“Prestigious” is a hopelessly vague term for American universities. It’s as annoying to use the term as it is to use the word “genius” when characterizing people. There’s no line in classifying people by which at some level of intelligence they switch from being smart to being geniuses. There’s no line in classifying American colleges at which they switch from being pretty good to being prestigious. Furthermore, most universities are a mixture of good and not very good programs. In choosing which college to attend, you should consider as many things as you have time to do.
When did it become a given that parents would pay for their child's (children's) college attendance?
Indeed; and some of the things that make a university “prestigious” have nothing to do with undergraduate education.
Well generally speaking, the more expensive the school, the better it is, leading to better career prospects after graduation. So quite often going to a better school tends to be a better investment.
IMHO this is a myth. Career prospects depend on lots of other factors, including luck.
Many families struggle to meet basic expenses, so paying for college is an unattainable luxury.
There are certainly factors that contribute to a family in poverty’s ability to put a kid on the path to going to college - but universities across the country bend over backwards to offer students from these families every opportunity to have that education paid for. Unfortunately, most of these families are completely unaware of these opportunities, and pass on this legacy of “that’s an unobtainable pipe dream” to the next generation.
Absolutely. I know that for Stanford, for instance, parents with income of less than $100,000 aren’t expected to contribute anything (though the student is expected to, from part-time work, summer jobs and so forth). Even parents with incomes up to $150,000 aren’t expected to contribute to tuition costs. Other top schools have similar programs. So if your family is poor but your kid is smart enough to get into one of the best schools in America, they will almost certainly be able to attend.
My kid had her heart set on attending a prestigious art school, she was accepted with a one time 45k scholarship. That would barely pay for one year’s tuition not including living costs in a major city. Admissions assured me that a Parent Plus loan would enable her dreams to come true.
But was I crazy enough to say yes to my impulsive, immature yet determined kid to go ahead with your 200k art degree? I wavered but we’d be on the hook for it the rest of our lives, the feds could garnish my ss if they had to. I asked a few grads on campus about their degrees and post grad plans. Then I knew no way was this gonna pan out for this middle class family.
She got over it, stayed home and commuted to a local University managed to pick up some marketable skills. lol.
Anecdotally, yes. In aggregate, most of the reports I’ve seen show a higher ROI with higher ranked and more expensive schools. I’ve personally observed trends where top companies in lucrative fields tend to hire from specific schools.
Even when people start out in community colleges or state schools, they often work their way into better schools to progress their career.
I understand that, but this figure is for the cohort that is attending college.
Is that cohort only those who go directly from high school to college? Because lots of people attend college on their own, once they’re out of their parents’ house and working. That may skew the percentage of people who receive parental contributions.
No idea. Like I mentioned upthread, it was a comment on a web site. Also take into consideration I am Canadian, and our tuition is a fraction of the US.
I know someone who put himself through college with a paper route, so apparently that was possible in the 1950s.
The point is, look at state schools. 100 years ago, in fact still in the 1950s, tuition at, say, the University of California was $0, if you lived there. There were still fees and expenses to cough up, no question, but it was at least conceivable one could come up with them without relying on rich relatives. There may also have been financial aid available, not familiar with the details. Now, tuition is… more than $0. May as well go to Harvard; I know someone who was able to get a full scholarship there all the way through grad school and some fellowships beyond.
<ThelmaLou chokes a little…>
I’m talking Stanford here. Median household income in Palo Alto is $195,000.
In May 2023, Palo Alto home prices were down 7.0% compared to last year, selling for a median price of $3.3M.
California is a different world.
That’s a real problem. There are high school seniors who are from terrible high schools, whose parents are struggling working-class, and who’ve had high school records that are perfect (at least for what’s possible to do for a student at their terrible high school). They have perfect grade averages for the hardest courses at their school, perfect SAT or ACT averages, lots of extracurricular activities, teacher recommendations that say that they were the best student the teacher ever had (but which don’t compare the student with anyone who’s gone to a top university, because the teacher has never met anyone who went to a top university), etc. If you were to tell them to apply to some top universities in addition to the second-rate local university they’re applying to, they would tell you that that would be ridiculous, since the cost of tuition and room and board at such a university would be more than their family makes in a year. If you were to tell them that a top university would offer anyone who was admitted from a family as poor as theirs enough financial aid to pay for all their tuition, room and board, cost of books, cost of traveling to and from the university, etc., they wouldn’t believe you. Indeed, it might be cheaper for them to attend a top university with all the financial aid they would be offered there than to attend a community college with the small amount of financial aid they would offer. They wouldn’t believe that. If you told them to ask their teachers about that, the teachers wouldn’t believe it. The guidance counselor at their high school wouldn’t believe that. They would all say, “Well, nobody from our high school ever does well at college. A lot of them flunk out. You should be happy to graduate from that second-rate local university and get a mediocre job.”
I agree with that, especially that a top university might be cheaper. My brother’s older child was admitted to Connecticut College (a small liberal arts school in New London) and the University of Connecticut, and it was cheaper for the child to attend the private school.
Edited to add, I think some schools really like the idea of having as a student someone who is the first in their family to go to college and they will bend over backwards to help them succeed.
Self sufficiency can be money, or, more importantly, it can be life skills and self-motivation. My kids learned self sufficiency far better by doing well at tough colleges than if they had taken a McJob and paid for themselves. Younger daughter went to Germany for a year abroad with good but not great German.
We wanted to pay for their college because our parents paid for ours, and because leaving them debt free gave them a good boost in life. It worked very well.
Being from New York, my mother got to take advantage of the free city college system. My father couldn’t even afford free, being very poor. He could have done fine in college, and fortunately back when he got out of the army one could rise to a high position without a college degree. And they had no trouble paying for me, though they did encourage me to go to Cooper Union where I could have come out ahead with my Regents Scholarship. (It was free back then.) But I’m glad I didn’t.
The practical ROI of a more prestigious school is highly dependent on the schools in question, the major, the career plan, and the temperament of a particular student. There are absolutely situations where paying more, even a whole lot more, is a smart move and situations where it’s absolutely ridiculous.
One huge factor that is often overlooked is the liklihood of graduating in four years. Some state schools graduate fewer than 20% of students in 4 years–and fewer than half ever get a degree of any kind. Other schools graduate 90% in 4 years. Obviously, more selective schools tend to have more prepared students, but they also have more resources to spend supporting the rest, and when you are trying to protect a graduation rate that high, you care about each individual. If as an institution failure to graduate is expected, then your own potential challenges will not garner special support. Additional years to graduation are extraordinarily expensive, both in cost (aid and scholarships are likely gone) and in lost income. An additional semester can easily wipe out all the money you “saved” at a cheaper school.
That said, there are concerns beyond ROI. Different colleges offer very different experiences, and for those who can afford it, it makes sense to pay more for your child to have an experience that fits their personality and goals. I mean, rich people take their kids to Europe for vacation and no one is like 'What’s the ROI on having seen Florence? Is there really any long-term benefit to life time earnings to have spent time seeing things outside your hometown?".