Your offer is definitely generous. I had a similar deal with my parents when I went through college (except that my tuition was paid by scholarships). However, I would emphasize that working 20 hours/week is a big strain, so if (and only if) you can afford it, I would consider relaxing that requirement.
Personally, I would require my kid to work summers and perhaps 10 hours/week during the school year, and then cover the difference, if I could.
bnorton, I also think your offer is incredibly generous.
The arrangement with my mom is-
She lets me continue living at home
She pays my tuition
My end of the deal is
I pay for my own books
I pay for car expenses/gas/etc
We’ve been doing this for 3 years now, and it has worked out well. By the way, I had no obligation to work, but it kind of goes hand in hand with paying for my own books and gas/insurance. I work 20 hours a week between 2 part-time jobs, and am taking on average 16 units a semester. I find I have plenty off free time between all that (actually a little TOO much free time…damn I need to study! :mad: 
)
I also plan on working through this summer. I’ve been trying to save up money as well; currently I’m thinking of getting a new car. So far I have 1100 saved up, and am able to put away about 300 to 400 dollars away each month if I am careful.
bnorton, I also think your offer is incredibly generous.
The arrangement with my mom is-
She lets me continue living at home
She pays my tuition
My end of the deal is
I pay for my own books
I pay for car expenses/gas/etc
We’ve been doing this for 3 years now, and it has worked out well. By the way, I had no obligation to work, but it kind of goes hand in hand with paying for my own books and gas/insurance. I work 20 hours a week between 2 part-time jobs, and am taking on average 16 units a semester. I find I have plenty off free time between all that (actually a little TOO much free time…damn I need to study! :mad: )
I also plan on working through this summer. I’ve been trying to save up money as well; currently I’m thinking of getting a new car. So far I have 1100 saved up, and am able to put away about 300 to 400 dollars away each month if I am careful.
Wow, yeah, generous. I put myself through school – with the help of a $4K scholarship (essentially covered most of the tuition my first four years), loans (no grants), and a $20 from my mom now and then when she could afford it. The rest was sweat of my brow between classes, on weekends, and over the summer.
The experience of working one’s way through college is A Good Thing.
My arrangement is that financial aid pays for tuition and rent, my grandfather pays for books and school-related supplies, and my mother helps me out with food and spending money. I do not live a completely bare-boned existance, but I understand that if I wanted a car or new clothes or something I’d be on my own.
Here’s my argument for not working.
I don’t work at all (except for summers). I tried it for a while, and it really didn’t work out. My major (film) is extremely comptetive, and I can’t afford to miss any oppertunities. This major is all about dedication, and when there are people who are willing to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt just to get a class project done, you gotta realize that you can’t afford to slack anywhere. Since I am working with actors and crew, I need a schedule that can fit everyone elses. I can’t afford to have times that I am unavailible. I need weekends to shoot. I need huge blocks of time to edit. My school schedule is too erratic to plan a work schedule around.
And the thing wth work is that you can’t just skip work like you can skip class. If something has to yield, it’s going to be class. It’s more acceptable and easier to blow of your very expensive education than your minimum wage job. Most people I know who work a lot have trouble with their classes- they have to skip when they get scheduled to work during a class, or they are too sleepy to stay awake for class, or they just stop caring about doing work that isn’t making them money. It doesn’t make them fail or anything, but it turns them into mediocre students who are interested in doing the bare minimum. The film students I know who work a lot really miss out on a lot and are, in my opinion, wasteing the precious money they are spending on their education.
Then again, I know some students that have launched careers from college-jobs. I guess it all depends on what the major is and what their goals are in school.
You’re paying for her apartment, tuition and books? That’s waaaay generous!
20 hours a week should not pose a significant problem, unless she’s working really late nights or double shifts. I managed to work 30 hours a week and take 5 classes per semester. I made straight A’s my first year. I was living at home at the time too, but I paid for everything on my own. I even had enough left over to buy my own car, pay insurance and buy a computer.
I took a break from school when I was promoted to a salaried position, but now I work 45 hours a week and am back to being a full-time student (5 classes a semester, with a 3.95 GPA). It’s a little more difficult, and I’m on my own, but it’s still doable. It’s all about how much effort she’s willing to put into it.
College degree programs being what they are, I would HIGHLY encourage any student to aim for 15-18 credits per semester, and work only during the summer or during breaks between semesters.
When you work and go to school at the same time, you don’t focus like you wish you could. And as even sven commented, if there’s a conflict between work and classes, the classes generally lose.
And all things considered, the LAST thing you want to happen is to become a third semester senior because you were a few credits short. Very expensive mistake, there.
