You all do realize that the particulars of the value of your degree have nothing to do with whether or not it’s prudent to do an analysis of the cost of education if you are actually borrowing money to pay for the education? That is the topic of the thread. Your particulars may or may not have worked for you. However, if someone is thinking of borrowing someone else’s 100k for a particular degree it’s wise for all parties involved to consider the market value of that degree.
Would any of you go into the business of financing college educations with your particular nest egg?
The 25 most common majors in college are business administration, accounting, nursing, psychology, communications, marketing, education, elementary education, English, computer science, finance, criminal justice, biology, political science, economics, electrical engineering, history, liberal arts, sociology, fine arts, commercial art/graphic design, general engineering, journalism, computer science/information systems, and social work.
You can find other websites with similar lists.
Most of these majors wouldn’t have been thought of as college majors at all in 1900. With a few exceptions, the fields that people majored in back then (things now thought of as humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences) have no more people studying them (as a proportion of the population) now than did back in 1900. The increase in college graduates since 1900 comes from people studying business fields, medical professions, engineering, computer fields, law enforcement fields, education fields, social work fields, and preparation for work in art/music/acting/dance/other artistic fields. People don’t usually study fluffy subjects.
“That degree,” or your plan to make use of that degree? There is a pretty major difference, and I think emphasizing the degree, the specific wording on a piece of paper, to the exclusion of the knowledge and skills and abilities and interests that make somebody tick, is misguided. “Degree in software engineering good, degree in art bad” is a terrible way to make plans for the future.
It’s interesting the cultural aspect of this. Like in general, US culture is all about pulling yourself up, and not waiting for handouts.
But, at the same time, the idea that some parents would let their already adult offspring, even partly pay their own way is abhorrent to many here.
I’m not suggesting there’s hypocrisy there, I understand that to a good parent their child’s success is incredibly important, it’s just interesting is all.
What if your child decides to not go to college but instead start a business, and needs $150k to get started. Is the obligation on the parents to pay that entirely?
I ask because to me the situations are analogous: if a parent can comfortably afford it, probably a good parent would pay it. If it’s not so comfortable maybe they contribute but the adult son / daughter may need to contribute too. And it’s also acceptable for a parent to say: “You try to pay it, but if you can’t, call us”
(Incidentally, I didn’t get a dime from my parents for college. They helped with things like moving my stuff, but that was it)
If only kids who’s parents can afford to pay their university costs, in full, go on to higher education, you have effectively created a permanent underclass.
Student loan availability is what gets kids from less affluent homes into higher education. Without it, only the wealthy can access both higher education and the financial benefits such provides.
Another twist (and I don’t think it’s been covered here):
There’s an argument to be made that, even if the US got Universal Healthcare, there should be some relatively nominal copay. The theory goes that investment in one’s health is a good motivator, decreases ‘frivolous’ visits, and helps increase compliance.
Similarly, I give you this:
A new national study has found that the more money parents pay for their kids’ college educations, the worse their kids tend to perform, at least when it comes to grades. According to “More Is More or More is Less? Parent Financial Investments During College,” a paper by Laura Hamilton, a sociology professor at University of California, Merced, larger contributions from parents are linked to lower grades among students at a variety of four-year colleges.
My dad used to blanch when I stripped wire with my teeth. “You won’t do that when you start paying for your own dental care,” he would always say.
I almost agree with you here. Hard skills are immediately valuable to an employer but most hard skills have staying power. So teaching is a hard skill by getting your teaching degree (and doing the student teaching that comes along with it) you can go out and immeaditly get a job sure over time you have to learn new things and the job changes but you still have the degree that says you know how to teach.
Law is the same way you learn how to read laws, how they are constructed and how to argue about their grey areas. Once you pass the bar exam you still have to learn the specific areas and nuances of the law and your practice will evolve over time but the hard skill is the ability to practice law. As an engineer you take the EIT or FE exam when you graduate, they aren’t testing you on your ability to understand the latest professional toys they are checking you understand the fundamentals which are the hard skills you will base your learning on.
