Day of Reckoning

[catherine]

It was funny when I visited Cambridge and realized that several of the Princeton Gothic-style buildings weren't just modeled after Cambridge buildings, they were direct copies.

The Princeton campus is beautiful. I don't miss a lot about New Jersey, but I miss being so close to Princeton and being able to take advantage of what it offers the community.

[rosarugosa]

I did my first year at Bunker Hill Community College, and it cost $300/year. I then transferred to University Of Massachusetts in Boston, which cost $1000/yr. I was able to pay my tuition in full working part-time during the school year and full-time during summer and school breaks. The fact that my parents continued to otherwise support me and let me live under their roof had everything to do with making this possible. I commuted to and from school on public transportation. I was working at my megacorp employer, which is where I ended up working for my entire career. They were great about letting me flex my work schedule around my school schedule. I was a good employee, which I'm sure had a lot to do with their willingness to accommodate me. I do recall fellow students waiting for their loan or grant payments to come through so they could go to FL for spring break. I always worked full-time during my breaks.

[catherine]

I did my first year at Bunker Hill Community College, and it cost $300/year. I then transferred to University Of Massachusetts in Boston, which cost $1000/yr. I was able to pay my tuition in full working part-time during the school year and full-time during summer and school breaks. The fact that my parents continued to otherwise support me and let me live under their roof had everything to do with making this possible. I commuted to and from school on public transportation. I was working at my megacorp employer, which is where I ended up working for my entire career. They were great about letting me flex my work schedule around my school schedule. I was a good employee, which I'm sure had a lot to do with their willingness to accommodate me. I do recall fellow students waiting for their loan or grant payments to come through so they could go to FL for spring break. I always worked full-time during my breaks.

That's awesome. For you guys, like you and LDAHL and others here who have bootstrapped their way through college, I'm wondering what the expectations were. IOW, did your parents tell you early that you were on your own? Did you sense that the family did not have the means to support you, or that they felt that it was something that you should do for yourself?

Maybe that's the problem with the Generation That Expects Everything. Maybe the parents set them up to believe they would be taken care of. In my case, I simply knew that my parents couldn't afford to send me to college, but I did know all through high school that my grandfather would be providing a college education to me.

As a result, as a parent, I felt it was my duty to do the same for my kids. I didn't fully calculate the cost to my future. Two of my sons went rosa's route: community college and transfer to the State university. It worked out great for them. their Masters degree was on their own dime. One son took out a loan, and the other son worked at Rutgers during the day and then headed up to Newark at night for law school, paying for it with tuition remission. I don't know how he did it.

My DD chose a private liberal arts school, and I took on her loans until she got married and then my SIL paid them off for her. It never occurred to me to tell her she needed to go a cheaper route, because I had the gift of being able to go wherever I wanted.

So I'd love to hear from y'all what your overt or implied messages from your parents were about your education.

[early morning]

I didn't go to college until my kids were in middle school, and then I mostly part timed it, while working full time. Got a few grants and scholarships, and several small loans that were forgiven due to my working environment (I taught incarcerated juveniles). I was 38 when I got my BS, and 46, I think, when I got my Masters. Got all my gen-eds done at the local community college. Parents paying for college was never seen as an option, mostly because my older siblings (I came 13 yrs after my Dsis, my DB was 15) had no college money provided. My parents were more about doing the same for all than looking at what could be afforded at the time. We weren't able to help our kids much w/ college other than providing shelter/food/transport. Oldest has an arts degree, is very underemployed, but no loans to pay. Second has many semesters of school, no degree, huge loans, and significant mental health issues that were exacerbated during their away from home years. They are currently stable and in a decent paying job they don't hate, so yay for that, I am guardedly optimistic. I do feel that if we had been able to cover educational expenses, both would be in a better position today, but that's conjecture, so I try not to beat myself up about it too much.

[iris lilies]

…So I'd love to hear from y'all what your overt or implied messages from your parents were about your education.

My parents said directly and clearly: don’t expect an “inheritance” because we are paying for your education.

As it turned out tho my mom did leave my brother and I a nice little chunk of change, $60,000 each, so that was good but not expected.

[Tradd]

I was the smart one so my education was paid for. My mother would have gone to college if family finances allowed it. They didn’t and she had to go to work the day after high school graduation. Receptionist at a doctor’s office.

[LDAHL]

That's awesome. For you guys, like you and LDAHL and others here who have bootstrapped their way through college, I'm wondering what the expectations were. IOW, did your parents tell you early that you were on your own? Did you sense that the family did not have the means to support you, or that they felt that it was something that you should do for yourself?

Maybe that's the problem with the Generation That Expects Everything. Maybe the parents set them up to believe they would be taken care of. In my case, I simply knew that my parents couldn't afford to send me to college, but I did know all through high school that my grandfather would be providing a college education to me.

As a result, as a parent, I felt it was my duty to do the same for my kids. I didn't fully calculate the cost to my future. Two of my sons went rosa's route: community college and transfer to the State university. It worked out great for them. their Masters degree was on their own dime. One son took out a loan, and the other son worked at Rutgers during the day and then headed up to Newark at night for law school, paying for it with tuition remission. I don't know how he did it.

My DD chose a private liberal arts school, and I took on her loans until she got married and then my SIL paid them off for her. It never occurred to me to tell her she needed to go a cheaper route, because I had the gift of being able to go wherever I wanted.

So I'd love to hear from y'all what your overt or implied messages from your parents were about your education.