Or, alternatively, if you could finish that degree in eight semesters with 12-15 credits per semester, then you should be able to finish it in 7 semesters with 15-18 credits per semester. And then when you’re out, you can work that extra semester in a FULL TIME salaried job and make considerably more than you would have with the part time position while you were taking classes.
A parent should pay whatever they can afford to cover a child’s college education, and not a penny less. She didn’t ask to be born, and the fact is, to survive in today’s world you NEED a college degree. You owe it to her to make these last 2 years of getting an education as easy as possible. She has plenty of time to learn how the real world works. Her job, for now, is to get as good of a book education as possible. Pay for her expenses, if you can.
Hmm. Please remove me from your mailing list. 
Ok…and what part of my argument do you disagree with? Do you not agree that a parent should want to give their child every educational advantage possible?
I’m leaning towards the offer being overly generous. While it’s nice to pay for your daughter’s education, I see too many potential pitfalls.
First, given that it is her education, she should by definition be the one to pay for it. Anything which you give her is a gift which reaps direct dividends for her, but less direct ones for yourself. I know it’s simply an oft-repeated line that parents give their children about how if they have to pay for it, it will mean more, but in some ways it is true – the child can take pride in something they have done.
The more she has to work while in college, the more advantage she will have over classmates who graduate with little experience. If she has to pay for almost everything, that will force her to seek more employment to cover college expenses, and more employment in college may help prepare her more for better employment after college. Yes, she may have to take fewer courses and take longer to graduate, but again, anything that might help her gain better employment is worthwhile.
I can see paying for some of the housing given how expensive it is nowadays, but all that? I’d say it would be reasonable to expect her to pay not only incidentals but also tuition and books, and perhaps also contribute a portion to housing expenses. If she has to take out some (or even major) loans to do so, so be it.
College is a time to learn what it means to take on complete fiscal responsibility for oneself. If you wish to give her a gift, do so, but will giving too much rob her of the opportunity to struggle financially, the need to pursue better employment or the satisfaction that comes with financing one’s own education?
I do not agree that people should want to be slaves to their own children for no other reason than they had them.
I do not agree that we use the fact that people cannot be asked to be born as a reason for anything.
I think you’re being generous, many young people do not have any support at all for their education, financial or otherwise.
BUT …
(there’s always a but)
If you have the means to provide more financial assistance, I would point out that 20 hours of work is a lot of time for a student. In addition to time needed for studying, 20 hours of work per week doesn’t allow for a lot of time for college activities outside of the classroom. This is a big part of college, and it’s unfortunate that many students cannot take advantage of the programs offered at a university because they must work. It is difficult to fully participate in student government, for example, if she’s expected on her shift at the local Denny’s. Current institutional research tends to the notion that the students who are the most engaged on campus are often among the most successful in their academics.
There are other 20 hours worth of things to do that might have more value in the long-term. An exciting, unpaid internship in the field of her future career might be more important over the long term than 20 hours of paid work doing the filing in the admissions office. 10 hours of paid work plus 5 hours of volunteering in a literacy program might also be a learning experience – college students are often in demand at service agencies because of their flexible schedules, and once she enters the workforce, it becomes much harder to find 5 hours per week to devote to a volunteer activity.
The type of work can be important, too. If she is offered a lower paying job as a research assistant to a professor in her department, I would argue that it’s better for her to do that and receive some additional “income” from you than to take a higher paying job as a cashier in the dining hall.
My humble opinion is that you present the deal, and then offer her the opportunity to present her case at some point in the future should she find that she has 5 or 10 or 20 hours to fill with a worthwhile, educational, unpaid (or low-paying) activity.
Good grief, this is so preachy. From the OP, I get the sense that the issue is not a lack of finances from you, the parent, although I could be completely wrong about that. Obviously, some students’ situations dictate that they find paying work, and these people can, and do, do very well in their academic careers.
This is all IMHO of course, and based on 13 years of working at a college.
But, if a parent wants the best for their child, as I think it’s more than safe to say the OP does, and can afford it, which I assume the OP can, why would it be a good idea to make the kid spend 20 hours a week working on a job that will likely do NOTHING for their education? A job working at the register at WalMart is simply not worthwhile experience for anything that a college degree will let her achieve. It should be the parent’s goal to give their child the chance to get the most out of college, and that’s most easily achieved through full dedication to their studies and the college campus experience. I’m not suggesting that the parent should be paying for beer or dates or diamond jewelry, but food, transportation, and heat? Certainly. Those are all necessities. The kid can work at an internship or something over the summer, a job that will let her actually learn something useful.
