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Beware These Financial Pitfalls When Choosing a College

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Financial Pitfalls When Choosing a College

With more and more high school students deciding to attend college, the race to find the “perfect” college often begins as early as a high school student’s sophomore year, though more typically their junior year. Students may consider a school’s “vibe,” and its ranking when picking a college, but there are more important things to consider. As the parent, stepping into your child’s college search with a dose of reality is necessary. After all, attending college can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Advise your child to beware of these financial pitfalls when choosing a college.

Financial Pitfalls When Choosing a College

College is expensive! Even if your child attends a local university and lives on campus, the price tag could be $20,000 per year or more. For that kind of investment, you should carefully consider these factors, which will save you money and help you and your child choose the right college carefully.

The Retention Rate

How many students who come in as freshmen come back for their sophomore year? That is the college’s retention rate. Colleges with high retention rates are likely doing something right for their students. If the college your child is considering has a low retention rate, be concerned.

Transferring to a different college because your child is unhappy at the one she initially chose can be expensive. Not all of your child’s credits may transfer, which means she may have to pay more to complete her college degree, which happened to me. I left my initial college after one semester. It ultimately took me five years to graduate college, in part because of the college I initially chose and the fact that some credits didn’t transfer.

The average retention rate nationwide is 78%. If the college your child wants to attend is lower than that, make sure you understand why before sending your child.

The Graduation Rate

How likely are incoming freshmen to graduate in four years? That is the graduation rate. Unfortunately, the nationwide graduation rate is surprisingly low. “According to the National Center for Education Statistics, just 41% of first-time full-time college students earn a bachelor’s degree in four years, and only 59% earn a bachelor’s in six years” (CNBC).

What do those lower graduation rates represent?

Financial Pitfalls When Choosing a College

First, some students drop out and never complete their degrees. My cousin dropped out of law school after one year, and he had tens of thousands of dollars of debt to show for it without the law degree. He did eventually get his Master’s in a different field, but paying off the law school loans took him years. This is the worst-case scenario.

Second, if your child does graduate but takes five or six years to do so, your child is in a better position—he has his degree. However, do you have the money to pay for an additional one or two years of college? Most families expect their child to graduate in four years and budget for that. When graduating takes longer, many families are left taking out additional loans they hadn’t planned on. Unfortunately, this scenario is surprisingly common as most schools have fairly low four-year graduation rates.

Some Scholarships Aren’t Renewable

If your child qualifies for financial aid, be forewarned that the college can usually manipulate the first-year financial-aid package to make attending the school possible. However, they often do that by finding scholarships the college offers. Yet, what you may not realize is that some of these scholarships aren’t renewable.

Perhaps for the first year of college, parents need to pay $7,000. However, for sophomore year, after some of these one-time scholarships end, you may be looking at a bill of $15,000 a year. Can you afford that if you were expecting to pay just $7,000 a year? That can be a shock to many parents.

Make sure when you sign your financial aid agreement that you know which scholarships are renewable and which are one-time scholarships so you’re not surprised next year.

Paying for College Can Increase Your Income

Some parents choose to pay for college by taking money out of their retirement accounts. However, when they do this, the money they withdraw counts as income in the next tax return that they file. Then, when the college sees this, they see that the parents’ income has gone up, and financial aid is further reduced.

Ideally, have a way to pay for college that won’t make your income increase and reduce the amount of financial aid for which you qualify. If you feel that taking money out of your retirement fund is the only way to pay, consider choosing another college. Or, choose to take out PLUS loans and either pay them back traditionally or pay them back with money from your retirement fund after your child graduates. Then, doing so won’t affect your financial aid offer.

