I’m a year older than you; I went to an in-state public university, and your experience is consistent with mine. Tuition was just under $1,000 a year; dorm housing + meal plan was about another $3,000.
In-state tuition at that school will be $9,646 this fall, a ten-fold increase over 40 years, which far outstrips the inflation rate over that time: if tuition had risen at only the same rate as overall U.S. inflation, it’d be only about $3,000 a year now.
So, that’s undoubtedly part of the issue: college has become crazy-expensive, while a college degree has increasingly become the minimum requirement for far too many jobs, meaning that a lot of parents (and their kids) have come to believe, rightly or wrongly, that going to college (and a good college, at that) is the only route they have to ensuring that the kids will have a chance at a good career, or at least a steady income.
Figuring out how to pay for that degree, without the student and/or their parents going deeply into debt, is thorny.
not really an obligation, but a goal. I went to college in the 70’s. Paid by parents who never went to college. I worked in grad school, not in undergrad. It was something parents did because they were being helpful. Think of it as helping with a chore. A four year effort to be sure, but Mom and Dad helped their kids because they wanted the kids to succeed and college was a step in that direction. I am sure they helped as much as they thought possible but not more than that. For me it was enough.
As for my kids, same reasoning. Help if one is able. Don’t injure anyone doing it. With two incomes and a few loans we got all the kids through college. But they knew that if the family finances went down and their post-grad income could handle it, they would pay the loans. Fortunately that wasn’t ever necessary.
It is part of being in a family. An obligation if one wants to call it that, but just being family. Why do families move to areas with “good schools”? They aren’t required to, but it is part of having a successful family. Same reasoning.
Yes and no. I was in the somewhat unfortunate position of having acrimoniously divorced parents with wildly divergent finances. Dad was an Ivy-educated engineer with an MBA, and Mom was a precariously employed social worker in a nonprofit. The divorce decree said that both parents were to contribute to the children’s college education according to their ability, but nothing about who was to determine that ability, or how. Dad’s idea of a fair split was down the middle.
I was a National Merit finalist who was accepted to some pretty prestigious schools. Those schools mostly took at Dad’s finances and thought he should be contributing a hell of a lot more than he was willing to contribute (and about 5x what they thought Mom should contribute). I knew that simply wasn’t going to happen, largely because my stepmother made it clear through her words and behavior that she did not appreciate a chunk of their household income going to any kids that were not hers. (Never mind that my dad’s working-class immigrant parents, with much more limited means, had put him through Princeton, even after he ended up on academic probation and had to go elsewhere for a semester to get his grades back up.)
So Mom took Dad to court, which went on throughout my college career. I ended up going to the one school that decided that Dad’s expected contribution was going to be what he was paying in child support, which was significantly less than the expected contribution that the other, more competitive schools came up with. There were lawsuits that lasted throughout my college career, which played a large role in my decision to graduate in 3 years by taking advantage of a bunch of AP credit, a couple of summer school classes, and some jam-packed semesters.
I don’t have kids, but if I had, I would never have put them through that crap. Dad could have easily afforded much more without breaking a sweat, and I deserved and earned it. But he’s dead now, and I long ago got tired of banging my head against the wall trying to make him understand why our relationship was jacked up. My stepmother is dead, too - you’d think if you married a woman 14 years younger than you, she would have a decent chance of outliving you, but COVID got her. I never even bothered trying to fix our relationship because she made it beyond repair. Karma’s a bitch.
I went to college in the early 90’s. I got no help from my parents. I was able to pay for it by spending 4 years in community college while working nights. I transferred to a 4 year public state university after community college and was able to get a scholarship that, along with my savings from working, allowed me to graduate with no debt (took a total of 6 years but it was debt free). Grad school was paid for by a government fellowship.
I think I was in the last generation where is was still possible (difficult by that time, but still possible) to work your way through college (at least if you went to community college and an in-state public university). Not possible now.
I’ve been saving every month for my kids college education since they were born. It might be enough by the time they need it. It might not.
I graduated from high school in 1982. My parents made it clear that they would be unable to help me pay for college. My mom did pay for all of the application fees etc. But I was on my own to figure out how to pay for all of it. I was fortunate in that I was able to get mostly grants and work study. Where I lived, we had a wealthy man who would pay tuition if you graduated from my high school and took full time classes. So, I had very little to pay off myself.
Pretty much the same for me ( minus the wealthy benefactor man part ) in 1980 when I graduated HS. I got some token federal and state grants, and my father set me up ( not monetarily, but dealt with the red tape ) with a student loan from a small local bank for most of the tuition. My grandmother paid for my books.
The student loan had good terms and after becoming employed full time the payments were manageable. When it came down to the last couple of hundred dollars or so, they just basically told me “forget it, we’re square, nice doing business with you.” Pretty neat.
) in 1980 when I graduated HS. I got some token federal and state grants, and my father set me up ( not monetarily, but dealt with the red tape ) with a student loan from a small local bank for most of the tuition. My grandmother paid for my books.