Remember those college loans? Time to pay up, sucker!Brennan Jackson , a high school student in Los Angeles, is desperately trying to patch together enough scholarships to enable him to attend the University of California at Berkeley next year. He is an A- student and he wants to go to a good college, but with his father out of work and another college-age sibling right behind him, money is tight. And, Brennan is finding, financial aid is tight, too.
There's an old song that says "You don't always get what you want," and I think Brennan should be listening to that wisdom. Forget about Berkeley for now, kid, and go to whatever two-year or four-year public college is within commuting distance.
In an age when nearly half the high-school population is expecting to go to college and the quality of public primary and secondary education is declining, the bachelor's degree is rapidly becoming the new high school diploma. Would you go into debt to pay for the "new high school diploma" for your child? Maybe, if the child is smart and willing to work hard and there is no way to pay for a basic college degree without borrowing some money, but as little as possible, please, or you're a dope.
At the present time, well-regarded public colleges are seeing a surge in interest. Another possibility that cash-strapped parents and students are exploring is starting the college education at a two-year public college and then transferring. In New York State, at least, the standard of education at public two-year colleges is not different from the four-year colleges, at least in the liberal arts or Associate in Arts (AA) degree programs. A student from the Syracuse area who got an AA degree from Onondaga Community College and got good grades could expect to transfer to a four-year college without any difficulty.
In the grocery store, "name" brands may sometimes be better than store brands or "off-label" brands. And Harvard is still Harvard, in part because Harvard has a lot of money to spend on faculty and facilities (although not as much as they used to), and in part because it can be much more selective in admissions than less celebrated institutions. But not all private colleges are Harvard, and borrowing money to send a kid to a Brand X private college is basically a waste of money. Bragging rights are nice, but bankruptcy isn't, and starting out on a career with a huge student-loan debt is crazy.
1 comment:
Florida has a very good system of community colleges which on average provide as good an education as the first two years at a state university, especially as the universities offer most of the basic classes for those years in larger and larger lecture halls. It depends on the student: does he or she treat it as a college learning experience or just an extension of high school party time? Parents, let your student invest some of their own money at college.
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