What many older people don't know about college costs today.

[muntrv]

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/09/what_many_older_people_dont_re.html#incart_river_mobile_home_pop

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. I've seen some families get better aid from private schools than public, making private more

affordable, due to the huge cuts to state school funding.

[Journeyman]

11. One of my clients attended USC for less than her sister paid for UC San Diego . . .

As she explained, the public schools are locked in to their fees and must, by law, charge every student equally. The private university, on the other hand, can reduce any fee it chooses, or waive them as needed, and there's nothing anyone can say, since as a private enterprise it's beholden only to itself.

[Xipe Totec]

2. I'm paying for my daughter's tuition room and board in Prague for half of what

tuition alone would cost in VA at a community college.

[Igel]

15. No, jo.

Ale tehdy musi rikat cesky. To je dost' velky problem pro amerikancy.

Nebo jde-li rec o Karlove universite a nejaky program tady pro cizincy?

(Zda se me ze je Masarykova univerzita lepsi. Mam Brno rado.)

[Xipe Totec]

16. Ona tam studuje, ne ja.

Ale studuje anglicky.

[marybourg]

3. It's disgraceful.

Both my spouse and I went back to college, in middle age, in the 70's for free!

Of course, by the same token, young people know nothing about long term care for the elderly costs today.

[leftofcool]

5. So true!

Our elderly costs for the next 10 years will be more than my grand daughter's college costs for 6 years. I don't expect her to pay for it. I'd rather she work her way through college.

[pnwmom]

20. The difference is that students today will be paying far more for college than their elders.

And young people today will eventually have to pay far more for nursing home care than their elders are paying now.

[genxlib]

4. Count me among them

I knew it had gotten bad but I had no idea how bad. My daughter is now in the 10th grade and I am starting to pay attention.

The newest scam is to set aside more spaces to out-of-state students because they pay even higher tuition. In Florida that has driven up the competition for the in state students to the point where it is difficult to get into the major schools

It is criminal to ask our youth to start their life with this kind of burden.

[marybourg]

6. Actually, that's a fairly old scam and is

less prevalent now than it used to be, because of complaints about it to state legislatures.

[Wellstone ruled]

7. Oh my,how times have changed.

Our Grand Daughter is enrolled at our local University. She was able to pull a Scholarship due to the fact the kid is a Brainy. But the Room and Board thing is brutal to say the least. Granny and I as well as her Parents are making it work. Planning on doing a sit down with our Kids this Thanks Giving with the Idea of Foreign College as a better deal. Just does not make sense to have these kids loaded with debt.

[LisaM]

8. I had a Michigan Competitive Scholarship.

I don't think they all covered full tuition - I think there was a sliding scale, IIRC. But I do know my room and board (and books) were the major costs. I think that the real culprit is the state and federal governments not providing the subsidies that they used to, which I don't think college students today realize was the case just a few decades ago. Maybe there wasn't free college, but there was affordable college and it was because the government contributed. Reagan and his ilk did that part in.

I'll add in that some of the costs now are amenities (not all, of course, I'm not saying that college isn't significantly more expensive than it was). But I've read a number of articles about how top universities are building amenities to attract wealthy students that will pay full tuition (I've put in a link to one of the articles, but there are more). I'll start with food service. We had three choices at every meal and one was a salad bar. And the food was fine, not fancy, but some of it was actually really good. What I see in the cafeterias now is mind-boggling. Do they really need 31 choices? Part of the fun of going to college was living a student lifestyle, figuring out how to budget for things, for example.

https://www.usnews.com/news/college-of-tomorrow/articles/2014/09/22/how-do-schools-market-themselves-to-attract-students

The dormitory known as Apartment 5 at St. Leo University in Central Florida has a fitness center, arcade gaming area, large saltwater aquarium, and a “relaxation room” with “state-of-the-art energy pods” for napping. At the University of California—Davis, residence halls have their own swimming pools, spas and private outdoor courtyards.

I did graduate with some student loans that took a long time to pay off. And the job market in the 80s was pretty sour.

[Wellstone ruled]

10. The G-Daughter has a full ride as

far a Tuition,everything else is on her Tab. Granny and I fronted the Books and Internet Access for this Semester. Just about 400 hundred bucks. And she saved her earnings to pay for most of her Room and Board.

[crazycatlady]

9. More teens today are considering community college

I have cousins who are a junior and a senior in HS this year. THier sister (23) just graduated this spring with crippling debt.

Both of them intend on doing their first two years at community college (most of their friends are the same way). Another cousin's daughter (senior in HS) intends on going to community college as well.

I graduated (HS) in 1998. Community college was where people went if they couldn't get into a regular college. I'm glad to see the image has changed in a generation.

[Adrahil]

17. Unfortunately...

Many CC's manage to charge less by paying their faculty terrible wages and giving them heavy teaching loads. There are exceptions, of course, but CC's usually do not attract top notch faculty, and success depends very heavily on the individual motivated student.

