I liked the article and I also have a high school senior so this has been on my mind lately. But I have BG’s rules, almost to the letter. They get to go to the CS or UC school of their choice that they are accepted into, nothing more. It’s not that I think other schools aren’t better, it’s just that I only budgeted for those schools and I can only send them to those schools without taking on debt. BTW, those estimates of 34k a year for UC or 27k for CS are using creative math. They calculate health insurance, vehicle expenses, toiletries, etc. etc. That’s fine and dandy of you give birth to an 18 year old, but for the rest of us parents it only matters what additional dollars I need comparing their senior year and their freshman college year. Tuition, books (used books didn’t kill me), room and board. That’s it, and even then I can deduct what I spend now to feed them and how much they use in utilities. I already pay for health insurance, car insurance, gas, vehicle maintenance, proms, dining out, vacations. It’s the same as comparing renting and owning, you only need to look at the differences, not the total, because you already have an electric bill, so only look at the differences. A CS school is just under 20k or thereabouts.
Walter, trash the lifetime community college idea, it sucks. College is 25% coursework, 25% macaroni and cheese/crappy part time jobs, 25% friends/fraternities/alcohol ad 25% the girls your mother warned you about. They have the rest of their lives to be practical and miserable. You think too much of the boy genius, and you should, and his mother doesn’t need to witness the testosterone era, let that happen somewhere else. He’s still a man and he needs to be around a few thousand 18-21 year old girls. There is no price tag for that.
In the end, it really doesn’t matter what that piece of paper says, or if you got your money’s worth. All that matters is that when you are sitting in the old folks home and someone asks you that if you could go back and relive one year of your life, what year would it be? I know my answer already, college, Junior year, hands down, every other year, no matter what happens from here on out is a bitter disappointment. Of course I beat the system, because I already did that year twice. And you thought the 5 year plan was because of impacted majors.
My kids think I’m slow, but I already factored in the 5th year from the time they were born. I may have only gone to SDSU, but momma didn’t raise no dummy.
I’m going to have to break out my DVD of OLD SCHOOL with Will Ferrell. It is to men what romantic comedies are to women, we know it’s not real but it makes the pain go away for two hours.