If, of course, the parent would have to sell their house to send the kid to Harvard, then of course, the child can chip in. I’m doing that. But to not give all you can to assist in the child’s education is, to me, equivalent to making a 16 year old start paying for their food. Sure, the child will survive, and perhaps even thrive. But there’s no reason to make the kid’s life harder than it has to be at such an important point in life.
First of all, let me thank all of you for you thoughtful responses. This is what I love about these boards – you ask a question that’s been bugging you for some time and within 24 hours you have more responses than you know what to do with. I truly appreciate the time everyone has taken to help me out here.
It’s interesting that the advice ranges from one extreme to the other – from pay for nothing to pay for everything. As many of you have pointed out, in a case such as this there are a lot of variables that need to be considered – financial means, one’s philosophy of the function of education, and the student in question. This latter I alluded to in the OP, but no one has commented on it yet, perhaps because it doesn’t matter. Let me explore it some more.
I think it’s fair to say that my daughter has spent the last two years coasting through community college. (By “coasting” I don’t mean to suggest that the course work is not a challenge to her, but rather that she has not put forth any real effort, just enough to get by.) She has averaged 9 hours per semester and maintained a 3.1 GPA. So after two years of college she has accumulated just over one year’s worth of credits. During that time she had her tuition and books paid for, a room to stay in, and free meals whenever she chose to eat here. In addition to the vacations we have taken her on (all expenses paid) she has flown back to Seattle twice to visit her friends. I loaned her $3800 to buy a car, and in two years she has paid me back only $800 on the loan and that was from a student loan.
To me this indicates that she has not been very appreciative of nor responsible with the opportunities she has been given so far. So, in your opinion, does this change the dynamics? Am I being stingy, generous or a putz?
Given your description of the last few years, I think you might be cutting off your nose to spite your face if you put to severe of restrictions on her. She has demonstrated that she is not a real “go-getter”, pushing her too hard might just send her over the edge. She could get swamped and give up. I think a better strategy is to recognize and embrace (just a little) her internal tempos. I say you set the boundries at 12 credit hrs and 12 hrs per week of work. And strong positive re-inforcement of the goal to increase the numbers, not as requirements, as goals. She might find on her own that adding a few hrs of class and/or work helps her meet her own personal needs.
Oh, and one other suggestion, sit down with her and work through what a budget would look like for the next year. Project out expenses and incomes (your contribution and her income) in as much detail as you can. And this is the important part, make sure you let her be a partner in the process, don’t dictate to her. Let her in on your personal household finances so she sees the impact to the whole family. You will empower her and she will take ownership. She might suprise you.
Hm. I have to say that, given what you’ve posted, I understand why you’ve decided to do what you’re doing, and for the most part, I think it’s a good, fair, and generous idea. She hasn’t appreciated what you’ve been doing for her so far, and having her somewhat support herself might be a bit of a wake-up call and a character building experience.
Side note: because of the emphasis that my parents have put on education, they’ve adhered to the following philosophy: I am still a dependent until I have graduated from college. See, with my family, it wasn’t “if” you go to college; it was “when” you go to college. Additionally, a large chunk (3/4) of my tuition is paid for via merit-based scholarships. I busted my butt in high school to take the courses and get the grades for that scholarship; therefore, my parent’s view that as my contribution.
Then again, my parents never flew me to Seattle. I had a boyfriend who lived in Detroit, but I paid for just about everything relating to visiting him–a train ticket, two limo rides. His mom paid for one of my plane tickets ($74 round-trip–apparently, I was a good influence on her son), and the other was my christmas present (that one was even less due to advance payment).
I say you’re being generous–though, you might want to possibly scale back the work time a little bit and then chip in a bit for gas.
I totally agree with Flymaster in all he has said so far.
However, lel has a good point. Work experience in college is valuable later on - you come out of college with jobs on your resume, not just education.
From delphica: this is key:
I’m looking at this from the standpoint of benefit to the child. That research assistant job is beneficial. The cashier job isn’t. The money earned, at this stage, is irrelevant, assuming that you, the parent, has plenty of money. If the kid has to give up a great internship because the parent is forcing her to “build character” by working whatever McJob she can find, when the parent could afford to subsidize meaningful studies instead – well, I fail to see the point, that’s all.
She’s in college to get an education. Help her get the best one she possibly can.
I’m afraid that the reference to the 20-hour work week in my OP has been a little misleading. I don’t really care how much she works or whether she works at all. I just feel that she needs to be responsible for some of her own expenses. It doesn’t matter to me whether she does that by working, getting student loans or “feeding small bits of her body to starving dogs” (it’s from an old SNL routine).