5027]

Fortunately we were able to help our two children with college expenses. They both received aid and scholarships.

We continued fully funding retirement and used our HELOC and taxable savings. When they qualified for subsidized Stafford loans we took them with the plan to pay them off before the interest accrued.

The deal was finish school and Mom and Dad pays off the loans. Not finish school and you pay off the loans.

In my son's words, "that was a no brainer."

 

[Live Free]

Both of my nieces are civil engineers (one with a BS and is an EIT and the other has her PE as well as an MS). They both did the first two years at a CC and transferred to state university. So it can be done that way. I think it depends on the state and how good their CCs are. They are in NC.

I am paying for my kid (will start junior year in college) - all expenses (including room and board) so far. I have always told my kids that we will do the best we can to help pay their way through school...but that we don't pay for poor grades or degrees we think are not worth the investment (e.g., photography or art history).

My biggest surprise has been with my oldest (younger is still in high school). He was a strong student in high school, did very well on his SATs, took many AP classes, super responsible, overall great kid, etc. He has finished his first two years in college and still is struggling to settle on a major. He started off in engineering and did ok in all his calc classes, etc. But he doesn't love it and has told me he isn't sure he wants to keep going down that path. The next two years will be all upper level math and engineering and he said he can get through it, but he hates it. He also is considering IT or Finance but keeps going back and forth. He is still signed up for engineering classes for fall classes but is leaning towards changing them and choosing a new major. This will add another semester to his schooling, which he will pay for using his savings from his summer/winter jobs over the last few years. I am at a total loss to guide him other than providing him a list of careers/earnings to consider. I also am not sure that just taking a semester or two off will help him decide either.

I can imagine that there are a lot of 20 year olds that are in a similar boat.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Whether the CC route is a good idea depends greatly on the child's committment to a major. If you want to be an engineer or scientist, it is a waste of time. First, those majors don't necessarily spend a lot of time on "common" courses. Further, they require a great deal of lab work even early in the college experience and CCs don't usually have that available to the degree needed. Now, if a child has no clue what they want to do, then it is a different story. Also, if the desire is to be a teacher, then it is probably a good route.

I think the amount of frou frou classes depend on the country and state you live in for public schools. Degrees our kids have looked at outside the U.S. require less overall classes to graduate because they skip general ed, while California has what I would consider a significant amount of general ed for all majors in both the state and UC systems. I think the number of general ed, not career oriented classes required at many schools in the U.S are part of the reason for the trillion dollars in student debt. I personally would like it if my gynecologist hadn't had to take classes in public speaking and two years of German. Maybe she could charge me less with less student loans to pay off.

For majors course like computer science these days you could do most of the classes online if you wanted to - you don't need any on site lab. Georgia Tech has a master degree in CS these days that is all online -

https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech

 

[photoguy]

I paid my way through undergrad by doing a coop program (engineering) + getting a few scholarships. Graduated with no debt and only a little help from parents. Is this possible at state schools in the US today? The main drawback of doing the coop program is that it takes an extra year to graduate so the opportunity cost is high.

Regarding taking community college for two years and then transferring -- is it possible to do this for STEM programs? In engineering, we had a fairly rigorous and well defined curriculum -- i do not think a CC transfer would have the right background courses and probably would have experienced a severe shock in difficultly.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

I paid my way through undergrad by doing a coop program (engineering) + getting a few scholarships. Graduated with no debt and only a little help from parents. Is this possible at state schools in the US today? The main drawback of doing the coop program is that it takes an extra year to graduate so the opportunity cost is high.

Regarding taking community college for two years and then transferring -- is it possible to do this for STEM programs? In engineering, we had a fairly rigorous and well defined curriculum -- i do not think a CC transfer would have the right background courses and probably would have experienced a severe shock in difficultly.

CA community colleges have two year transfer degrees where by law if kids earn the transfer AA, they get priority admission to 4 year colleges accepting the degree and the 4 year school has to come up with a plan so they graduate in no more than 2 more years.

I see many STEM majors on it, but not engineering -

Degrees

A student could be a physics major and transfer to Cal Poly under this plan and graduate in 4 years total. Or be a CS major and transfer to San Jose state for two years and get a job at Apple making $100K after a few years of work experience.

This law was put in place by the legislature, not the schools, to help kids who couldn't graduate in 4 years because the 4 year schools weren't offering the classes they needed or making them pay to take substantially the same classes over again that they already took at community colleges.

