GIVE A DEBT-FREE COLLEGE DEGREE HIGHEST PRIORITY
Families with college bound students compare college reputations, faculty, locations, size, and campus atmosphere. Give highest priority to plans where students graduate with the lowest student debt, preferably zero. Higher tuition, lower grant awards, devastated 529 savings plans, and steep student loan debt make college degrees so expensive that their economic value is barely marginal in today’s economy. Obama’s administration may increase grants aid, but the other three are getting worse.
Cost estimates should include tuition, room and board, textbooks, materials, time-in-school (graduates take an average of five years), and interest costs. Costs vary by school. For example, MIT offers 85 percent of their course material online, saving students thousands of dollars in textbook costs. Of course students pay MIT plenty, but individual faculty at other schools are doing the same.
After estimating all the costs, subtract scholarships, grants, awards, and work-study. Now subtract the family payments from savings and income. Whatever is left over would be borrowed.
Give highest priority to plans that allow the lowest student debt load upon graduation, such as ones that include beginning at the community college. Students often give the highest priority to a school’s reputation for a major, but most students wander into college unclear about majors, or change them several times.
Some students know what their majors are, and often involve graduate school, which implies more debt. Tragically, graduates give up their dreams because debt matters. USA Today reported that 25 to 50 percent of new teachers and social workers could not pay college debt on their starting salaries. Or consider music majors forced into an unwanted job to pay off debt while working late into the night on the music they love.
Incredible options abound for people with clear majors. Jan Petrie of Wenatchee Valley College sent me a report on the major trends affecting colleges in the next two decades. Learning will occur in media-rich environments that may take place anywhere at anytime. Programs will be less regimented and more customized.
Suppose our music student wants to concentrate on violin and voice, but a school has a poor voice department. Our music major could take free classes at Youtube.com/edu, which my dentist alerted me to last week. YouTube Edu offers free lectures from hundreds of colleges and universities promoting their schools. I searched for voice lessons and found excellent lectures with 4.5 to 5-star ratings by hundreds of viewers. They ranged from Voice Problems I & II at the University of Maryland Medical Center, ARTS: Finding Your Voice as a Musician at USC-Thornton, and How to Make Your Voice Last a Lifetime at Duke Voice Care Center. As a former Dean and faculty member I know students could arrange credit for courses that overcome a college’s weaknesses.
Students should absolutely give highest priority to college plans that result in a debt-free degree. And combine that degree with a customized educational plan that includes free lectures from excellent instructors online.
Cost estimates should include tuition, room and board, textbooks, materials, time-in-school (graduates take an average of five years), and interest costs. Costs vary by school. For example, MIT offers 85 percent of their course material online, saving students thousands of dollars in textbook costs. Of course students pay MIT plenty, but individual faculty at other schools are doing the same.
After estimating all the costs, subtract scholarships, grants, awards, and work-study. Now subtract the family payments from savings and income. Whatever is left over would be borrowed.
Give highest priority to plans that allow the lowest student debt load upon graduation, such as ones that include beginning at the community college. Students often give the highest priority to a school’s reputation for a major, but most students wander into college unclear about majors, or change them several times.
Some students know what their majors are, and often involve graduate school, which implies more debt. Tragically, graduates give up their dreams because debt matters. USA Today reported that 25 to 50 percent of new teachers and social workers could not pay college debt on their starting salaries. Or consider music majors forced into an unwanted job to pay off debt while working late into the night on the music they love.
Incredible options abound for people with clear majors. Jan Petrie of Wenatchee Valley College sent me a report on the major trends affecting colleges in the next two decades. Learning will occur in media-rich environments that may take place anywhere at anytime. Programs will be less regimented and more customized.
Suppose our music student wants to concentrate on violin and voice, but a school has a poor voice department. Our music major could take free classes at Youtube.com/edu, which my dentist alerted me to last week. YouTube Edu offers free lectures from hundreds of colleges and universities promoting their schools. I searched for voice lessons and found excellent lectures with 4.5 to 5-star ratings by hundreds of viewers. They ranged from Voice Problems I & II at the University of Maryland Medical Center, ARTS: Finding Your Voice as a Musician at USC-Thornton, and How to Make Your Voice Last a Lifetime at Duke Voice Care Center. As a former Dean and faculty member I know students could arrange credit for courses that overcome a college’s weaknesses.
Students should absolutely give highest priority to college plans that result in a debt-free degree. And combine that degree with a customized educational plan that includes free lectures from excellent instructors online.
Posted by JSR at 4/30/2009 2:05 AM 
Categories: Wealth,Serving Others,Common Sense
Tags: Student debt; college loans; college choice;
Categories: Wealth,Serving Others,Common Sense
Tags: Student debt; college loans; college choice;
Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I'll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon
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Thanks for sharing this information
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Loved this - the debt can be crushing. I'm banking on getting 17.5K of my loans for my Masters in Teaching forgiven, something available to anyone who pursues a graduate degree and then uses that degree in a public sector job.
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One of the best strategies is simply to tell a professor that you are applying to become his teaching assistant, if they like you, you’ll probably get the job over a student that they don’t even know. Once I had the first semester under my belt, I had seniority and was continually rehired each semester.
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students should learn how to manage their finances wisely to avoid debt problems. They have to be more responsible with their spending habit especially to those who have car loans, student loans, credit cards etc.
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