Should parents or Children fund College Education, and how can they do it.

[Brit]

Great thread. I am at a client site, and so haven't really had a lot of time to read it thoroughly, but skimming the posts has resonated with me! I have a daughter in college and the financial burden these days on both parents and students is astonishing.

We have one ParentPlus loan for our daughter (first year fees/r&b) and we are paying the rest without loans. However, we have made her take out her stafford loans each year and she will graduate with about $23k in debt. Plus, we have told her she needs to help us pay back the ParentPlus loan.

Our younger daughter is 5 years away from college, and we are saving in a 529 plan currently. (Utah 529). We learned with our older daughter that going to a big name school is not always worth it. The costs are egregious and in all honesty, my personal opinion (and YMMV, of course) is that the big bucks are better spent on grad school rather than undergrad. So, with you young'un we will be more judicious in saying "no" to a big name/big price school unless she gets very good scholarships.

 

[MarkD]

I think this is a great thread also (but I'm biased because I started it ).

I think one thing overlooked is that even a basic state college is exceedingly expensive. The cost of a state college in California is around $24,000 a year. Considering that most students these days take at least 5 years to graduate you are looking at $120,000 of college expenses - minimum.

Yes - you can minimize this by attending a Junior college for two years. That brings it to $72,000 plus the JC expenses so you are most likely looking at over $80K in expenses if you start with zero $$$ saved. Obviously you can reduce the costs by college savings plans, work study, scholarships and other means but the reality is that even a basic school will saddle a student with debt for quite a while if not prepared.

We're not even talking Grad school here. This is very sobering.