My son is attending Virginia Tech next year, and of course, requires his tuition be paid, some of which will be paid by loans. But I would never think that he has to take out loans to pay for college, that’s up to me to pay for his education, isn’t it? Are parents not expected to pay for their children’s college education?
Are you willing and able to pay for his education?
Yes, of course. What parent wouldn’t? that’s the part I don’t understand.
That is not the expectation in the U.S. anymore (if it ever was in the first place). Part of it is that college – even at a public, in-state school – is exponentially more expensive now than it was a few decade ago, and while some families are able to pay for it entirely out of their own pockets, that’s no longer the case.
There is a standard form, the FAFSA, which colleges use to determine how much financial aid – scholarships, loans, and grants – a student qualifies for. The FAFSA includes something called the Expected Family Contribution (EFC), which means, as I understand it, “this is how much we expect the family to be paying up front,” and is based on the family’s income and assets.
https://www.edmit.me/resources/what-is-the-fafsa-and-how-does-it-work
If the family is able to pay for college without loans, I can’t imagine why they would not be allowed to do so, but for a majority of college students, they have to take out student loans to help pay for school, because the total cost of college is more than their families can pay. The site below says that 56% of seniors who graduated from public and non-profit colleges in the U.S. in 2019 had student loan debt upon graduation.
Yes, I know all about the FAFSA and EFC and all that. I just went through that. But the expectation in the US is that the STUDENT has to get the loans, and not their parents? That’s the part I don’t get.
Even in the 1980’s, my parents were not in a position to pay for my very low in-State University expenses. They supported me in a very tiny way, and backstopped that I could always go home and sleep on the couch vs being homeless. But pay for my education. Bwahahahahahhaaha, and they couldn’t afford it.
As I note in my first reply, it’s not really about the “willing,” it’s the “able.”
Your son’s going to Virginia Tech. Here’s the fee schedule for VT for next fall: if you’re in-state, tuition and fees are $7,000 a semester, or $14,000 a year, and that doesn’t include housing, food, or books. If you’re out of state, it’s almost $17,000 a semester.
Now, multiply that by four years (or even more, if your kid goes to summer school, or needs five years to graduate). If you can afford that out of your savings, that’s awesome, but that puts you in the distinct minority.
Yeah, it’s almost double that. But, for instance, if I, as a parent, can’t afford it, how could my 18 year old son afford it?
The student is a adult. They are capable of signing a legal contract, including for a loan.
If the parents would rather take out loans themselves, I imagine that there’s no reason that they would not be allowed to do so. But, the U.S. system assumes that the parents’ “share” is in that EFC, and that the student themselves are the borrowers.
But if your parents couldn’t afford it, with jobs and such, how could YOU, a student, afford it?
Most student loans have long payback schedules, but the sad truth is that it’s an onerous debt for many former college students, and defaults on those loans are really common. And, the assumption is that your son won’t be paying it back as an 18 year old; but when he’s in his 20s and 30s, working and making money.
I take guitar lessons from a guy who took out a lot of student loans, as part of attending a private college to study music. He’s in his 40s, and is now convinced that he will never be able to fully pay off his student loan debt.
You do realize that students don’t have to repay loans while in school?
But yeah, lots of students wind up with crushing debt after graduation.
Some parents can’t afford it. Some families spread the debt over generations, the parents take on as much debt as they can and the child takes on as much debt as s/he can. Why is that so hard to understand?
This. As I understand it, with the public loans, at least, you do not need to start paying them back until six months after graduation.
I get that. But how can the child afford it, if the parent can’t? Banks give loans to students easier than they would to their parents?
Again, the child is not being asked to pay it back today; they are being asked to pay it back over the decades to come, when, hopefully, they will be making money.
Also, federal student loans aren’t borrowing from a bank – you’re borrowing from the federal government. Some (those for poorer students) are subsidized, and because they are issued by the goverment, they often have lower interest rates than private loans.
https://www.edmit.me/resources/what-types-of-student-loans-are-there
I repaid my student loans over about 20 years. While I was in school, my parents contributed what they could and I worked and contributed what I could. Some parents can afford to pay full expenses; mine couldn’t. Some assume the loan repayments; mine took on my undergraduate loan debt. I paid for my graduate degrees.
Some parents aren’t going to qualify: they’ve already got loans, they declared bankruptcy, etc.
Well, the parents might be poor and/or have bad credit. The student can take loans out because s/he doesn’t have much of a credit history yet. The first day on campus, someone will give the student a credit card in exchange for a bag of M&Ms. The kid is getting on the American debt merry go round and death is the only way off.
Define “expected”.
The only thing I owed my kids was roots and then wings. After they were adults anything I did or gave them was from my heart and not based on any debt someone thinks I owed them.
I was willing to pay tuition but they were required to work and contribute as well. One of my sons went for 2 semesters and decided it wasn’t for him and bailed. That ended anything he was getting from me. Today he’s a VP for a company making well over 6 figures. My other son went to culinary school and today owns 3 restaurants. He worked his ass off while in school and needed little from me. My daughter didn’t go to college until she was 26 and long out of the house, married and on her own. I wasn’t paying for it then.
I was married and on my own at 19. I didn’t go back to college until I was almost 22. Why should my folks have paid for it?