Consider Living Expenses

Financial Pitfalls When Choosing a College

When people think of the price of college, they most often consider tuition and room and board. However, your child will have many more expenses than that. Consider the following additional costs students may incur:

  • travel home for vacations,
  • clothing if the climate at school is different from the climate at home,
  • entertainment,
  • food when the college cafeteria is closed,
  • fraternity or sorority fees if they are pledging,
  • laundry,
  • parking fees,
  • summer storage for their college furniture and other goods when they are home on summer break

Final Thoughts

Choosing a college can be exciting, but make sure your child isn’t swayed by the college’s slick advertising. More importantly, consider the many financial pitfalls when choosing a college. Investigate the college’s retention and graduation rates. Understand your financial aid package, especially if the scholarships that your child receives are renewable or one-time scholarships. Don’t forget to also account for living expenses. If you consider all of these variables, you will be more financially prepared for what is to come in the next four (or six!) years your child is a college student.

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The Higher Education Path Not Taken

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I’m not sure about you, but I have a hard time with keeping myself from constantly over-analyzing everything.  You name it, and I’ve analyzed it.  Even things that I cannot change, like my choice in Colleges.  Should I have gone to a different college?  Perhaps.

If I look at it from a strictly financial perspective, the answer is a definitive yes.  I went to Jamestown College, which is a private school.  While it isn’t the most expensive private school you can choose, it’s not nearly as affordable as a state school would have been.  Instead of the student loan debt that I am paying on now, I would have only about half of it had I gone to a state school.  Maybe less.

If I had gone to a school closer to home, I could have saved money over the summers by moving back in with my parents.  Traveling home would have been a far cheaper endeavor, and certainly would have been a shorter endeavor.  It’s over 950 miles from Jamestown to Hamilton, MT, where my parents live.  Even with the best car I had, mileage wise, it cost at least $200 to drive home and back.  And that’s without stopping along the way at a hotel.   And don’t even get me started on the money I could have saved on laundry by bringing it home and using the washer and dryer at home!

Of course, not every decision in life can be judged solely by it’s financial merits.  (Not that I was all that adept at anything financial back then anyways.)  Something as important as college has many factors that go into it’s choosing.  For me, the money did come into play simply because my family didn’t have much of it, and I needed to be able to get enough financial assistance to go to the college I chose.  I also wanted to play football, so the college had to have a team.  I’m not a big fan of lots and lots of people, so the school needed to be smaller.

Having had pretty good grades in high school, I was able to get scholarships and financial assistance to go to all of the schools that I applied to.  I had ruled out the main state schools as being too big.  They also got ruled out because I wouldn’t be able to play football.  In the end, the choice came down to a smaller state school, a private school closer to home, and Jamestown College.  All offered everything that I was looking for.  All were good schools.  What it finally came down to was friendliness.  Of the three schools I had narrowed it down to, only JC took the time have a enrollment counselor call me.  The football coach at JC was the only one to call me and personally invite me.

Sorry, I’ve gotten off on a tangent, and it’s turned into a bit of a love fest.  But, there’s a reason for that too.  It’s the funny thing about college.  No matter where a person goes to college, the college they went to was the awesomest college ever!  It’s not about the money.  It’s not about the education.  It’s not about the faculty, or even the sports teams.  Those all play a part in the choosing of the school, but, really, play very little part, if any, in how you feel about the school.  No, the college you attend is the best school because of the people you meet, the adventures you have, and the growing up (hopefully) that you do while you’re there.

When I think back on my higher education, I can say that I got a good education, but I can also say that I could have just as easily gone anywhere and gotten a good education.  I was able to play a couple of years of football, and that was cool.  I could have played at several other schools too.  I certainly could have gone to a cheaper school and had less student loan debt when I was done.  But, what really made college, college was the people I met.  Either directly, or indirectly, through college, I met my wife, and made so many friends.  We had so many shenanigans!  And that is what made college worth every penny.

Let’s do something fun.  Tell us all what college you attended in the comments below.  Maybe we’ll find some fellow alumni!  (Also, I’m curious how many of you are Ivy League-ers. 🙂 )
img credit:pwbaker, on Flickr

How Higher Education is Ruining the Economy

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The last thing you probably expected, today, was a post about how higher education is ruining the economy. After all, aren’t personal-finance bloggers supposed to be all about advancing yourself, spending wisely, and earning all that you can? Perhaps, but I’m of the personal belief that one can still advance yourself, spend wisely, and earn all that your worth without having to go to college. Before I get off on a tangent let me explain just what it is that I mean. Higher education has its place. If you want to be an engineer, a doctor, social worker, or even a teacher, you’ll likely need to have a college degree. For those professions that require a college degree there simply isn’t any other way around it. But, that doesn’t mean you need to go to a college whose tuition costs exceed several years worth of the expected salary for the profession that you wish to have. After all, the idea is to learn a profession so that we can earn more money, not learn a profession so that we can spend more money.

