Class of 2028
This post is a collaboration with the Arizona Commission for Postsecondary EducationFor as long as I can remember, I knew my parents would pay for my room and board when I went to college and I would be responsible for paying for my tuition and books.
Both sets of my grandparents did this for my parents, and now Bart and I plan to do the same thing for our children.
We like this strategy for several reasons (reasons which we’ve mostly stolen from my parents, as we do):
First, it incentives our children to perform well in school or extra-curricular activities so they can get a scholarship. I knew that if I got a scholarship, all that savings would go directly into my pocket, so I really wanted to get good grades and do well on the ACT (since academics were basically my only shot at a scholarship, considering that my athletic, music, and artistic abilities are non-existent). And paying for your own tuition means you really want to keep that scholarship too, not lose it after one semester of not taking school seriously. During our move, I found the letter my dad wrote me when I left for college and one of his ten pieces of advice was DO NOT LOSE YOUR SCHOLARSHIP (and I believe it was in all caps).
Second, we really want our children to live on-campus. Both Bart and I are strong proponents of living on-campus as freshman (at least at BYU), and we don’t want our kids to miss out on that because they are trying to save a few dollars. The majority of my best memories in college are from my freshman year, and one of Bart’s biggest regrets about his college experience is that he didn’t live in the dorms.
Third, having our children pay for their tuition gives them a strong motivation to graduate in a timely manner. It’s kind of unbelievable to me how long some people take to graduate these days. I can certainly understand if there are health issues, or if you get married young or have a child or are working full-time while trying to graduate, but even at selective top-tier universities, only 36 percent of full-time students graduate in four years. At public universities in general, the rates drop to 19 percent graduating in four years or less and education policy now uses six years as the standard length to get a bachelor’s degree (imagine me scraping my jaw off the ground here). Bart and I are not interested in funding years and years of higher education while our kids switch majors, don’t take full course-loads and generally waste a bunch of time and money. I only spent three years on campus (then finished my last three classes online when we moved to Texas), which meant that I was able to work full-time for a year before doing a master’s degree, and then work for a year after that before having a baby at age 24. (Let this long paragraph be a warning to you to never bring up this subject in our home, or Bart and I will talk to your ear off).
Fourth, we want our kids to see higher education as part of a route to a job and a career. I don’t believe in “education for education’s sake,” at least not when you’re paying tens of thousands of dollars for that education. Bart and I both have liberal arts degrees and a love for learning in general, but I think you’re fooling yourself if you think the only reason to go to college is to become well-educated. At least a large part of the equation needs to be what you’re going to do after you graduate and we feel a big responsibility to help our girls have an end goal in mind when they go to school so they can graduate with the ability to provide for themselves with an interesting job and a good career trajectory. Especially if you’ve taken out loans to cover your tuition, you’ll really want a way to pay back those loans once you graduate.
Of course, we’re lucky to even have the ability to consider how and what we want to pay for when our children go to college, and with three kids, we know just paying for room and board will be a hefty chunk of change on its own. For kindergarteners like Ella, experts estimate they’ll need around a quarter of a million dollars to attend a four-year college (yikes!).
Since October is Arizona CollegeSavings month, I’ve been looking through the AZ529 plans where you can save for your child’s college education. You can use it for any accredited institution, whether it’s online, an academic or vocational program, and it’s in your name, rather than your child’s, so they don’t lose financial aid eligibility. Plus, you can use the money for any educational expenses, including room and board.
You can start with as little as $15 a month in a AZ529 plan, and this form is super useful for helping you figure out how much you should be saving. You can jumpstart your child’s savings with a $250 scholarship – they can color a picture of what they want to be when they grow up and mail it in by December 11th.
I’d love to hear about how you and your parents handled college finances for you and how you plan to pay (or not pay) for your child’s education. I could talk about it all day long.
