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I understanding wanted to give your kid a great start in life, but since when did it become expected? I feel like my parents owe me $50K in the loans that I paid for my engineering degree.
It is part of upward mobility.
In general well off families have always paid for their children's education. My great grandparents were college educated, they paid for their kids college educations, and it has continued since.
I think the issue comes about because there is a large segment of the population who are the first in their families to go to college, and many did it through their own efforts because there was no expectation of familial aid. But for the upper and upper middle classes who have been college educated for a few generation, it has become and expectation. The newest generation of college educated feel the brunt of that with their own loans, and the expectation to pay for their own kids educations. OTOH, it is a sign that you may have moved up a step or two on the SES ladder.
I honestly don't think it's as high as the media is trying to tell me. I go to a large state university (UGA). I personally only know of 1 person who is taking out a loan. 99% of people I know have their parents pay for college tuition/books/housing/food/etc. Most even pay the extra 1k or 2k a semester for sorority/fraternity dues. Matter of fact, most of the people I know drive luxury cars (volvos, infiniti's, bmw's, I even know 2 people whose parents gave them a porshe for their graduation present).
I simply look at them and think to myself, there's no way the majority of kids are taking out loans. None of us are extraordinarily rich, we all have to have some sort of job in order to support ourselves.
You have friends with money. Almost everyone I knew in college paid for all of their bills through loans or the majority. They also did not drive luxury cars. Loans are a way of life for more people than you think.
Go stand outside of the finical aid office the week before classes start and then report back.
Lines really aren't what they used to be at most schools. The percent of students receiving aid is up, but at most schools with more services being electronic (even refund deposits) students only show up when they have problems. What used to be three days of lines with people waiting for an hour is now more typically a pod of people showing up between classes.
The class issue is more complex and harder to say definitively. There are still certainly a lot of upper-upper-middle class families that are spending big on buying education (or even just prestige) for their child, and working class families are in many ways being squeezed. But there also seems to be a trend of families just above the median (60-1000k income) who really aren't saving for college at all. In some cases that's b/c they live in high cost locales where 80k barely pays the rent.
But in a lot of cases they just seem to be spending money on other things (vacation, a boat, nice cars). There have probably always been those families and we just never noticed because the kid was doing what s/he had to do to get themselves through. Now it's not possible and the lack of parental support (despite having means) is a big hole to file.
Again, what feedback did you receive from your student teaching? From everything you share, it sounds very much like any training you received seriously underprepared you.
Again, what feedback did you receive from your student teaching? From everything you share, it sounds very much like any training you received seriously underprepared you.
what student teaching? I plan to be a programmer when I grow up. How is social science really going to help me? If you are talking about my econ dual major. A part of Econ is studying trends. I'm told the trend is students taking out loans. I don't see it. I'll admit I go to a fairly cheap college (I think the total for my 4 years will be in the 50k range), but it can't be that much of an outlier.
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