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;
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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Students should be wise enough to utilize the availability of free courses and tutorials online. It is safe to say, that we, the students of this modern age are lucky enough to be blessed with the tecnnology to learn as much as we want to. We just need to know how and where to search for it.
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Students would be more willing to use those websites if public institutions and private organizations learn to value the students who demonstrate the ability to gather that knowledge from online sources. Jim
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Great post, and I most certainly agree with you about how we should consider and choose schools for our children. One thing that you made mention of is that the jobs that college bound students go to school for seldom pay enough to even pay off the debt. When students are leaving high school they have no idea how much their choice of major will affect their probability of landing a job after college. I think that students should be more focused on what job they want and how they are going to get there. If, for instance, a school has %100 job placement for marketing degrees and only 50 in a similar degree like advertising, what would you recommend? It seems pretty obvious stated like that, but college bound kids are not usually presented with that scenario.
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