Software engineering must be very different from the engineering I’m familiar with if you dump everything you learn on the way out the door except for how to aquire more information. It does sound very much like History or English Lit in that way. Maybe that’s why a lot of places call it Comp Sci rather than engineering like chemistry you come out without a lot of hard skills.
Hopefully, I’ve clarified a bit I’m just talking about things you would be directly paid by an employer to do that you learn in the course of a degree program. These are not by any stretch all STEM degrees but I think more programs should be focusing on “how will you be paid for this knowledge”.
Preferably this skills would also differentiate you from other majors one of my best friend’s graduated with a degree in Parks, recreation and leisure studies that enabled her to immeaditly run a rafting company upon graduation. Despite the name it was a focused major on the knowledge that was involved in operating businesses in that space. She developed lots of hard skills that enabled her to expand the company into mountain biking and fly fishing as well.
On the other hand her brother (also my best friend) was a history major and used his skills at writing reports to write more reports. He had no direct marketable skills or even an industry to start his job search in so he joined the army where they have taught him many hard skills.
I believe you missed my initial comment about chemistry degrees:
I’m not a software engineer - I thought you were, since you brought up computer languages. I also didn’t “forget everything I learned on the way out the door” - I just had to learn a lot more after I left. If you were lucky enough to get a job that required only information that can be learned in a BS engineering course, that’s great.
I’ve been told by a friend who’s a philosophy professor that philosophy is also a good major for those going to law school. They learn in philosophy courses how to make a good argument and how to clearly express their ideas in writing. That’s useful in law school and in practicing law.
Education in general is not really an “economic investment” for the individual, because the benefits are so externalized. As a society, we want people educated so they have the skills and knowledge to help society function, not merely so they can earn more money for themselves. The benefits of teaching children to read, to communicate, to think critically, etc., are spread very broadly across all of society.
Sure, individuals need to have plans for their careers, earning a living, and so forth. But it’s not irresponsible or wasteful for people to spend significant amounts of money on college because they want to go to college, even if they don’t need to go to college.
Similarly, a lot of people spend a lot of money over the decades—even a college education’s worth of money, in some cases—owning cars they don’t really need. Whether it’s the individual car-owner who could actually get by fine with public transport and occasional rentals, or the family that maintains multiple cars when they really only need one, there’s a lot of spending and indebtedness associated with car ownership that is in many cases not really necessary. (Same thing for people buying bigger or more expensive houses than they really need, for example.)
So the idea that student loans are only justified if the student has a solid plan for maximizing their investment in their education is, ISTM, holding higher education to an exceptionally strict standard that we don’t apply to expenditure in many other areas of life.
By the time a student is of college age, they are legally an adult. Is it the parent’s responsibility to buy their kids their first house?
My parents did not pay for my college tuition. Between scholarships, grants and loans I paid for it myself. They allowed me to continue to live in their house and feed me, but if I wanted to go to college it was my responsibility.
I gave my daughter the same deal. If I wanted to delay my retirement by 5 years, I sure could have paid for her college. We discussed this very early on and it made her work harder. If I were paying, she would have gone 4 years to a private University costing 80K per year for tuition plus room and board. Instead she got a full scholarship to the local community college and will go to a private University for 2 years. She is welcome to live with us for as long as she likes and we will provide all of the basic necessities and other financial support as needed.
If someone is able to and wants to pay for their kid’s college, more power to to them. But there is no reason there should be an obligation. They’re adults at that point and need to start making decisions on their own and accept whatever repercussions those have. It’s a parent’s responsibility to guide and support their children, not coddle them for the rest of their lives.
Depends. If you can swing it, then more power to you. Your kid will graduate without any debt, and will be well-positioned coming out of school.