In my case, there was no question because there was no money beyond the occasional care package or little gift. Asking for anything more would have amounted to cruelty on my part. So I went through the not unusual path at that time. Lawn work, paper route, burger flipping, factory work. We (at least in my neighborhood) didn’t have the snowflake sense of entitlement so often seen now. That’s just how things were. Running out on your debts would have been thought shameful, no matter what the rational. I suppose the result of that experience was that I became a somewhat more self-reliant and resilient person than I would have been otherwise.

For my kid, I help where I can but not to the point of encouraging them to feel they’re entitled to anything they want as a matter of right.

[ToomuchStuff]

What I learned with money from my family was do what I say, not what I do.
We had an allowance, that mom borrowed, and we never saw. Told I could do something like mow lawns, after I bought a mower (couldn't start with dads), and not allowed to compete with neighbor kid.
Want money, don't eat, save your lunch money (which I did for three weeks straight to buy the Return of the Jedi book and pay for me and my friend who was worse off, to go see it).

And from Grandma, you don't buy things you can't afford. So I tried to join the military to get away from both family and to be able to pay for school, and was declared 4F, while told I would go to jail if I didn't still sign up for the draft. Taught me I was going to grow up between a rock and a hard place.

[bae]

That's awesome. For you guys, like you and LDAHL and others here who have bootstrapped their way through college, I'm wondering what the expectations were. IOW, did your parents tell you early that you were on your own? Did you sense that the family did not have the means to support you, or that they felt that it was something that you should do for yourself?

I was the first generation of my family to go to college.

I went to a fancy boarding school for my last 3 years of high school. I entered a competition for a full-ride academic scholarship to the place and won. (Today that school is $75k/year!). This saved me from attending high school in San Diego at the horrid high school parodied in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

My parents divorced while I was in high school, and made it clear they would not be able to provide much, if any, financial support for college. My father was especially sad about this, as when he was young, he had been admitted to college, but his own father refused to co-sign on a student loan, so he never had the opportunity, and went into the military instead.

My parents provided me a lot of social/class support - reinforcing the value of education, encouraging me to explore all resources, and creating in me the expectation that somehow it would work out.

I applied to Princeton for several reasons: 1) they had the best physics and statistics programs on Earth, 2) they had good financial aid packages available for students from less-advantaged families, 3) the college admissions counselor at my boarding school had previously been Princeton's director of admissions and walked me through the applications process for admission and for financial aid.

I got a sizeable financial aid package, a combination of student loans, some outright grants, and a work-study program. My initial work-study job was working in the college dining hall dishing out food to the rich kids and washing dishes. I lasted about 3 weeks at that before I got a job in the university's computer center, where I provided support for rich kids trying to get through the engineering program. That lasted about 5 months before I scored a job working for a private scientific research firm about a 30 minute bicycle ride away, which paid *vastly* more than my work-study job. I worked at that job for several years before I was recruited to be the minion/sidekick for a super-intelligent physicist/mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study. That job paid *a lot*, and more importantly got me some serious connections that have proved useful through my life. I still work with that fellow on a consulting basis.

My girlfriend at the time went to my same high school, she was a day-student from town. Her parents were both professors at the local college, and strongly encouraged her to get a university degree. She also applied to, and went to, Princeton, and they paid for the whole thing. She never had to stress about money, or work at school. She eventually became my wife, and we lasted together nearly 40 years. She never really understood the value of money, as she had never had to struggle with it.

We both decided not to raise our kid to be a privileged dork. My daughter still has a substantial amount of $$$ left over from her 4H prize and auction money, which she had been planning on using for her first year of college. Her grandmother left her a trust fund more-than-sufficient to pay for college and a Ph.D. program and several years of post-doc work - my daughter has not touched a penny of this money.

I only assumed the parent loans for her undergrad work because our family was "too wealthy" to get any scholarship from Princeton for her, though Princeton has a fabulous amount of no-loan financial aid available to anyone with need, with 70%+ of the students there on an aid package. (One of her roommates was there on a full-ride financial aid package, though her parents owned a home in the Hamptons...). My mistake was in not restructuring my assets so that she would qualify. Retiring YMOYL-style "early" doesn't really compute in the financial aid calculations, which viewed my invested retirement assets as available cash.

My daughter, bless her heart, has offered to repay me the amount I spent on her undergraduate and masters programs out of her trust fund, but so far I have advised her to "keep her powder dry", as I'm not exactly eating cat food yet, and she may well have need of those funds for something extraordinary some day. Knowing the funds are available has given her the security though to apply for postdoc programs and university positions that might not exactly pay the rent. (This is what privilege looks like...)

I'm quite proud of her that she hasn't ever asked for, or expected, support, and is currently living entirely off her fellowship salary/benefits, and seems to be crafting a life to continue to proceed in that fashion.

[Rogar]

That's awesome. For you guys, like you and LDAHL and others here who have bootstrapped their way through college, I'm wondering what the expectations were. IOW, did your parents tell you early that you were on your own? Did you sense that the family did not have the means to support you, or that they felt that it was something that you should do for yourself?

My parents told me they would pay for books and tuition in state and after that I would be on my own. I lived at home and went to the local four year college for a couple of years, at which time I'd saved enough from various jobs to go away to the big state university and pay for room and board. I thought that was very equitable. I always had roommates to help with living costs and I recall at one time all of us worked part time...a waiter, a dishwasher, and a cook. The eastern ivy league schools were not even in the realm of thought for me and most of my high school classmates. Tuitions did not seem huge, but it's hard to compare to present day dollars.

I've wondered of the expectations of the current generations. Is the default just to get a student loan and pay the piper later without thoughts of work and cost savings, or is the cost of college just so expensive that a loan is the best way to go. Is the concept of working one's way through college no longer a possibility.