Such an interesting topic! My husband and I have very strong feelings on this as well. My husband was given a full ride to a small private school – only his full ride covered the exact cost of tuition that first year and would not be adjusted for any price increases. 5 years later (4 of schooling, one co-op year he spent working), he graduated with $60k in debt – and it's been haunting him (and now me) since. I understand learning the value of money, but he wishes someone had helped him to figure out that the short term complications of transferring would still be less than the complications of living with student debt so many years after graduation. I received a full ride (that did adjust for inflation), but got very very sick my sophomore year and I pulled out to focus on my health. I should be able to go back in a few years, and for now, I'm figuring out what I want to study and do as a career. As for our kids, I'm not sure. At the very least, we are going to be open about our experiences, our knowledge of fiances, and encourage them to work hard for scholarships. We also know now the value of state schools- reputations can be very good and an affordable education is a rare commodity these days. All in all, it would be so nice to help them with undergrad if we can.
My parents paid for all three of us to go to the same state school, tuition and everything else. The deal was that if we graduated in less than four years, they would pay for a ticket for us to go to Europe. Because a ticket to Europe is a lot cheaper than a semester of college.
Obviously, I was incredibly lucky and unusual to be able to graduate with zero debt and a trip to Europe (I graduated in 3.5 years, mostly because I tested out of the language requirement thanks to my proficieny in high-school Spanish). My husband paid his way with scholarships and loans, and then more scholarships and loans for law school, so we're still paying those off.
We have three boys. They each have a savings account to which we contribute, but it's not really for college. Because, despite my own experience, we're not really planning on pushing college or paying for it as a matter of course. Even if we can, which I highly doubt. A trade would be just as desirable as a college degree, if not more so. You know how much our plumber makes? Enough to go on vacation every year to places like Japan. So if our kids get to 18 and don't know if they want to go to college, they can go to truck-driving school, or apprentice to an electrician, or just work on a farm driving machinery during haying season. And if they're really set on college, they will have to get scholarships or work for at least part of it. They'll figure it out. We'll help as we can, but it's their life, and we want them to know that college is not the only path to happiness.
I must be one of the lucky ones. I received a full tuition waiver based on my AIMS scores (AZ's old standardized test). I attended NAU on that tuition waiver, and then paid for my "room and board" with pell grants, school grants, and working part time on campus. I never lived on campus (not really a good situation at NAU), and I loved my time there. It was way cheaper to live off campus and a better environment. I graduated in 3.5 years, was married at the end of my sophomore year, and graduated debt-free. After I graduated, I worked full time for the university to get reduced tuition for my husband, had a baby, and still managed to get my husband graduated with only one tiny loan to repay. I'm a huge supporter of education–but the right kind. I do not believe in getting a degree that you can't use practically. We both have practical degrees that can get us jobs.
Part of me wants to laugh about this, and part of me wants to cry. Haha. I come from a family of 9 kids (typical Mormon family, right?!) and we always knew it was up to us to pay our way as soon as we hit 18. All of us got scholarships, worked part time, and ended up doing fine. I had enough scholarships that I was actually given a check at the end of semesters, but still worked part-time to pay living expenses. I had to work really hard, but it was still my favorite years by far! I came out of school with no debt and a bachelors degree that I loved. Fast forward to the middle of medical school with my husband. Because we had a great opportunity to go to a competitive school across the country we had to take out every loan we could. If you are familiar with med school families-those who go through school with kids–it is typical to come out of school with almost 500,000 in debt. This is from tuition, living expenses, costs of tests, interviews, flying to interviews, flying to take tests, the list goes on and on. It takes most doctors 10-15 years after residency to pay off their student loans. Which means we will pay ours off by the time we are fifty. This was really hard to digest coming from my background where debt free was always the goal. But I have been involved in groups online and in person where this really is the only way. So would I ever decide not to support my husband just because of debt? No way. The government is ridiculous in this respect, and I would generalize and say the average person has no idea what expenses a student has to go through to get through medical school, research, residency, and fellowship. Someday it will pay off. And we have NO IDEA what we are going to do with our kids' futures. I love that I had to pay for it all. It's exhilarating and liberating and so difficult to have to work for it yourself. But then my parents have stepped in to help (when cars break down, etc.) on a few bigs things now and then when they could. I think that's what I want for my kids. No ultimatums, just a recommendation that they have to do it all themselves, until they need a little help.