 

[SJ1_]

I have a degree from a private college but transferred about 2 yrs. from a
much cheaper Community college. It never came up as a negative. Took all the into. and general required classes so I would have no prob. transferring them. Even while I was at the private college I took a speech class at the
local community college to save money.
My experience was that the students who partied non stop and had horrible grades were usually being funded by their well-intentioned parents.

 

[Katsmeow]

Regarding taking community college for two years and then transferring -- is it possible to do this for STEM programs? In engineering, we had a fairly rigorous and well defined curriculum -- i do not think a CC transfer would have the right background courses and probably would have experienced a severe shock in difficultly.

Well, around here, I think you would be wrong. At the CCs DS attended they had courses of study for those planning to transfer into engineering. It is laid out very clearly what courses transfer and you can look up the in-state school you plan to transfer to and see what the course will transfer as. Remember the CC is the first 2 years of courses and so is mostly used for the core courses that most universities require.

My son has transferred as a CS major but most of his courses from the CC were the courses that everyone has to take at the university to graduate -- English, history, government, some of his required science courses, etc. He could have taken some of his programming courses at the CC and they would have transferred although in his case he decided to take all of the CS courses at the university. But, the first few CS courses were, in fact, available at the CC. Also the first few semesters of calculus are available at the CC.

 

[dvalley]

I went to a community college in the mid 90s for 2 years then transferred to a university for CS. Almost all the general ed type of stuff got transferred over except for a couple of courses that they didn't give me credit for but I was able to make those up in the summer/winter sessions and graduated with a B.S in CS in 4 years. My parents paid for my education and I'm hoping to do the same for DD.

I see several parents here have put conditions like 'we'll pay...as long as they keep their grades up etc' but in reality some of my grades weren't that great (high level math) but my parents stuck with me and I managed to graduate with a good in-demand degree (for back then) and got very decent jobs/salaries etc because I was very good at programming and logic.

My hope is I can help steer/advise DD in the right direction for her major. I picked my own major (with some advice from my older bro's but my parents didn't care as long as it was an engineering degree). I find that computer science is no longer what it once was and with our 'global job market' its hay days are over. I think a good field for DD would be medical or perhaps something similar that can't easily be off-shored.

 

[rodi]

We're budgeting to pay for 4 years at a public school. CC is an option, since they can transfer an associates (as mentioned above) and have it count with the CalState/UC college systems.

We're budgeting for books, tuition, fees, and dorm equivalent expenses. If they get an apartment - we only subsidize what it would cost to be in a dorm. (Shared housing is sometimes cheaper, so we would have to look at whether we split the "savings".

We are not subsidizing spending money. Summer jobs can cover that. This should prevent developing an expensive starbucks habit.

If they live at home and attend locally, we'll give them use of a car - and gift it to them on graduation.

Big strings attached to all this: The major has to have a job-path at the end WITHOUT a masters degree. I will pay for a teaching credential (5th year) if necessary - but that's it. So most liberal arts majors (and some less lucrative science majors) are out.

If they want to go to vocational school instead (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, auto mechanics) I'm fine with that.

This was the deal my parents gave me. I ended up with a BSEE rather than my wish to get a political science degree. I'm ok with that. It was their money and they were being generous. I definitely made more as an engineer than I would have with a poli-sci undergraduate degree.

Masters degrees would be paid for by kid (unless the market takes off and our nest egg grows substantially in retirement.

Kids are only 11 and 13, hubby is already retired, I'm retiring w/in the year... so we've had to calculate all of this ahead of time. We currently have about $68k/kid saved for their college. That money and another 52k/kid of our investible assets are earmarked and not considered as part of the retirement money.

 

[FUEGO]

I paid my way through undergrad by doing a coop program (engineering) + getting a few scholarships. Graduated with no debt and only a little help from parents. Is this possible at state schools in the US today? The main drawback of doing the coop program is that it takes an extra year to graduate so the opportunity cost is high.

Regarding taking community college for two years and then transferring -- is it possible to do this for STEM programs? In engineering, we had a fairly rigorous and well defined curriculum -- i do not think a CC transfer would have the right background courses and probably would have experienced a severe shock in difficultly.

I'm in NC and recall folks doing 2 year associates "college transfer" program at the nearby CC and transferring to the state university in the same town to pursue an engineering degree. Many were disappointed since the engineering program has specific requirements like "calculus for engineers", "physics for engineers", etc. They were beefed up harder classes that the engineering school required for engineering majors to pass with a C or better to matriculate into a designated engineering curriculum.

