In the end, I realized dreams are meant to be dreamt.
Not achieved!
What I really needed was a reasonable amount of money and freedom.
I got that.
My kids were NOT top students.
I encouraged them to pursue practical degrees at directional universities (with scholarships).
They both graduated debt free and with low six figure jobs.
10 years from now they will probably both wonder “what if I had pursued this dream” and regret their choices.
Oh well, such is life.
The grass is always greener
This is probably the case for 90% of non-foreign students. I don’t know any kids my daughers’ ages that paid full price. My kids went to top liberal arts schools and the biggest cost was room and board. I paid $225 per quarter for my undergrad at UCDavis.
There were plenty of healthy options in the 90s . A lot involved previously frozen vegetables. But as an athlete we met with a nutritionist and reviewed the menus to come up with plans. (This may have been due to the eating disorder problem on my team- it didn’t seem all teams did this). But there was plenty of chicken and beans and rice and veggies.
While I somewhat agree with this, for sure, the kids were not all to blame.
The universities and loan sources are responsible for quite a large share of the blame. Before all the big funding push for ‘college-for-all’, it was absolutely true that you could just take out loans to the max for your education, and it would reap manyfold benefits in the workplace. (This was 20+ years ago). Colleges were somewhat less expensive (still very expensive!) and importantly, selective. A lot of folks were left out of college, even community college, for cost, etc.
Then all that big gov’t funding came, which even in retrospect was with very good intentions. But all the scammers came quickly - Corinthian college and other online scam colleges that charged $30K+/yr to take advantage of the easy student loans (but which could not be discharged) but yielded no education and importantly, no hirability even in fields like nursing where the degree was specifically aimed to be a nurse.
Then colleges, even the elite ones, joined in the funding party and upped their tuition like crazy to pay for country-club dorms, gyms, etc.
Meanwhile, nobody was warning the kids until too late that the situation of educational loans had lost its payback for a large percentage of them. And they’re the ones stuck with the nondischargable loans, not the predatory schools and loan dealers.
In today’s age, I do think you’re an idiot and it’s completely your fault if you take on 6-figure or close to 6-figure student loans without a realistic plan of how your are going to pay it back down the road. This may mean you can’t go to college to ‘find your life path’, but that’s reality for many, if not most. And expecting a gov’t discharge of your loan doesn’t count for a plan unless you have it down in writing as to when/how it’ll be discharged.
A larger issue is that state funding of state universities is much lower per student than it was in the past and has been on a steady decline since the 1970s. So tuition has counted to increase for students compared to the past disregarding amenities.
That’s backwards. The student loan “crisis” is directly the GOP and the Devos’ fault.
Tuition was affordable from the 40s to the 80s because the tax payer footed the majority of the bill.
The example I’ve provided over and over again on these boards is Michigan (thus the DeVos). From 1998 to 2024 there has been a direct, 1:1 relationship between per student funding to public schools and public school tuition.
Those fly-by-night online colleges that produced worthless degrees were because of the push for college-for-all.
And all the country-club level amenities for student dorms and facilities that have helped jack up tuition also were part of it.
Maybe for public school in Michigan that was true, but for private colleges/universities, I think it’s’ more inline with taking advantage of the easy student loans.
it would be very helpful to understand the drivers in tuition increases. Is it because of improved amenities? I would think that mostly just impacts room and board. Is it faculty salaries? Perhaps due to increased competition from industry for top talent (ie Google and Amazon). Is it increased administration costs? What would be driving that besides just inefficiencies? Is it reduced government funding? Is it just because they can charge the high tuition due to increased reliance on loans?
Still way too much for affordability and still significantly outstripping inflation. You do get more at colleges nowadays though too it’s not all waste.
Sushi can be quite cheap and fairly healthy. I mean I get the point that the food doesn’t need to be first class I’d rather sushi than fried food.
I think our university (this was Early 2000s) had fairly healthy and reasonably priced foods… Soup and sandwiches, rice bowls, that sort of thing. But the real gem was our college. The culinary school program ran the cafeteria, and for $8 you’d get a plate of lamb and roast potatoes with salad and a small dessert, or a huge portion of chicken pot pie etc. Once a week they hosted a restaurant night when you could go and get a really good three course meal for dirt cheap. Plenty of students would take advantage of that.
I’m going to say the biggest source of blame is the parents. Just my $.02. Parents should say something and encourage the kids to understand the impacts of their choices. You are right that the kid can not know what they don’t know. And some parents don’t understand and can’t help. But the majority of them should. And it is their job to prepare and protect their kids for the future.
Yes Between 1976 and 2018, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by those institutions increased by 164% and 452%, respectively. Meanwhile, the number of full-time faculty employed at colleges and universities in the U.S. increased by only 92%, marginally outpacing student enrollment which grew by 78%.
Yeah. Just talked to a friend (in the our kids do the same stuff type of friend). Their oldest just decided on college. Had heart set on two very $$ private options. They ended up going the more practical route, with some money.
The kid is disappointed/sad. But, I agree with the parents. Can’t justify and our job as parents isn’t to make all dreams come true. It is to set up for success. This is part of it
I think if a parents job needs to include protecting their kids from predatory colleges who want to entice them with a flashy experience and saddle them with insurmountable debt, maybe we need to take a harder look at those colleges and their role in society and assign more of the blame for this situation on them.
To add to this:
“Since 1980, the number of administrators per student at colleges has about doubled; on most campuses their numbers now match the number of faculty,” the study reads. “Here are some of their titles: senior specialist of assessment; director for learning communities; assistant dean of students for substance education; director of knowledge access services.”
