My parents paid for about 1/3 of my private university undergraduate education. It looks like we'll be contributing some old towels and cardboard boxes to our kids college education.
Good luck kids! And remember; you can marry more money in 20 minutes than you can make in a lifetime.

I went for free because my mom worked for the college. DH had no support at all. We have 2 daughters and plan on paying. They will be expected to do their part academically to work towards merit aid. We both are against them taking on massive loans. DH has a ton of student loan debt, it's a damn mortgage payment. We don't want that for our girls.

My parents paid for my undergrad and I will pay for my child's (and I'll pay for any professional and grad schooling as well, which my parents couldn't). I had a part time job the whole way through undergrad for personal expenses/spending money and expect my daughter to do the same.

My parents paid fully for my twin sister and me to go to a private college, which at the time was $25k a year per student. They also lent us money interest-free for grad school; we paid them back very shortly after graduation.

DH's parents paid nothing, though they'd paid fully for one of his older brothers. In order to pay, DH worked full time at Walmart and as a result, didn't make any friends at college. He is still saddled with a lot of student loans because he went to a private school freshmen year, transferred to a public one his 2nd year but then almost flunked out and then transferred back to the old private school for the remainder. He also went to GW for grad school whereas my grad school was public.

We intend to pay as much as we can for our kids, but as someone said, not at the expense of our retirement. We are faced with the coming prospect of having to support MIL and it's becoming clearer what a financial burden that is.

Study abroad

My parents did not pay for college at all and did not believe in co-signing for student loans. Crazy as it sounds I was fortunate my dad could not find a job in his field at the time so I qualified for a lot of need based aid. A relative helped out the first year a little. I qualified for a pell grant the next year. My youngest sister got into a state college for another state but qualified for no aid financial aid because my dad was making decent money then but not enough to write a check for $18,000. DH's parents paid for his undergrad with a little help from his grandparents. The budget was 4 years undergrad at his state school, anything else was on the kids to figure out and they didn't pay for grad school. DH worked for spending money and had no loans. He might have chosen a different career if he had extensive loans.

We plan to pay for 4 years of tuition at our state university. We would also like to cover room and board there too but I have to see if we can swing it. If our children want to go anywhere else they will have to win a merit scholarship. We likely make too much for big financial aid, short of having two in college at the same, but not enough to write a check for what at least $80,000 by year 2020. It is crazy how expensive college have gotten. My kids will have a limited choice of colleges within the budget and will have to be very savvy and apply to places where they can get merit aid or considered a good value if they want more than the Maryland state colleges.

I think if you refuse to pay for any college but make too much for generous financial aid, your kids will be very limited. There is a cap on how much a freshman can take in federal loans so if the school costs $30000, your child may only be able to take out $5000 in stafford loans, maybe $2000 in work study and $23,000 is expected to be the parent contribution, parent loan, or you are going with a higher interest loan with parent co-signing to make up some of that contribution.