This was a topic I always avoided in college after learning the hard way my freshman year. Growing up we always knew that my parents would pay for our tuition, books & housing. We were on our own for all personal expenses (that integration actually started at age 8, but that's a story for another day). We had high school jobs and babysitting opportunities and a small monthly allowance (to teach us how to handle money) and a good education in how to save so by the time we graduated from high school we never asked our parents for personal things because we knew it was our responsibility to pay for them. That being said, when it came to college time and any of us five kids called my dad when tuition was due, we all felt humbled and grateful (and sometimes a little guilty, not my parents' intent ha) that they were helping us out with college. If we got poor grades the housing allowance was on the line and we'd have to move home (as much as we all loved home, we also loved our independence!). They allowed for a bit of time to figure out our majors and told us if it was getting out of hand we'd be responsible to pay (it took me 10 semesters – including my internship). After my Bachelor's I worked for a university hospital and they paid half tuition on my Master's and I managed to cover the second half without any debt. I will say though, 'degrees to nowhere' are a problem and I unfortunately fell into that. I studied what I found interesting (health promotion & education), but was disappointed in the lack of direction into the work field the college provided. I don't have kids yet, but I envision doing the same thing my parents did, likely because that's what I know and what worked for us. Great topic and so interesting to think about!
This topic is so fascinating to me. There was much discussion around the dinner table last night after I read this post. Josh always assumed the kids would be on their own. That's how it worked at his house and he's (rightfully) proud of the fact that he worked all the way through grad school. My parents helped where they could, but it wasn't anything like tuition. I was on my own for all of that as well, but they were very generous with providing my brother and me a car to share and filling in the summer I ended up abroad with negative dollars and all kinds of overdraft fees. Because my parents always gave what they could, I figured we'd do the same for our kids. What we'll be able to do is probably more than my parents could do for us. So we've sort of unofficially (clearly we have this all figured out!) planned on paying tuition and having the kids pay room/board. Your plan is similar, but it has a few significant differences. For example: what happens if the child gets a scholarship? I like the idea that the student gets the reward for that, since it's the student who has to earn/keep the scholarship.
All that said, my best friend's dad was a community college professor. Because tuition was free at the local community college, the deal in their house was this: live and home and attend the community college through your associate's and then mom and dad will pay for university. If you chose to go to university straight after high school, you're on your own the first two years. Now that Josh is a community college professor, that plan has factored its way into the discussion. We don't have a perfect plan yet, but I love hearing what everyone has to say!
Oh, and the degree discussion! (I posted this already and then spotted a typo. Bleh. Blogger needs an edit comment function.) Bart and I had the same major, I'm fairly certain, and I had some great professors that were extremely frank about what opportunities it would provide and what it would not. I never detected any difference in their discussions with me (one-on-one or in class) because I was a married woman. I was told, based on their professional experiences, what marketable skills and what overall enrichment the degree would give me (and what it would not). I think the question of what the plan is after school to actually generate income is a great one. That's not to say you can't get a Humanities degree, but getting specific work experience (tutoring writing continues to be pretty lucrative for me. Go Writing Fellows!) is huge. I feel the same way about the trade school discussion. I have a nephew that is an extremely talented welder with no desire to go to college. He has no problem making money. What he needs to plan on is what he'll do when he's too old to weld. He needs to learn about the up and downsides of owning his own business, for example, and how to get from welding for someone else to running his own shop. And now this comment is longer than the one I was editing, but seriously, this topic is so good.
Definitely a fascinating discussion. we are very lucky that tuition at BYU is really reasonably priced compared to other schools (I think if our kids go to a church school they won't be spending quite a quarter of a million dollars for school.But maybe they will with living costs). Matt attended BYU after his mission and did his freshman year at a community college. Soo he too missed out on the freshman experience. I wonder how that changes now the new missionary age. One of my roomates (she is super down to earth and not snobby) but her parents paid for her undergrad (100%) AND graduate school (and she went to medical school) AND paid for her husband's graduate school (LAW school) once they were married. Pretty insane that they had that much money to help up? And she had three other siblings so they were going to do the same for them and their spouses.
Good work ethic is very important to teach kids. I like that your dad capitalized "do not lose your scholarship"