[MissB]

12. I paid off my student loans by the time I was 40.

Dh's parents paid for his college education so he had no debt from undergrad. His employer paid for him to attend an Ivy for his masters degree.

Our kids didn't want to stay in state. We gave them the budget- they sought out merit (we don't qualify for financial aid.)

Both ended up out of state- the oldest earned a full ride. We pay for airfare, books and taxes on the room and board portion of his scholarship. The youngest earned a merit scholarship that covers almost all of his expenses except for a couple thousand bucks. If he is an RA next year, he will end up taking in a couple of thousand instead.

I have lots of friends and coworkers that take out a lot of parents plus loans. I also have a bunch of friends that saved enough. It's a shock to the system if one thinks that a kid can just work summers to earn enough to pay for the next year.

[msongs]

13. barebones dorms are now luxury palaces with electronics for the millenials who

need to be pampered 24/7 the old 2 to a small room sharing a john/shower
with the next 2 to small room is probably vanished.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

14. Budget cuts and low wages are much more to blame, but millennial-bashing is certainly more fun.

For some.

[whistler162]

23. When the title of the thread starts

by bashing the older generations it is quite predictable.

[xmas74]

18. You have no idea.

I have a high school senior. We're still in the process of doing the college visits. I've yet to see a single college with dorms like you describe.

We've been to smaller schools, KU,K State, Mizzou, Washington University and Creighton. Nothing you've described-nothing. Now Greek housing is an entirely different matter.

[LisaM]

19. I've seen some of the dining halls.

They are over the top. Take a look.


https://dining.umich.edu/menus-locations/dining-halls/south-quad/

[xmas74]

27. So you saw a dining hall?

Most of those are under contract to a corporation. They decide how it looks, what is served, etc. The school gives them control so they no longer need to employ food services as part of their budget. Sodexo and Aramark are the big two. These same corporations also do food services for arenas, stadiums, etc.

I know how they run because I worked for a Big Two for ten years. The school gets rent for the dining hall and a share of the profits for concessions in most cases. And as much as thestudents are charged they should get a say in what's put in the cafeteria, especially since many universities now demand you live on campus for two years. Those two years include you must purchase a meal plan. If I'm spending $10 a meal then I'd want a say in what's served.

[LisaM]

29. I've been in a couple of them, but here, I looked up the menu at UofM because that's where I went

and it's where I could make a comparison. We didn't have ten stations and 18+ choices, and if you think they should have that now, that's fine, but also realize that it's one of the things that makes college less affordable now.

BTW, we also had a two-year requirement to stay in the dorms unless our family lived in town.

I also helped pay my way by working in our dorm cafeteria, which was fun. I don't think they should contract those services out now.

[WinkyDink]

21. What many younger people don't know about salaries then: Starting, 1971, $6,700.

Thirty years and a Master's later, I retired at, exactly, 10 X that. IOW, never reached $70K.

Now graduates want to START there.

CMAR.

[crazycatlady]

25. The cost of living has also one up

Boomers remember a time where they could buy a house at 25. At 25 with a degree I was making $12 an hour at a call center. Impossible to buy a house in the NYC suburbs at the time (I was living at home then).

My parents bought the NYC suburban house mentioned above at 27. There are no young families moving to my hometown anymore. It's now mostly Wall Street (all who can afford it).

[Cuthbert Allgood]

28. My daughter has a masters and started at half what you claim they want to start at.

I have a niece who is a new attorney and will start below $70K.

But, sure, fuckin' millennials, right.

[mnhtnbb]

22. Our youngest just finished a master's degree at an Ivy League school

and graduated with no debt.

Thank goodness for a merit scholarship as an undergrad used at a public university (UNC Chapel Hill)
that covered most of his tuition; we paid his living expenses, books, etc.

He was accepted at Yale School of Drama for a 3 year master's in 2014 and this time had financial aid that covered
almost all tuition, plus work/study, and we only had to help with living expenses, books, etc.

Fortunately, we were in a position to help.

Our oldest is financially much better off than his brother, though. He didn't want to go to college. He is all self-taught
and working as a software engineer for an IT firm. The money we would have used to help support him in college we
added to money his grandmother left him for college, and he used that for a down payment to buy a townhouse in 2007. So this son
now has some serious equity in his own home and is pulling down salary in the $70-80K range and never spent
a dime on college.

The youngest has a fellowship with one of his Yale professors to TA for a year. He moved into a furnished room to save
money on rent for a studio apartment this year. Don't know what he'll do next year.

Both sons are following their dreams.

[DFW]

24. My grandfather worked his way through Harvard as a janitor

Of course, this was possible in his day. Class of 1915 or some such. He was the son of a penniless tailor from South Carolina, didn't exactly have a lot of options.

[Not Ruth]

26. Free tuition for all is the future

Some states are already trying to get it done.