Yeah, I know it’s too early to think about college for my kid. Maybe I’m selfish with money, but if things stay the way they are I probably wouldn’t pay for much of it. The reasons for this are masterfully summarized in this article:
http://www.soundmindinvesting.com/visitor/2009/oct/feature.htm
1) Lots of kids who are going to college shouldn’t be there. Since it’s become the “default” plan after high school (at least in this area of the country) students are pressured into it. Many of these kids aren’t mature or knowledgeable enough to care about or do well in college. They squander their education or drop out, wasting many thousands of dollars (including lots of taxpayer money). At my college, a state school, a LOT of kids were there just to get drunk and party.
2) Since we have a lot of under-qualified (but paying) college students, the standards are sometimes lowered to accommodate them. I took a class in college in which we had to learn about writing papers. Our final was a three-page paper. Students that can’t write a three-page paper have no business being in college in the first place! My remedial math class saw us learning about Venn diagrams and drawing lines on graph paper – basic algebraic skills I had learned as a freshman in high school. College is supposed to teach “higher” education, not remedial skills that should be learned in middle school.
3) Debt is not something I ever wish to take on again. The more I learn about God’s word and learn about money, the more I am scared of debt. It’s literally a modern-day enslavement in which the debtor becomes slave to the lender. Yeah, that’s dramatic, but true. Even our mortgage, our ONLY debt at this time, seems to me a weight that I want lifted as soon as possible. Good investment or not, the American way of life – spending money we don’t have yet – is sometimes just plain foolish.
Due to fears, expectations, and dreams, parents and teenagers are willing to incur huge amounts of debt for soaring collegiate tuition fees. One year of tuition often costs more than Jill and I make in a year. What a burden this is on our young people! To graduate with $50,000 in debt (not an uncommon amount) is a burden that will be felt for years to come. Worse, there’s no guarantee that the graduate will even be able to get a job that pays enough to keep up with the payments.
I’m not against a kid having a dream or interest and pursuing that for a living. I’m not against college education or even helping to pay for some of it. But I’d want to make sure that no debt (or very little) was incurred in the process, that a good education was the primary motivation for attending, and that a college degree was the best way to pursue the goal.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/general/2006-02-22-student-loans-usat_x.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/education/30dropouts.html
http://www.collegescholarships.org/loans/average-debt.htm
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