College Costs: Part 6. Should Parents Let Kids Sink Or Swim On Their Own? JAN 26, 2018
I’ve come to suspect that the college admissions process is a huge business racket aimed at vulnerable parents who want nothing more than just to give their kids a leg up in the competition of life. The racket starts when your child is born. Advisers and financial planners instruct parents to start saving for college using tax advantaged college savings plans such as the 529 plans. Parents are encouraged to contribute money to the plan as early as decades before the child goes to college.
Next, parents are pressured into searching high and low for the right day care, preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, charter school, magnet school, art school, high schools, public schools, private schools, alternative schools, parochial schools, all to angle their child’s position so they can be admitted to the best possible college.
Then, we are told that kids need to have extracurricular activities to make their resume look good to the colleges so they are not just academic nerds. So we cajole, entice, and force our kids to use their free time to do things against their natural instinct to just play and relax. We sign them up for art classes, music classes, robotics classes, karate, and sports and pay hourly fees to the provider of those classes to make our kids well rounded. We drive or fly them all over the state and country for high stress competitions, games, performances, recitals, conferences in the name of having these activities on their college applications. We are imformed that a second language is essential to get into good colleges. So we pay for tutors, language immersion programs, foreign travels in the hopes that our kids can speak a second or third language. Wait, what about demonstrating that your child possesses kindness and awareness of those less fortunate? So we sign them up to volunteer at food banks, serve meals to the homeless during Thanksgiving, enroll them in service programs to build homes for the needy domestically or internationally.
Then we are told that your child’s high school grades and standardized test scores are the most important indicators that they will excel in college. So it’s more tutoring and practice sessions for the PSAT, SAT, ACT, AP. When my daughter’s high school recommended this test prep outfit with some tutor charging $900 per hour (no joke, I swear) for test preparation. And who are these tutors? When you look at the glossy brochures of the operations, you find that these tutors all graduated from top universities, yet here they are, tutoring privileged students to go to the same universities they attended while they are writing their first script hoping to get into Hollywood! I can’t help but feel that this is a scheme where kids are pressured all their lives to get into the top colleges. Once they get there, none of the tests, music and dance lessons matter anymore. They are in. They need not prove themselves again in these areas. And what happens after they graduate from elite colleges? They become part of the pipeline to get more kids to do nothing more than feed the pipeline. Is this what gainful employment and contribution to society mean?
By the time you have spent maybe $100,000 or more feeding this pipeline for your kids since they were born, you are then told that you have finally reached the main event: The privilege of paying $70,000 a year for college tuition. After doing all the above for eighteen years or more to raise a top specimen of a student that top colleges should be vying for, you realize that the top colleges look at the sweat and money you’ve put into your child’s education and yes, they want your child in their program. They see your family as a top contender for them to charge full tuition so they can fund their top notch facilities and provide scholarships to other well deserving kids.
You also realized that you are middle aged and tapped out. Forcing you to borrow money against your retirement, savings, and your house is not just imprudent, it is downright extortion that will send you straight to the poor house. You tell your kids, to their disappointment, that they cannot attend the college they have worked all their lives for because they cannot get any decent amount of scholarship.
I think the way to get out of this rat race and still get a good education for your child is to look for alternatives that don't seem like programs trying to scam you of your life savings. After hearing people make fun of community colleges as school for losers, I've come to see community colleges and public universities as a good alternative to the higher education rat race.
In California, there are two year community colleges that are inexpensive and accessible to many people. They don't have the cache of widely touted universities, but they provide basic required courses that are transferable and accepted in four year colleges and universities. Most of the classes are small and a student receives good instruction. My daughter had a difficult time getting into a Maya 3D design course at USC because she was not in the animation program. However, she decided to take the same class at Santa Monica College, and had no problem getting in. When she decided to apply for a game design internship at Play Station, it was the fact that she had the Maya class under her belt that got her the internship because much of the sound implementation for the game was done in Maya. From there, Play Station offered her a full time job.
There are kids who go to community colleges because they don't know exactly what they want to pursue in college, and the inexpensive classes give them time to explore. Further, classes offered at the community colleges also fulfills the core requirements at four year colleges, so it is a prudent choice for students to complete those core classes inexpensively and then apply to transfer to four year colleges to complete their Bachelor's degree.
The community colleges do not provide e the camaraderie of a fancy dorm and frat life, but it is also not conducive to the drinking and drugging culture that many college students fall prey to. It is a no-frills alternative to getting a college education, and I am more and more beginning to think that community colleges are are great first step into higher education and allow for a guilt free and inexpensive alternative for a student to explore classes before transferring to a four year college.