But it sounds like you’re more questioning who’s taking out the loans- you or him? I’m not sure if the system is set up for parents to take out loans in order to send their kids to school. I do know that the ones in the student’s name are pretty sweet deals as loans go; low interest, long payback, ability to defer payments, can be consolidated into one loan later, etc…
That might be a reason to have your kid take out the loan in his name- less money spent overall, and it starts building a credit history.
I wouldn’t call it coddling; it’s more like ensuring that all the effort put in earlier in their lives in terms of getting them educated and raised isn’t torpedoed because they’re 18 and have no financial wherewithal, experience or sense. Paying for school is basically making sure they’re not screwing themselves with too much debt, or whatever. It usually comes with strings- “we’ll pay if you go to schools X, Y or Z, but not schools AA, BB and CC, as they’re private and too expensive.” sorts of things are common.
My parents basically paid what they could, but that came in the form of being able to pay part of the bill for me to go to a state university in a different city, and I’d have to foot the bill for the remainder through work, loans or scholarships (I got scholarships and worked), or I could stay at home with them and go to the local university (University of Houston) and not pay a dime.
Since I was more than ready to fly the coop, I opted for the state university option, and got scholarship and jobs to make up what they couldn’t pay. But had mom and dad not been willing to pay, I’d have had to stay home, or do something more extreme like join the Navy and use the GI bill a few years later to pay for school somewhere else than home with Mom and Dad. I’m honestly not sure which I’d have done at that point.
When I was on site council for my kids’ high school, one of the problems the principal had was parents who threw their kids out at 18. Perfectly legal, but not likely to get anyone parent of the year awards.
FAFSA assumes that a parent will be paying some of college, at least when I filled out the forms for my kids I had to enter my information. That means a kid who is only going to get part of the loans they need is at a disadvantage. So, there is a societal assumption that a parent is going to help.
Not having debt, or having reduced debt, allows the kid a wider range of choices after college. I didn’t have to repay my (small) loans until I finished grad school, which was liberating. My first daughter, not having loans, could go to grad school. My second could take a Fulbright which would have been impossible if she had to pay off her loans.
As for college choice, it depends a lot on what college they could get into. Two years of community college is not the equivalent of two years of MIT or Harvard or Chicago.
There are alternatives to paying everything or nothing. How about paying on loans until the kid gets a decent job? Or any job, to encourage them getting a decent one.
I considered it an investment. My kids are never going to have to move back in with me. I figured my duty was to launch them, and I did, and every penny I spent on them was worth it.
Yes, there are loans for parents of college students. And given the maximum amount for subsidized student loans, it’s not possible to use them to cover all or even most of the cost of many colleges.
Some parents do buy their kids their first house. Some help out with the down payment. Some contribute nothing.
Some parents buy their kids their first car; some don’t. Sometimes it’s a fancy new car. Sometimes it’s a reliable, old, used car.
Some parents pay for their kids’ weddings. Some don’t.
In each case, it depends on a bunch of different factors: cultural expectations; age of the kids; what the parents can afford; what the kids can afford; what kind of relationship the kids have with the parents; whether the kids will feel grateful or entitled; whether the contributions enable the kid to have a better life than they otherwise would have been able to, or go to waste, or grease the path to destruction; whether the gifts come with strings attached…
Because the student is the person receiving the services of the educational institutions and getting the long term financial benefit of the educational services he purchased. It’s the reason you buy your own house, and your own shoes.
The parents may generally have more money but they also have a lot more financial obligations. Some of them have mortgages and other loans, others may be working class and living hand to mouth. In many, if not most cases, they aren’t going to qualify for an unsecured six figure loan. Should they be expected to put up their houses or retirement accounts as collateral? I don’t think so. When the loan is made to the student, the loan is secured by the anticipated post-college paycheck.
Heck, some parents set their kids up with trust funds. They can work or not work. IME, the vast majority of people I have met with trust funds do work…even the trust fund “kid” I referred to upthread works - but does important unpaid or low paid political work - and there are a ton of people who are enabled to work in arts, social justice, community organizing, etc. because they are supported by someone else - a spouse, parents, a patron…The volunteer world runs off these people.