If you took the regular flavor of calc or physics (what a business or biology or humanities major might take), you would have to retake the entire course to count toward the engineering graduation requirement (and you had to take the right flavor of calc/physics etc to even be able to take subsequent engineering courses). I think it is so that the engineering program can maintain ABET accreditation for their engineering program (generally a requirement to qualify graduates to take the FE exam and subsequently take the PE exam).

Out of curiosity, I just took a look at the CC's Associate's in Science Pre-major-Engineering. It looks like you spend 2 years getting an AA that will get you maybe 1 year of engineering credit at the university in the civil engineering dept. The comp sci won't transfer to anything useful apparently. And you'll miss another freshman level computer class. You can do the physics and 1st year math (but you should really have that out of the way in HS honestly). But for the second year at university, you'll get virtually nothing from the CC (other than the E+M physics course that will transfer, and possibly 1 elective if you carefully choose it and it fits the uni-approved list). The engineering curriculum has a series of prerequisites that mean if you start at university in year 3 as a junior, but you missed the year 2 pre-reqs, it's not likely you can finish in 4 years without some serious hustling. The CC curriculum skips the 2nd year uni maths that you need as a pre-req, and all of the discipline specific engineering courses that you need going into the 3rd year.

The engineering curricula at my alma mater have very little fat to trim and jump into discipline specific courses early on (in the second year, or 1st year if you come in with some transfer credits or credits from good AP scores). I pulled the Plan of Study for my eventual civil engineering major pretty early in HS and selected high school courses and college release courses that counted toward my major. I managed to finish all my maths, physics, chemistry, and engineering electives (thermodynamics and the euphemistically named "Intro to Electrical Engineering") before I officially started as a full time student in my first fall semester.

The biggest expense for kids going into college is the opportunity costs of a year out of the work force honestly. If you do the CC then college transfer to an engineering program and end up taking an extra year to finish the degree, that's $40-60k you just missed out on, plus a year of experience that would have made you more valuable each year into the future, and you'll get your PE 1 year later (that was a $7500 pay bump for me).

I'll definitely keep my eyes open to the CC option for my kids, but I'm not sure it's a good route here in NC if they are headed into an engineering program.

FWIW, my nephew is doing the 2 year CC option and planning to transfer but I doubt it will be into an engineering program.

 

[REWahoo]

FUEGO, some states have established a "common course numbering system" to eliminate (or at least reduce) what you describe from happening. This is the system in Texas:

The Texas Common Course Numbering System is a voluntary, co-operative effort among Texas community colleges and universities to facilitate transfer of freshman and sophomore level general academic coursework. TCCNS provides a shared, uniform set of course designations for students and their advisors to use in determining both course equivalency and degree applicability of transfer credit on a statewide basis. When students transfer between two participating TCCNS institutions, a course taken at the sending institution transfers as the course carrying the same TCCNS designation at the receiving institution.

To date, 115 institutions of higher learning in Texas participate in the TCCNS project.

TCCNS

 

[LOL!]

Texas also has the feature that if one takes too many course hours, then those are no longer charged at the "in-state" rate, but instead get a higher rate:
Tuition and Fee Definitions : Student Business Services : Texas State University

Excessive Hours Tuition - Texas Education Code §54.014 specifies that resident undergraduate students may be subject to a higher tuition rate for attempting excessive hours at any public institution of higher education while classified as a resident student for tuition purposes. Texas State students attempting hours in excess of their degree program requirements will be charged at the non-resident tuition rate.(1)

Thus, students who burn up hours in CC need to be aware of this. (Although the quote is from Texas State, it applies to all the public (state) universities in TX.

Brag: My daughter took the FE exam after 3 years of college because the engineering alumni association of her university would pay for it if one passed it and earned the EIT accreditation. My daughter didn't have to pay for it.

 

[misanman]

My parents paid for nearly all of my college expenses so that is what we wanted to do for our children.

We tried to set the expectation that each of our three children would go to college, get good grades and graduate in 4 years. And also that they would work to cover personal expenses. We covered tuition and room and board. Not sure it would be for everyone, but all three came through with flying colors.

Where we had some doubts was the son who wanted to study Art. But he was tenacious about it and now works for a major Hollywood studio and has a dozen or so film credits.

I am trying to set a similar expectation for our grandchildren but I have no idea how well that will work. We are funding 529s for them so we'll see.

