When it rains, it pours. Here's yet another piece on the value of college and the costs associated with it.
But this one is absurd for the title alone:
In Applying to College, Is Cost a Factor? Really? We have a writer for the Wall Street Journal asking if cost is even a factor when picking a college. Is that what it's come to? Unbelievable.
- As you read farther into the article, you'll see the struggle this writer/parent is having:
- Their daughter is sorting through colleges based on "fit".
- The parents are wondering if they should add "cost" into the decision process.
- They have some money saved, but not an unlimited amount.
- The husband does not want the daughter to consider cost when she selects a school. He wants her to select whatever school she wants at whatever cost. He's planning on paying for it as well -- for all four children, including grad school if need be -- and is willing to tap into their retirement to do it.
- They are willing to have the daughter go to a less expensive school initially as long as she graduates from the school she "loves".
- This quote: "He is determined to make sure she goes to the best school for her, whatever the cost."
The second half of the piece is much more level-headed, and the thinking, of all places, comes from the daughter. (It's hard to tell who are the parents and who is the child in this piece.) Some of her thoughts:
"I will be weighing cost pretty heavily because I'm a realistic thinker," she says. "I know I can get a good education for low cost." A sign of her realism: She favorably compares an honors program in a public-college system with a private-school package for which she might also qualify. So, she plans to apply to schools across a wide price range.
"Right now I could come up with five different colleges I could go to and be totally thrilled about it," she says. "I don't think there's a perfect school out there that is the only place you can be happy. I think you just pay for what you can afford, and you can get a great education either way."
She's also thinking about her three younger sisters, and how her choice will affect their future. "There's more than one school that is a good fit for you, so why harm the future of anyone in your family?" she asks.
I first saw this piece in my Sunday paper and was shocked. While I applaud the WSJ for printing the real-life struggles of a family (kind of like a blog in print), I would think a writer for such a prestigious financial publication would have much of this stuff figured out -- at least the part about considering cost when selecting the school.
Then I had to remind myself that this was from the mainstream media, the same people who confuse "net worth" and "income", write pieces like "the 10 best stocks to buy now", and regularly indicate in one way or another that they have very little practical knowledge about managing money. Yes, they WRITE about money, but they don't KNOW anything about it themselves (they get it from others and quote them).
Is it any wonder the country is messed up financially? We are reading stuff from people who know nothing about money.
But I'm getting off track here. Let's get back to the subject at hand -- college. A few thoughts:
- YES, cost should be a factor in determining where a person goes to school. As the daughter indicates, there are many schools that could work for any given student, and believe me, they have different costs.
- IMO an even bigger factor (which is not mentioned at all in the article) is what type of jobs the student will be able to get upon graduation from any given school. What percentage of students has jobs at graduation? At what pay? For what companies? What companies recruit at the college? And on and on and on. College is a step towards the next thing in life, which is employment. So shouldn't future employment be a consideration in where to go to school? Of course!
- Haven't we been through the "don't raid retirement funds to pay for college" discussion enough? For goodness sake, even the mainstream media gets this one right most of the time! Yet these parents can't (IMO, it sounds like the husband is the issue in this piece -- I think the wife would make more level-headed decisions if it wasn't for him.)
I'm going to leave my comments at that. You all are probably sick of this topic by now, but 1) the piece was so over-the-top and 2) we are in the midst of ramping up our college search plans at home (so the topic is fresh for us), so I just had to post on this one.
Thoughts?
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