More Thoughts on Funding A Child’s College Education in Full

I recently explained why I will not pay for my son’s education in full. I received some great comments, and I felt I had enough to say to warrant another post on the topic.

I by no means am saying that every child who gets a free-ride to college will screw it up like I did. I have known some students who excelled and didn’t have to pay a dime for their education. And just so everyone knows, I had great parents. After all, I did well in high school. They did something right.

I’ve reflected back on my life often, and tried to decide what made me lose it when I went to college. I feel a big part of it was that I didn’t want it enough and I didn’t have to work for it.

I didn’t mention it in the other post, but I had NO CLUE what I wanted to do with my life when I was 18. I applied to three different colleges and for each one a different major (criminal justice, music and mechanical engineering – if that isn’t a smorgasboard of majors – tell me what is! – LOL). The decided factor was whatever college gave me the best financial package and that’s where I would go and what degree I would pursue. I hope my son has more drive than I did 11 years ago.

There also was a great comment from someone who didn’t have any help at all, but had the desire to go to college. It adds another view to the story worth reading about.

In the end, as parents we just have to do what we feel is right for our child. And I think one of the most important things to do is to support them in what they do. When you at least have a cheering section behind you – that can make a big difference as I sort of mentioned with my answer on whether I have support from my family.

Posted by Tricia on May 12, 2006 at 8:02 AM in Kids & Money | 2 Comments »
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Carol responded:
Posted: May 14th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
I’ve been enjoying your blog, and liked this one a lot, especially this:

I didn’t mention it in the other post, but I had NO CLUE what I wanted to do with my life when I was 18. I applied to three different colleges and for each one a different major (criminal justice, music and mechanical engineering – if that isn’t a smorgasboard of majors – tell me what is! – LOL).

I have some concern for “lost” teenagers like yourself and so I taught a class on Career Exploration to a group of homeschooled kids last year. It was pretty popular; 20 kids signed up which is HUGE for a homeschool class. Crosswalk.com picked up an article I wrote about the class again telling me that parents want to help direct their kids. There are a lot more personality surveys and resources to help kids narrow their search these days. But right now my 15yo daughter sounds like you were. Her choices are paino, pharmacy, accounting or preschool teacher. At least she has three years to decide and we’re being pretty deliberate about giving her experiences to try out different occupations.

Keep up the posts. They’re so interesting!
Tricia responded:
Posted: May 14th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Wow – that’s a great program that you are doing! I wish they had something like that at my high school 11 years ago. Rather, what we had were a multitude of tests (academic) and almost all of them said I was fitted for an engineering career.

I think I started believing that for a while, even though I knew deep down it wasn’t the career for me. But everyone was pushing me towards it. It would have been great if there was more attention given to interests versus aptitiude. Oddly enough, I ended up going to the college with the engineering degree. But I soon switched to a less technical field a few quarters later.

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