Higher Student Loan Debt is Burdensome.

How does all that relate to the economy? The effects of the high cost of tuition are far-reaching. The added debt of college loans can create a cyclical debt treadmill. A recently graduated student may have a small window of time to get his or her affairs in order, but is quickly saddled with a student loan payment. Newly minted professional usually work extra hours to make extra money to pay off the large student loans they’ve accumulated. The combination of less free time with higher debt repayment figures creates a vacuum whereby the money earned never gets a chance to enter into the economy. And everyone knows that the quickest way for money to enter into the economy is through consumer spending.

Exaggerated Educational Requirements are Exaggerated.

But, the added debt isn’t the only reason that higher education is ruining the economy.  Heck, it isn’t even the student loan interest rates.  Our economy has always had an informal hierarchical system.  When I say that, I don’t mean that the people with the degrees got the better jobs, either.  Not so very long ago, the people who got the better jobs were the people who were best suited to it.  For many positions, that meant that the people getting the better jobs were the people with the most experience, and the most aptitude for the position.  Somewhere along the way, the people in charge of hiring decided that a higher education degree could replace some level of experience.  More and more companies decided that this was a good thing.  And now, many job openings require that you have a degree of some sort.  Real world experience in a position has been surpassed by classroom experience.  Entry level jobs that could just as easily be done excellently by a person with a high-school diploma are suddenly closed off to anyone without a degree.  Anyone that aspires to hold such a position is thereby required to attend college for a minimum of two years rather than spend those two years gaining experience and job skills for the position.  Worse, for the economy anyways, is that that person is then effectively taken out of the economy for at least two more years.  Instead of earning money, paying taxes, and contributing to the economy, that person is racking up the debt while taking so many credits that they can’t even afford the time to take on a part-time job.

How do we fix higher education?

College Fund © by Tax Credits

I think, first and foremost, we need to stop pretending that a degree is a “requirement”.  Stop pushing our children to attain a degree, and instead push them to get the minimal required training to attain the job/position that they desire.  Kids will be kids and they’ll do what they please, but they shouldn’t feel like their being pushed into a college education because their parents want them to get one.

We need to stop requiring degrees for positions that clearly don’t really need one.  In my particular field (IT for those curious among you), very little of what I learned in college has been applied in my work experience.  And yet, each of the positions I’ve had (with the exception of my most recent part-time job) has required a four year degree in the field.  Let me tell you, anyone with an aptitude for IT, and a willingness to learn on the job could have easily fulfilled all of the duties that I performed.  It’s a fact. How many other positions are there that are the same way?  Lots and lots, I’d wager.

From a strictly financial perspective, we have to do a better job of educating our children about how to go about getting a degree if that’s what they choose to do.  There are numerous tools that can help us out, in this internet age.  Our own government has a plethora of information to help, and there are plenty of other resources, like Big Future, that have lots of information too.

We also have to properly express what a fiscally responsible adult should do.  I can’t count the number of my fellow students (myself included) who took the maximum allowable student loans out, despite not needing that amount, so that they would have the extra funds available to do what they pleased with.  Yes, it’s some of the cheapest money you will ever borrow, but unless you’re planning on investing in a guaranteed rate account while you attend college, it’s still debt.  And every penny of it will make your financial life harder once you graduate.

Finally, we have to stop this idea that we are all entitled to a college education.  We aren’t.   It’s a privilege that we pay grandly for.  Just because you can spend $50,000 a year to get your library sciences degree, doesn’t mean you are entitled to, or should.

Do you have a degree?  Was it required for your position?  Should it have been?  How would you fix higher education?