When did it become a given that parents would pay for their child's (children's) college attendance?

In My Humble Opinion
81

I’ve worked closely with college access for ten years, and I’ve read a lot of aid packages and compared a lot of offers, and everything comes down to “it depends”. However, I will say that generally speaking, if a kid can live and eat at home and commute to a state school, college is still generally affordable for most with a combination of part-time work, loans, scholarships, etc. It’s the room and board that pushes even regional state schools into “unaffordable”. However, there are so many kids who can’t do that, for so many reasons:

  • There just isn’t a college close. This is a huge problem in rural areas, but also in urban areas where a kid without a car would need to do bus-train-bus both ways, which can end up being like 2 hours a day on public transport.
  • Home can’t afford to keep you. If you parents really don’t have space for you, or can’t afford to feed you, it pushes the whole thing into “unaffordable”–even if you are working, if you have to spend your earnings on your household, that means you can’t use it for tuition. And teenagers eat a lot.
  • Home is not supportive. These are situations where yes, you can stay at home, but no one will really get that this is work, so you’ll be seen as the most flexible person to solve everyone else’s emergencies.
  • Home is intolerable. A abuser lives there, or some other really toxic situation.

There are a lot of people who fall into one of those categories, and generally unless they did very well in school, there is not really an affordable option for them. People love to talk about how inexpensive community college is, but if you can’t live at home and someone else buy the break and peanut butter, it’s really not.

82

My parents, both of whom were college graduates, fully paid for my sisters’ and my college educations. It was expected all along that we would go to college; all of us wanted to, and it never even crossed our minds that we might not go. I will forever be grateful for all they did for us.

My wife and I established 529 accounts for our three boys soon after each was born, and for many years deposited the maximum amount for the tax credit. Their grandparents on both sides were again generous in their donations. We now have two graduates (American U. and the Cleveland Institute of Art) and one who just finished his sophomore year (Denison U.).

I agree with those who’ve posted that qualified but poor students can find ways to pay for and attend even the most selective colleges. It’s not easy, and you’ll probably have to do some digging, but it can be done. And, with affirmative action in higher ed quite likely to get smacked around by SCOTUS soon, focusing on socioeconomic status (giving a priority in admissions to, say, the top 5% of students from the poorest-funded public high schools) rather than race may become a canny alternative approach both for creating diverse student bodies and enabling subsequent upward mobility.

83

This site says 32% of students pay nothing and 39% pay some. Which isn’t the same as asking what parents pay. And a time series would better answer the OP. But it’s the best I could find over breakfast.

84

Class of '72 here. I started working the summer of '70 and most of my earnings went into the bank for college. There was no way my folks would pay, but they kindly allowed me to live at home without paying board when I finally started college. I had to take out a loan - $300!!! - that year.

Lucky for me, I figured out that I hated college and enlisted in the Navy instead, then used my GI Bill to eventually get my degree. And I did repay my student loan.

When our daughter was about 2, the Florida Prepaid College Program started up, and we enrolled her, paying $35/month so that her tuition in a state university would be covered. As it happened, she got a full-ride scholarship, so between that and the prepaid program, and a part-time job, and some help from us, she graduated debt-free. I don’t know if we could have done that if we’d had more than 1 kid.

And now, I’ve rolled my last 401k into a fund that will (I hope) pay for whatever higher education my grandkids choose. I’d hate for them to start adulthood in debt up to their eyeballs. Two young engineers in my last job graduated with 6-figure loans and they were still living with their folks when I retired 3 years after they started. It’s obscene.

85

Ha! Those were the days! When I started graduate school in the fall of 1970, I had to take out a TOP (Texas Opportunity Program) loan for $600. A fortune at the time! As I only had $400 in the bank, I asked an undergrad teacher of mine to co-sign it (he graciously agreed). No point in asking my parents. When I left home, I had asked them to loan me $50 for my first utility deposit, and my father told me I was now on my own.

86

Midway through my senior year in college I realized that I wasn’t going to have enough money to live on until graduation. I managed to qualify for an additional student loan of $500.00, but I needed to find a bank that would lend me the money. When I went home to Chicago for Christmas break I called every bank I could, but none of them would lend me the money, with most of them claiming that I was a “poor risk”. So I went back to Quincy IL and, out of final desperation I went to the local bank where I had a checking account. I sat down at the loan officer’s desk and gave her my tale of woe. She asked if I had an account with them, and I said I did. She asked to see the loan papers, looked through them, and said she didn’t see any reason they couldn’t lend me the money. In less than half an hour I had a check which I promptly deposited in my checking account.

When I graduated I had less than $10 in my pocket, some of which was the deposit on returned pop bottles. I moved back in with my parents; my dad said I didn’t have to pay rent until I found a job, which I managed to do in less than a month. Six months after graduation I got a notice from the Quincy bank that I needed to start repaying the loan, with a payment plan. I sent them a check for the amount of the loan, which by that time I had managed to save up. No interest!

It took a little longer to pay off the larger student loan I had gotten earlier, but I made all my payments on time and without any problem. Of course, the amount of the loan was nowhere near what students need now - I can’t remember after all these years, but I know it was under $10,000.00.

87

My mother’s mother was my first ancestor to graduate from college. She choose nursing over teaching. She worked her way through school. None of my other grandparents went to college.