 

[imoldernu]

My Grandson is a Junior 3.9 (4.0 scale) at IMSA... and hoping to attend my college, which he chose independently. Curious, I took a peek at the 2013/2014 college expenses, and the Alumni Fund,which totals more than 1.2bn., and provides an average annual grant of $36,000 to 50% of all students.

He is hoping for some of that scholarship money... either there or at another IVY League type college. His parents (my kids) will have three in college or Grad school, at the same time, between now and 2020.

When I graduated in 1958, the comparable annual cost to the chart below, was approximately $1,400./year. Using the US inflation rate, this would equate to today's $11,500./yr.

I looked at the numbers on a comparative basis just to see how much higher education costs are today.

I put myself through school, working 25 hrs/wk and all summer.... this along with a tuition scholarship of $800/yr. A far different world. Graduated with no debt. I don't see any way this could be done today.

My heart goes out to those who will be accepting the student loan debt, and I hope that the chosen field of endeavor will balance out in the long run.

Yearly costs for the 2013/2014 year.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

One thing I see with a few of our kids' friends is both parents working, either one full time or maybe the dad works full time and the mom picks up a part time job to help pay for college, and the kids are going to some party school on the ten year plan for an undergraduate degree. There is no way we would both work, especially at a minimum wage type job, so our adult kids could go to school part time and otherwise basically live a life of leisure.

 

[Hamlet]

Yeah, its much harder today than it was in the 90s when I did it.

In addition, a bachelor's degree is now a basic requirement to enter Corporate America today. There are also good alternative paths (the trades and the military are two), but most of the paths to a decent paying job for anyone under 30 today involve a college degree.

I have two very young daughters. My current plan is to pay full tuition and books for four years at any State school or any private school that I feel gives enough value to justify the added expense, assuming that they are passing their classes. So if they get into MIT, I'll happily suck it up and pay the bill. Not so much for the $50k/year extended high schools that some private schools are.

I will encourage them to move out to go to school, and will expect them to pay their own living expenses from part-time and summer work. I think that it is reasonable to expect a student to earn enough to support themselves if their tuition is paid for. I also think that it is very good for kids to leave the nest and deal with the day-to-day issues of living on their own without having Mom and Dad available to solve every little problem they run into.

None of this is set in stone, or an indictment of how anyone else is going to do things. My plans may change over the next 15 years. This is just my current plan. I'd like to give my daughters a decent chance to graduate with a bachelor's degree and minimal debt.

When I graduated in 1958, the comparable annual cost to the chart below, was approximately $1,400./year. Using the US inflation rate, this would equate to today's $11,500./yr.

I looked at the numbers on a comparative basis just to see how much higher education costs are today.

I put myself through school, working 25 hrs/wk and all summer.... this along with a tuition scholarship of $800/yr. A far different world. Graduated with no debt. I don't see any way this could be done today.

My heart goes out to those who will be accepting the student loan debt, and I hope that the chosen field of endeavor will balance out in the long run.

 

[Mulligan]

It's too bad kids of today couldn't do what I did in the early 80s. My father paid for my first 2 years, and I was to pay the last 2 years. I loaded up max on student loans first three years and put them all in bank CDs. Interest earned ( 12%- 15%) from the loan dollars paid completely for my senior year, so I only had to pay for one year. I never did take the money out of the CDs as the rate was always higher than the charged loan rate even when paying back loans, so I just paid back out of pocket.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[jerome len]

I live in a State with sub par State colleges in the field my son wants to follow. So, we just chose an out of State, State college and out State tuition is about $38000 a year with room and board an additional $10600 PLUS a couple of grand a year for books.

Now DS graduated qualifying for the National Honor Society and is smart, works hard and is a good kid. But......4 years of school will be a couple hundred grand and I know he wants to go on to get a PHD. It's my understanding the IVY Leage colleges are even more expensive. I have and make just enough that we dont qualify for student aid but the good news is that I've been putting away college money from the day he was born. Still, I never thought it would be so expensive so we'll enjoy fewer new cars, less expensive dinners and vacations for a while. I don'[t know what I would do if I had 3 or 4 kids all wanting the same type of education. I think he'll qualify for stipends when he works on an advanced degree.....or, so I've been told. He is so smart he's received a paid intership this summer at a local University.....the Professor validated our decision to send him out of State for a quality education. In closing, I'm lucky to have been financially able to help....it would hurt if I couldn't provide him with the education he deserves based on how hard he worked in High School.

