Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You do realize that in most places Harvard is considered liberal arts, right?

That said, I agree with OP on the whole. I'll be damned if I'm going to be saddled with people looking for handouts.

So don't send your child to a school and pay full freight. You won't be saddled with "handouts" then. We are happy to pay full freight and know that some of the dollars go to paying other kids' tuition. Or are you suggesting that taking out a student loan is looking for a handout? This country is in real trouble when we start to denigrate the value of education and we look at everything through a lens that focuses only on our own immediate self-interest. What kind of country is that? Third world.

Student loans aren't a hand out. They're a business. They turn a profit. It may be the only government program that turns a profit.

I think this conversation's mixing apples, oranges and prickly pears. One issue is the benefit or not of a liberal arts degree, i.e. amajor like English or history or philosophy vs. business, accounting, a STEM major, etc. I maintain students do well to major in what they'll get the best grades in. Engineers are really different personalities than analysts.

The other is the Big Public U vs. Small Liberal Arts College dichotomy. Sure, that's relevant if you live in Idaho. But in this area, you can go to William and Mary, St Mary's College of MD, as well as medium sized publics like JMU. It's not all V Tech or College Park vs. Reed College.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My spouse: Ivy Leaguer. Her best college friends are: medical doctors, lawyers, Ph.D.'s, theologians, and overall brilliant people.

Me: state school. My best friends are journalists, truck drivers and cops.

It ain't the quality of education you're paying for. It's the quality of your professional network.

This may indicate more about you and your best friend then the colleges you attended.

Yeh brah cause keg parties was networking fuck going to school to learn

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/dartmouth-frat-year-probation-hazing-16209778

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/confessions-of-an-ivy-league-frat-boy-inside-dartmouths-hazing-abuses-20120328

Many ex-hazers and possible vomlet eaters provide connections for jobs in the financial biz.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, you do not get in state tuition at any public college or university. For participating public schools, you get 10K per year for tuition towards the out-of state cost. In some cases this is close to in-state tuition, but at a school like Michigan, you're still stuck with a 30K tuition bill.

$30k to Michigan a school with worldwide alumni, great academics and rich NCAA tradition (which increases alumni camaraderie) is worth more than $50k to Grinnell or other middling school.

I didn't go to Grinnell, but my Grinnell friends would fight you on this one. Not everyone wants to go to a school with 40,000 students.

Grinnell's no middling school - it's a top 20 LAC(I didn't go there BTW). SAT scores (middle 50%) for Grinnell are 1220-1470. SAT scores for #28 Michigan are 1200-1400 (a conversion of their reported 27-31 ACT scores for the middle 50%). And believe or not some people are not drawn to Division I sports and Greek life. The student to faculty ratio and Grinnell is 9:1. Average alumni giving rate at Michigan is 15% while at Grinnell it is 41%.

I'm not saying that Michigan isn't a great school. It clearly is. But there are also great LACs that have terrific academics, wonderful placement rates at top graduate schools, superlative and life-long career counseling and small student-to-teacher ratios that can result in fantastic internship opportunities/contacts.

It was a terrific investment for my sister, who has mild Asperger's syndrome and is painfully, painfully shy. She had exactly one friend in high school and got mediocre grades. At her small liberal arts college, she made a good group of friends who were very accepting of her, found a major she was really interested in, and found her niche. I don't think that would have happened at a larger state school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My spouse: Ivy Leaguer. Her best college friends are: medical doctors, lawyers, Ph.D.'s, theologians, and overall brilliant people.

Me: state school. My best friends are journalists, truck drivers and cops.

It ain't the quality of education you're paying for. It's the quality of your professional network.

This may indicate more about you and your best friend then the colleges you attended.

I disagree. PP was correct. You do pay for a professional network.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, you do not get in state tuition at any public college or university. For participating public schools, you get 10K per year for tuition towards the out-of state cost. In some cases this is close to in-state tuition, but at a school like Michigan, you're still stuck with a 30K tuition bill.

$30k to Michigan a school with worldwide alumni, great academics and rich NCAA tradition (which increases alumni camaraderie) is worth more than $50k to Grinnell or other middling school.

I didn't go to Grinnell, but my Grinnell friends would fight you on this one. Not everyone wants to go to a school with 40,000 students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to GW. At the time it was one of the most expensive colleges in the nation, and now I think it is the most expensive. I was able to attend on scholarship. I paid nothing for my education other than room, board, books and fees. A lot of private colleges charge some students $50K (which includes everything) in order to charge other students very little.

Ideally, my daughter will be able to go wherever she wants and wherever lets her in, but hopefully she won't have to go into a ton of debt to do it. We'll try for scholarships and ideally I can gift her money after graduation to help her pay down student loans.

I don't understand. If you have the means, why not just pay the tuition?

Tax reasons.

I can't think of any. It's actually easier to pay tuition for a kid than to pay off students loans for them (tuition isn't considered a gift if paid directly to the school). I suppose if your kid wasn't a dependent on your return and wanted to claim the Hope tax credit it might work out better, but that seems not all that likely (similarly, your kid might be eligible for some tax deductions for student loan interest, but that wouldn't justify taking out loans, except maybe for credit scores?)