My parents both worked through school. My mom had some support from her parents. My father had none. They had few loans and paid them quickly.

I earned a merit-based full-ride scholarship that covered tuition and room and board. It only lasted for four years and was contingent on maintaining an escalating grade point average. I had to pay for my own books and supplies, but had a $500 scholarship that I managed to stretch out for three years. Savings covered the rest.

I worked my way through grad school as a teaching assistant and then research assistant. The department paid for tuition plus a living wage. No savings, but no debt either.

My sisters had less money from scholarships and more support from our parents. And they took loans.

My spouse went through the education system in South Korea. It’s very different there. The school placements are merit-based, but parents pay a lot for extra tutoring, which continues the privileges of wealthy families.

For my kids, we’ll have our mortgage paid off before they finish high school. So we’ll have the means to help them a lot, but I’m hoping they can get some merit-based scholarships.

Past my anecdotes, I think most parents want their kids to do well in life. That’s the expectation of our society, and a very general goal. For a lot people, it means becoming educated, both for better job and marriage prospects, and because being educated is prestigious in itself. (The motto “fighting ignorance” wasn’t chosen out of thin air.)

How much parents directly pay for their children’s education is a matter of preference. Most parents would pay for it completely if they had the means to do so. Most don’t have the means, and after all the immediate financial needs, it becomes a balancing of trade-offs among the parents’ retirements and children’s educations.

The Ivy League of the Big Ten!

88

I had a few loans when I graduated in 1973, but back then if you went to grad school you didn’t have to pay them back until you finished and no interest accrued. When I did finish, in 1980, they weren’t bad, and after a few years of double digit inflation they repayment amount was approaching the cost of postage, so I paid them off early.

89

It was expected that my brother and I go to college, too - my parents hadn’t gone, my grandparents hadn’t gone, etc., etc., but we were going to go. I wanted to go, so that was fine; my brother was a little more ambivalent - but he went. In my case, it was loans, scholarships, and money from my parents that got me through (with a bit of summer work from me).

90

Neither of my parents went to college. None of my grandparents went to high school. None of my great-grandparents attended elementary school. My great-great-grandparents weren’t even mammals. My great-great-great-grandparents were amoeba. Hey, we evolve fast in our family!

(O.K, that was a joke, but it really is true that my parents didn’t go to college and my grandparents didn’t go to high school.)

91

Thank you for the clarification. I was wondering how your great-great grandparents could be something other than mammals.

92

They did amazing things with gene splicing back in the day.

93

I trace my family tree back to the quarks

94

Ah, you and Richard Benjamin.

95

Yes, this is an interesting point relating to college costs. When you and I were at college age, the costs were comparatively low. But a lot of parents contributed nothing to that (my parents didn’t). Now college costs are sky high, but most parents contribute or pay all a kid’s educational costs.

96

Called it.

97

The culture of the family has a whole lot to do with it. Judging by your parents’ ages, I’m going to guess you are either around my parents’ age or a little younger. My mother graduated from high school , my father didn’t and as far as I know , none of my grandparents did. It was absolutely not an expectation that I would go to college. In fact, I distinctly remember my father saying when I was very young ( maybe 5 yr old) that if he ever had enough money, he hoped to send my brother to college ( not me). Which probably had a lot to do with why I worked so hard to attend. The help I got from my family was a place to live and some meals. I had friends whose families were financially better off and their parents paid as much as they could- but those friends were raised with the expectation that they would attend.

What I think has changed is what some of my contemporaries have done - parents going into debt for kids. I paid for my kids’ college education and a master’s degree for one. But that was because they went to the public university. I would have given them that amount no matter where they went - but no way in hell was I going to take out loans so they could go anywhere they chose. But I know lots of people who have done just that and/or continued to work past 70 because they spent what should have been retirement savings on college/wedding/houses for their kids. Coming from my background, I never would have done that.

Someone mentioned that top colleges can be very affordable for poor kids because of the financial aid. That may be- but if you had told me in 1981 that a private college would have been virtually free for me, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would have assumed that at the very least, I would need a loan. And since I was allergic to the idea of a loan, I wouldn’t have wasted the application fee.

98

That’s exactly the problem. People whose families are in (approximately) the bottom third of the population in income are often discouraged from even applying to one or two top colleges because everyone they talk to (their relatives, their friends, their teachers, their guidance counselors, etc.) think that it’s completely impossible for them to get financial aid that will make it possible for them to attend some colleges. Even if their grades are perfect, even if their SAT or ACT scores are perfect, even if they have great extracurricular activities, even if they have great teacher recommendations, they’re told not to waste a cent or a second on applying to top colleges. If they point out to the local people that in the chance that Harvard (or whatever) accepts them, the financial aid there will make it cheaper than attending community college, the local people will tell them that that’s crazy.

99

Not sure when it became a given in general, but I think a factor was when parents had the higher paying jobs attained by their college education there was some notion that they shouldn’t make their kids struggle to pay for school. Eventually that was combined with a 4 year degree costing as much as a house. If my wife had listened to me then my kids wouldn’t have any degrees unless they paid for them, but they’d each own a house right now.

100

I went to a very prestigious college practically for free, because our family was very poor back in those days. The difference is, I had a distant cousin who had gone to that college about ten years earlier, and he encouraged me to apply.