 

[photoguy]

Well, around here, I think you would be wrong. At the CCs DS attended they had courses of study for those planning to transfer into engineering. It is laid out very clearly what courses transfer and you can look up the in-state school you plan to transfer to and see what the course will transfer as.

Many were disappointed since the engineering program has specific requirements like "calculus for engineers", "physics for engineers", etc. They were beefed up harder classes that the engineering school required for engineering majors to pass with a C or better to matriculate into a designated engineering curriculum.

I guess I should have known the answer would be it depends on the state/school. But it is still useful to see the specifics so thanks for the information.

Whether the CC route is a good idea depends greatly on the child's committment to a major. If you want to be an engineer or scientist, it is a waste of time. First, those majors don't necessarily spend a lot of time on "common" courses. Further, they require a great deal of lab work even early in the college experience and CCs don't usually have that available to the degree needed.

This matches my personal experience (which actually was in canada not the US and was some time ago) -- at my school, I think there were only five general ed course that you had to take (out of 40 courses over 4 years) but 1 was technical writing and the other was engineering ethics so there wasn't much else. Only the first year could arguable be described as general courses, and it was very problematic in that if you failed a course, it could mean that you were pushed back a year due to timing of when it could be retaken.

Also even if you could get the "same" course in say a different department, the emphasis on examples/applications was very different. I remember a very smart (but in this case naive) math guy bitching about how eigenvectors were totally abstract (and not practically useful). This was in the top math undergrad department in canada.

 

[Katsmeow]

If you want to be an engineer or scientist, it is a waste of time. First, those majors don't necessarily spend a lot of time on "common" courses. Further, they require a great deal of lab work even early in the college experience and CCs don't usually have that available to the degree needed. Now, if a child has no clue what they want to do, then it is a different story.

As ever....it entirely depends on the CC and perhaps the state you are in. My son is a CS major and will receive a Bachelor of Science. It is true that, as such, he doesn't have to take the 2 years of a foreign language required by a BA degree.

However he did have to take:

6 hours of English
3 hours of visual/performing arts
3 hours of cultural studies
3 hours of literature or philosophy
6 hours of history
6 hours of political science
3 hours of social science
1 hour of kinesiology
(the above requirements are basically the same requirements for anyone at his school getting a B.S. degree even in one of the sciences other than CS)

Also, 12 hours of electives

Even if he took no science or math at the CC there was plenty of room there for him to take those courses at the CC.

As it turned out he also took at the CC 4 hours of the 16 hours of lab science he was required to take (he found the labs fine for the beginning science course that he took at the CC).

He also could have taken 11 hours of his required math courses at the CC (Calc I, Calc II and Discrete Math).

So, in the state where we live, it simply does not put you behind at all to go to CC and then transfer to the state university. I can understand not wanting to do it, but not being able to take enough courses at the CC is simply not a reason not to do it.

 

[Midpack]

I started working summers after my junior year in HS, and my parents insisted I work summers while in college, and that money was supposed to be used for all my personal expenses while at college (so I couldn't just blow my summer income partying during summers). But they paid for tuition, room & board and books. They did not want me to work while in school, for fear it would compromise my study time. I consider myself very lucky my parents could provide me with an education. I was not eligible for any scholarships.

 

[tryan]

The high school my son is in is affiliated with the state university. We pay an "admin fee" for a college level class ... the HS pays the tuition. As a sophomore he already has 4 college credits. By senior year I expect he'll have more than a semester of college under his belt. Total cost to us .... less than a grand.

 

[Hamlet]

That would not have worked for the mechanical engineering program at the University of Minnesota in the 90s when I took it. There were just too many classes that you had to take early because they were prerequisites for other classes. There were also very few general classes or non-engineering electives required. It was all math, science, and engineering classes.

The first year was pretty much entirely Physics, Calc, and Chemistry. I think I took one elective class in the entire first year. You could take most of that at a community college, but you'd have to be very careful that it would all transfer.

The 2nd year I needed to take the Statics/Deform/Dynamics series of classes that is a prereq for all of the other engineering classes. Note that Physics and Calc were prereqs for Statics, so you needed to be taking Phyiscs and Calc the first year to be taking Statics/Deform/Dynamics in the 2nd year. I don't think most community colleges offer Statics, Deform, and Dynamics as classes.

So, in the state where we live, it simply does not put you behind at all to go to CC and then transfer to the state university. I can understand not wanting to do it, but not being able to take enough courses at the CC is simply not a reason not to do it.