If I had to go to college again, I will start at community college. In fact, I just might give it a try and go explore some topics I've been wanting to learn all these years.
Next, parents are pressured into searching high and low for the right day care, preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, charter school, magnet school, art school, high schools, public schools, private schools, alternative schools, parochial schools, all to angle their child’s position so they can be admitted to the best possible college.
Then, we are told that kids need to have extracurricular activities to make their resume look good to the colleges so they are not just academic nerds. So we cajole, entice, and force our kids to use their free time to do things against their natural instinct to just play and relax. We sign them up for art classes, music classes, robotics classes, karate, and sports and pay hourly fees to the provider of those classes to make our kids well rounded. We drive or fly them all over the state and country for high stress competitions, games, performances, recitals, conferences in the name of having these activities on their college applications. We are imformed that a second language is essential to get into good colleges. So we pay for tutors, language immersion programs, foreign travels in the hopes that our kids can speak a second or third language. Wait, what about demonstrating that your child possesses kindness and awareness of those less fortunate? So we sign them up to volunteer at food banks, serve meals to the homeless during Thanksgiving, enroll them in service programs to build homes for the needy domestically or internationally.
Then we are told that your child’s high school grades and standardized test scores are the most important indicators that they will excel in college. So it’s more tutoring and practice sessions for the PSAT, SAT, ACT, AP. When my daughter’s high school recommended this test prep outfit with some tutor charging $900 per hour (no joke, I swear) for test preparation. And who are these tutors? When you look at the glossy brochures of the operations, you find that these tutors all graduated from top universities, yet here they are, tutoring privileged students to go to the same universities they attended while they are writing their first script hoping to get into Hollywood! I can’t help but feel that this is a scheme where kids are pressured all their lives to get into the top colleges. Once they get there, none of the tests, music and dance lessons matter anymore. They are in. They need not prove themselves again in these areas. And what happens after they graduate from elite colleges? They become part of the pipeline to get more kids to do nothing more than feed the pipeline. Is this what gainful employment and contribution to society mean?
By the time you have spent maybe $100,000 or more feeding this pipeline for your kids since they were born, you are then told that you have finally reached the main event: The privilege of paying $70,000 a year for college tuition. After doing all the above for eighteen years or more to raise a top specimen of a student that top colleges should be vying for, you realize that the top colleges look at the sweat and money you’ve put into your child’s education and yes, they want your child in their program. They see your family as a top contender for them to charge full tuition so they can fund their top notch facilities and provide scholarships to other well deserving kids.
You also realized that you are middle aged and tapped out. Forcing you to borrow money against your retirement, savings, and your house is not just imprudent, it is downright extortion that will send you straight to the poor house. You tell your kids, to their disappointment, that they cannot attend the college they have worked all their lives for because they cannot get any decent amount of scholarship.
I think the way to get out of this rat race and still get a good education for your child is to look for alternatives that don't seem like programs trying to scam you of your life savings. After hearing people make fun of community colleges as school for losers, I've come to see community colleges and public universities as a good alternative to the higher education rat race.
In California, there are two year community colleges that are inexpensive and accessible to many people. They don't have the cache of widely touted universities, but they provide basic required courses that are transferable and accepted in four year colleges and universities. Most of the classes are small and a student receives good instruction. My daughter had a difficult time getting into a Maya 3D design course at USC because she was not in the animation program. However, she decided to take the same class at Santa Monica College, and had no problem getting in. When she decided to apply for a game design internship at Play Station, it was the fact that she had the Maya class under her belt that got her the internship because much of the sound implementation for the game was done in Maya. From there, Play Station offered her a full time job.
There are kids who go to community colleges because they don't know exactly what they want to pursue in college, and the inexpensive classes give them time to explore. Further, classes offered at the community colleges also fulfills the core requirements at four year colleges, so it is a prudent choice for students to complete those core classes inexpensively and then apply to transfer to four year colleges to complete their Bachelor's degree.
The community colleges do not provide e the camaraderie of a fancy dorm and frat life, but it is also not conducive to the drinking and drugging culture that many college students fall prey to. It is a no-frills alternative to getting a college education, and I am more and more beginning to think that community colleges are are great first step into higher education and allow for a guilt free and inexpensive alternative for a student to explore classes before transferring to a four year college.
If I had to go to college again, I will start at community college. In fact, I just might give it a try and go explore some topics I've been wanting to learn all these years.
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