Get Schooled

By fred

September 1, 2008 10:53 AM | Link to this

My daughters are 5 and 6 and we have their colleges paid for already, its called the 529, most, if not all, states offer them.(just be sure to look for ones with low or no fees). my wife and I with help from the grandparents managed to pay this off while other expenses are still reletively low. now the same amount goes into 401 and 403s for retirement. Yes we had to scale back, but since we have been doing it for 5 years, continuing was easy.

By fred

September 1, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this

My daughters are 5 and 6 and we have their colleges paid for already, its called the 529, most, if not all, states offer them.(just be sure to look for ones with low or no fees). my wife and I with help from the grandparents managed to pay this off while other expenses are still reletively low. now the same amount goes into 401 and 403s for retirement. Yes we had to scale back, but since we have been doing it for 5 years, continuing was easy.

By fred

September 1, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this

My daughters are 5 and 6 and we have their colleges paid for already, its called the 529, most, if not all, states offer them.(just be sure to look for ones with low or no fees). my wife and I with help from the grandparents managed to pay this off while other expenses are still reletively low. now the same amount goes into 401 and 403s for retirement. Yes we had to scale back, but since we have been doing it for 5 years, continuing was easy.

By Lee

September 1, 2008 11:02 AM | Link to this

With HOPE, if your child attends a local college as a commuter student, your out of pocket costs (not including transportation) will be less than $1000 per year.

With HOPE, if your child attends a University System of GA college or university and lives on or off campus, you can expect to pay about $6000 per year out of pocket.

Now then, if your child wants to attend their “dream college” and that dream is out of state and/or private, then you’re looking at about $30k per year.

The choice is yours.

Personally, I don’t think a fancy name on a diploma is worth $100k - and the vast majority of employers don’t care.

By dittohead

September 1, 2008 11:05 AM | Link to this

alist Endowments to colleges go to higher salaries to professors who don’t even teach….and 90-percent of them are liberal & anti-American, anti-capital & anti-free market.. Many professors are socialists…many are Marxist, like Obama

By dittohead

September 1, 2008 11:05 AM | Link to this

By Old School

September 1, 2008 12:46 PM | Link to this

We had practically no college savings for our two kids. We went the student loan/parent plus loan route for both. One got an excellent Berry College education and now has a most successful career. The other got an equally fine education out of state. Thanks to the Academic Common Market, sending her out of state to get the degree she really wanted was doable and our annual out of pocket expenses were less than $6000 a year. Big time savings… almost like getting HOPE to go out of state.

We were willing to take on the debt and even started paying it back before the ink on the checks dried. Very low interest rates and online access/payments have made it all work very well for us. Our kids have excellent educations, successful careers, happy families, and outstanding credit ratings.

It can be done.

By Larry

September 1, 2008 1:01 PM | Link to this

College expenses should be viewed the same as expenses required of those who decide to start their own business. Maybe mommy and daddy can fund it, maybe they can’t. Either way, it’s the responsibility of the individual who makes the decision.

I see no difference in long term debt for education and long term debt for startup capital. In both cases those who can figure out how to handle it will succeed and those who can’t will fail.

This is how it should be.

By AlreadySheared

September 1, 2008 8:34 PM | Link to this

Read the essay - dropping $50,000 a year for a big name school is a mistake.

I love my kids, and I am preparing for them to attend any public university in Georgia they can get into. If they choose some crazy expensive private school or out of state college, they have my sincere best wishes.

I myself declined the opportunity to borrow large sums of money at Emory in favor of attending Georgia Tech; about this I have absolutely no regrets at all.

By HS Teacher, Too

September 1, 2008 8:42 PM | Link to this

Larry,

One big difference is that adults who need start-up capital have had opportunities, at least theoretically, to save and thus to provide some percentage of that capital. And if they haven’t, and can’t get the money, too bad. Kids who down the road intend to go to college don’t have the “choice” to save when they are young. (I can’t tell you how many people I know who take the money their kids get for birthdays and holidays and allow their kids to use it to fund shopping trips. The kids don’t know any better. Sure, shame on the parents. But you can’t blame the kids for not having money down the road when their parents never saved, or taught them to save. Starting to save for college at 16 when you can get a job is a lot like starting to save for retirement at 55. Might get you somewhere, but more than likely won’t!)

Which is to say that to some extent, the responsibility IS on the parents — if not to pay for college, at least to invest their childrens’ savings wisely in order to help THEM to pay for it.

By simon

September 1, 2008 9:38 PM | Link to this

HS Teacher, Too

I think the notion of the service commitment for a couple of years after HS in return for some college tuition support seems to be a good idea. I think having the two years of service experiences will also help students in their study as well. Unfortunately, the military seems to be the only option right now [with no disrespect to those who do serve in the military]. I guess there may be some loan forgiveness programs for teaching in the high-need schools for a couple of years, but that will be limited to those who obtain teaching licenses, I guess.

