Reply to Mother Expects me to pay for my younger sister's college education

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DH and I are both first gen immigrants.  There was an understanding that DH, the first born son would should the cost of education for his younger sister as the parents couldn’t afford it.  DH went to college on scholarships and work/study programs.  So when we started getting serious in mid 20s, he had asked how I felt about his financial responsibilities.  I didn’t hesitate to support him on that as there was no way his sister would be able to go to med school without support.  So we did what we could on our combined starter income.

30 years later, SIL is now a specialist making good income.  We have never asked her to repay us.  She is grateful for everything we did and has supported my children on their education (even though we have enough to cover the costs ourselves).

OP’s family dynamics might be different. I guess I see this as the typical immigrant way of trying to break out of the bottom rung. [/quote]

I think there's a big difference in helping to get a medical degree versus a random undergraduate degree. It seems your SIL had already acquired the undergraduate degree and she had to be smart and determined to do medicine, much smarter than the average. The fact that the OPs sister hasn't managed to get an undergraduate in her home country and instead was sitting at home for 3 years shows that she's none of that. Most international students end up in the US on graduate scholarships, especially from third world countries, having already acquired undergraduate at home. Now it's true that at "home" only the smartest get to state universities (say top 20%), which is free, and the rest have to find pay-to-play private schools or jobs.[/quote]

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