I'm in a little bit of a panic and hoping the Disers can help! I'll speak with the financial aid office tomorrow but in the meantime......My daughter will be attending a Pa. public university in the fall. She has been approved for a Stafford loan and a small Pell grant. I went online to apply for a Sallie Mae loan to cover the rest, about $15,000 a year. I was rejected! We own our own home, never claimed bankruptcy or defaulted on anything. My husband was laid off last year and we have some med bills that went to collections along with lots of late credit payments. He's back to work and we are slowly getting back on track. Where do you turn for student loans if your credit is bad?
OP, I was searching for the words to say it, but others have already said it: You can't afford this school.
It's better to face that fact up front BEFORE she begins school. It'd be worse to have to leave school because she can't pay the spring tuition, or to be forced to transfer sophomore year.
Not true, but you HAVE to pick a college you can afford, and it helps if mom and dad have been saving for it for the past 18 years - most families simply can't create $10,000 a year that they didn't have.
The 4 year state school I graduated from was $6k a year. A lot of us - including myself - worked full time and took classes half time and lived at home. That meant we had $3k a year to fund - and took eight years to graduate (I started "mostly done" but switched majors - I only had three years of school - including summers - but I graduated with people who had been going to school for ten years to get their B.S.).
There are three huge issues with college funding:
Parents put off saving - when your kid is two, or six, or ten - college seems so far away and there are so many other demands on your income.
Kids and their parents pick colleges not based off what is reasonable to afford, but off where they want to go.
Parents and kids believe that scholarships and financial aid is available. It is available - but it isn't sufficient to cover all your kid's expenses at anything more than a community college (and probably not there) and it most often comes in the form of loans which leave you and your child in debt for college. Its hard to look at your two year old and know they have the talent for a hockey scholarship or are going to be a National Merit Scholar. Don't bet on it.
Crisi, as usual, you've hit the nail on the head. People buy into false ideas about college (it's years away, left handed scholarships are out there, etc.), but I think you've correctly identified the three biggest issues that get people into financial trouble with college. Now that it's more difficult to borrow, the problems that've always been there are magnified.
I'd add just one detail to the "parents put off saving" thought: Many young parents are paying off thier own students loans, and that's one of the things that prevents them from saving for their own children's educations. It's a vicious cycle, and in the OP's case her only choice is to choose a less expensive school.
To be blunt... college is not a right. Not everyone should be in college or can afford college. The issue is that we as a country have forgotten that. If you don't have a college degree it can be hard to find jobs. We have allowed it to become this way.
I remember reading some time back that 20% of Americans have a college degree, and 25% claim they do. I don't know if that's true, but I just googled this information, which came from USA Today:
63% of high school graduates go straight into college
15.5% complete a bachelor's degree
8.9% complete a bachelor's degree and a graduate degree
I'm taking these from a rather poorly written article, but I looked at a couple other sites too. Most of these articles say that 27-28% of all Americans have a bachelor's degree. Regardless, I think it's safe to say that less than 30% of Americans have a bachelor's degree.
So most Americans are finding jobs, working, and supporting themselves without a degree.
What does this have to do with the OP's daugther? Not much. She's a good student, and we have every reason to believe she'll be successful and will be in the minority that'll earn a degree . . . but she has to get herself into a school she can afford.
. . . He went to community college 27 years ago and got all of his tech classes . . . all have some type of technical school . . . It may not be a B.A. but it still costs the same if not more.
Yes, LOTS of jobs require education past high school but NOT in the form of traditional college. Yet too many parents /high school students ignore those very real options and pay attention only to the traditional college plan, a plan that's not going to become reality for the majority of our students.
My brother is a huge proponent of high school vocational programs. He himself took every high school class in the field of electronics; then he went into the Navy, where he learned more. He says that today he earns his living with what he learned in those high school classes. If more students paid attention to those very good options (bricklaying, auto mechanics, etc.) in high school, they'd be doing better than some college graduates!
It isn't the tuition cost, it is the room and board that kill you!
And subtract the full-time income they
aren't earning during college.
Serious question: Do college students work/save any more? On the boards, parents are always talking about scholarships, financial aid, and loans . . . but I never hear about college students working for a portion of their college expenses. When I was in college, I worked non-stop and saved every penny -- I didn't have good choices, and I'd like to see my daugthers work a more moderate schedule during their college years. Today it seems that most college students I know personally are working part-time during the summers and
maybe a few hours a week during school. I know I worked much more than most college students in my generation, but I wonder if I have a realistic gauge on this or not. College-student type work IS a little harder to find these days, but most of my high school students have part-time jobs, so it's not impossible in this area.
Please don't think of community college as a death sentence or something. It's not the case! Many people graduate from a community college and do quite well, or transfer their credits and still complete their degree. Most employers look for a degree, and don't even realize that you spent the first 2 years of your college life at a community college.
My husband goofed off in high school. After graduation, he worked a few years, and then decided that college looked pretty good. He says that if he'd gone straight to a 4-year university, he'd never have made it. He says community college was the absolute best option for him. Because he started in communty college, he did spend 5 years total earning his degree, but he says it was the right path for him.
Please, please do not jeopardize your home for your daughter's education. She is an adult now, if she really, really wants to go to college she will find a way. Suze Orman had a woman on a few weeks ago. She and her daughter are on the hook for 100K in student loans. The woman now has serious financial trouble and a very uncertain financial future.
Sadly, that's a story we've all heard too many times. Someone (probably a loan officer) invented this concept of "good debt" and sold the American public on the idea that borrowing for college is a positive thing. Being a society given to extremes, we've taken this concept and turned it into permission to send any student to any college -- regardless of ability to pay. Moderation has to come into play in these decisions.
DD has a degree in SpEd and it was still pretty hard for her to get a teaching job. The district that hired her had over 5,000 applications for the 34 positions (not all teaching). Needless to say, we are very thankful that she has a job as a new graduate.
Plus I'll probably tutor. She will also be expected to get a job once she settles into school.