By TheBlogger

September 1, 2008 10:10 PM | Link to this

Something that can be done is for students to take AP classes and try hard to do well on the AP test. Students can earn enough total college credits while still in high school to enter college as a sophomore! That is a 25% savings on college costs.

As an AP teacher, however, I see too many students sign up for an AP class because they want a possible gpa boost in high school. And, they really don’t care to try on the AP test because they don’t see that far into their future (heck, a month is too far for most teenagers).

As is for all students, it is the parents that must “sit” on their children to study and to teach them that AP tests are important for their future.

Most high school students today don’t concern themselves with the cost of their i-pod much less with the cost of some future tuition.

By DB

September 2, 2008 12:43 AM | Link to this

Thank goodness for academic scholarhsips — my son would probably not be at a top 20 out-of-state university if he hadn’t worked his butt off in high school and earned a 75% grant. The fact that he entered college with almost a year’s worth of AP credit also means that he can be a little choosey about his classes. For example, he’s taking only 12 hours this semester, with some high-powered science-oriented classes and labs. He can concentrate on just those classes, and probably will do very well on them, rather than have his attention scattered among other, entry-level classes that he isn’t really focused on.

What I found interesting was that out family’s private tuition for our younger child was completely disregarded in the calculation for our share of the tuition. Their logic was that “private school is optional” — so, apparently, after going to the same private school for 11 years, I’m supposed to tell my younger child, “Sorry, but you have to go to public school so your sibling can get a bigger grant in college”?! Hehe, not a chance.

By bearcasey

September 2, 2008 9:33 AM | Link to this

I started buying US savings bonds when my son Beau was one year old. Have about $40,000 there. My mom gave him $15,000 toward college. He’s a good student and got three “4’s” on his junior AP classes. He’s taking three AP classes as a senior.

Here’s the plan. He’ll use the HOPE in Georgia + AP credit to get through his core college courses. Fairly cheap. Then, he’ll transfer once he knows what he wants to study. He’s looking at Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and Maryland. Works for us.

By Tony

September 2, 2008 9:36 AM | Link to this

Any education for which you work hard and earn a degree will serve you well. Besides the book knowledge you gain from the college experience, you also learn about yourself. Whether a person succeeds in life is more about the person’s on drive and ambition than it is about their intellect or college degree.

By jim d

September 2, 2008 10:20 AM | Link to this

Actually agree with most of that Tony,

I will add however that a degree from certain schools does mean more to some employers. Holding a Degree from schools such as The Citadel, VMI, or the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership at Mary Baldwin College tell an employer a great deal about the integrity of an applicant and can weigh heavily.

By Wolfmont

September 3, 2008 1:00 AM | Link to this

My parents would have paid for me to go to college when I graduated in 1974, but I knew it would have put them so deep in hock that they might never get out. I joined the U.S. Navy instead.

Later on, much of the training I received translated into liberal arts electives credits. I was able to take CLEP tests for free, and those translated into credits, too. When I was at sea, we had visiting professors who conducted classes onboard the ship while we were underway. When I was on shore duty, there were colleges close to the bases who offered weekend and night classes for very low cost, even full degree programs.

During my time in the Navy I earned two Bachelor’s degrees and a Master’s degree, by using all the avenues open to me. And I used less than 50% of the VA education benefits I had coming to me.

The military may be tough for some people, but it was certainly good to me. (No, I wasn’t a shore sailor most of the time. In twelve and a half years, I was assigned to four different ships and two shore stations.) My parents never laid out a dime for my college education, and I’m proud of that fact.

By surprised

September 5, 2008 6:50 AM | Link to this

I thought that newspapers were not supposed to be bias. AJC is looking other wise.

By Both parent and educator

September 6, 2008 5:10 PM | Link to this

Part of the frustration of being a middle/upper-middle income “saver” is when you realize that parents who made as much or more money than you but lived at the extent of their means and saved nothing get to send their children to any school to which they’re admitted on a “needs” basis.

Many top-tier schools admit on a need-blind basis, but then (private schools at least) require you to submit a CSS profile. If you are honest and admit that you have much equity in your home, money in retirement, and savings, you are expected to spend a great deal of that savings and/or take out loans against your home, to pay for your child’s education.

My elder child is spending his entire college savings (close to what you have BearCasey) this, his freshman, year at an internationally acclaimed school. He made the reverse transfer decision, because this school accepts very few U.S. students as transfers (i.e. two last year). If he finds that this school is all he believes it to be, he may choose to leave with $90K in loans. That means, of course, that going directly to grad school will likely not be an option for him, but that he will have to work to pay off the loans first.

Don’t believe that there are scads of grants out there for undergraduate students in math and science; that is a complete urban legend. Unless you are an under-represented minority (which does NOT include Asian/East Indian), you can pay your own way.

Top-tier colleges like this generally don’t give merit scholarships - everyone would qualify - so “needs-based” and outside scholarships are all that’s there besides student loans at 7%…very discouraging, as the college student who wrote the op-ed piece shared!