I'll begin this quite simply as: when you graduated high school, what process did you endure to enter into college? Was it simply SATs followed by parental payment? Or did you have to take out student loans and slowly chip away at it?
I ask because education is the most important thing we have for a future. When I graduated high school, I came to the grim realization that my family did not have a lot of money. I have completed a two-year associates degree program (pyschology) at a local community college and now plan to take out student loans to aide completion in a bachelors. How easy / difficult was it for you? Did you just complete an ivy league school in four years, no worries? Or did you struggle with financial issues?
Which is better?
I've come to believe that it doesn't matter where we go to school, so long as the student is motivated and the professors are qualified. Labeling of institutions does not necessarily reveal potential; more times than none it reveals socio-economic status.
My family had absolutely no money to send me to college. My older brother basically paid his way through a state school, and I knew that I'd have to do the same or figure out some other way of funding my education. I was advised to apply to the schools I was interested in, regardless of the tuition. It turns out that the most expensive schools are usually the ones that have the most financial aid to offer. Many universities will often find a way to meet 100% of your financial need with a combination of grants, scholarships, loans, and on-campus jobs. In fact, admissions officers are eager to admit 'poorer' students in order to have a diverse student body and, less cynically, to give them a chance at a great education if they deserve it academically.
I've worked between 5-15 hours/wk. during most of my semesters to have some spending money, and I'll graduate with about 15,000 in debt, which is pretty average. I'd just talk to the financial aid departments of whatever schools you're looking at and tell them you're situation.
While I didn't understand it at the time, I was forbidden to hold a part-time, after-school job during high school. My parents wanted me to focus on my high school education and working hard to get good grades (which isn't taxed at the local, state, or federal levels, and is exempt from Medicare and Social Security). During the summer I made money from a couple of jobs and that was what I had as savings or spending money. (In addition to forbidding me from working, my parents also didn't buy me lots of new "things" as my father never made anything above $25,000 in 1980 dollars.) The work I did during the schoolyear was work that I did around the house, what used to be called "chores", and I didn't get an allowance (for doing what I was supposed to be doing either).
So how did all of this pay for college? Simple. I paid for college by getting good grades in high school, which in turn earned me a full ride to college. I graduated from college in four years in 1997 owing less than a $1,000 bucks.
As a new parent, I am not setting money aside for my children's college education. Instead, I will expect the same from my children as my parents expected of me and my siblings.
Do your children a favor and don't let them work through high school. They will enjoy these years much more and so will you. High school should be their full-time job.
College has been extremely difficult for me to pay for, but I find that my grades propelled a higher level of success and made it a little easier, through grants, awards, departmental gifts, etc. Acheivement can reduce the impact of college costs...sometimes. But I had to work my way through, everything from farm work to temp work in an office.
My situation was almost the same as "Hume was wrong." My parents had no savings for my brother or my own college education. My father made just enough money to disqualify us for a Pell Grant, but clearly not enough to establish any substantial savings. Being from the working class, they assumed that my brother and I would simply go into a trade or attend a trade school. So, I attended a state university, worked during the school year and summers, and applied for as much financial aid and scholarships as I could. The irony of all this is that I am in a Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia and my brother will begin his Ph.D. program at Harvard in the fall.
