
Whose Parents Pay for College? - ryan_j_naughton
https://priceonomics.com/race-gender-and-paying-for-college-who-bears-the/
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plandis
That's fascinating. I'm curious as to why women have less debt even without as
much financial assistance from parents. I'm thinking I could be because:

    
    
      * Women go to cheaper universities
      * Women get more scholarship money / financial aid from universities
      * They pay more of it off while still in university?
      * Universities charge them less in tuition (I doubt this is true)
      * The fields in which women go are less expensive (Do universities charge different amounts for different undergrad degrees?)
    

Outside of that was there sampling bias? Perhaps the women population was a
lot less than men sampled? Does anyone have anymore information into this?

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klipt
Less financial assistance from parents != less financial assistance overall.
My guess is that plenty of the women in the age range they look at (25-54)
have husbands or boyfriends who assist them financially.

Women are more likely than men to get married young (while still in college)
and to marry someone older than them (who might already have a job).

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RightMillennial
When my wife was in college and we were dating, I helped her out financially
because I worked instead. I'm sure it's fairly common.

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treyfitty
This brings up an interesting topic of conversation. My wife and I lived two
very different lives. Her parents paid for her $50k a year undergrad + $??K a
year grad school. She's 1 of 3, and it was the same situation for her siblings
as well. Me on the other hand (1 of 3 as well) had $0 paid for, along with my
siblings.

My parents believe the child is responsible for education because it's their
adult life they're building. My wife's parents are the opposite- they believe
it is an obligation as a parent to support college. Granted, my parents
couldn't afford to pay, but it's been ingrained in me that parents are not
obligated to pay for college.

Now, is there a social stigma, as a parent, NOT to pay for their child's
education? We're about to have a child, and we have this discussion quite
regularly.

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yougotborked
I think education should be free and provided for by the government. But since
that probably won't happen any time soon, I will at least live my own values
and pay for my kids college as my parents paid for mine.

Also if you care about your child's well being (both emotionally and
financially), it's much easier for the parent to start saving a small amount
when the child is born per year (compound interest) then for the child to have
a houses worth of debt to pay off.

Also my kids don't have to go to college if they don't want to. And if not, I
guess I get to take a 150k vacation.

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ssambros
> I think education should be free

It's never going to be since educators for some reason are not willing to work
for free.

> and provided for b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ by the taxpayer.

Why would taxpayer have to pay for the education for everyone? Judging by the
size of the current student debt it does not look like a worthwhile
investment.

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legolas2412
A society may decide that its worth educating its own citizens. Several
countries around the world do that.

Several countries even do that for internationals.

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jedmeyers
Of course elected officials may decide that it's worthwhile to spend larger
portion of the budget to educate everyone, but why would they? What are the
arguments other than "i think it should be" that may convince them and the
electorate that it is a good direction to proceed?

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dv_dt
My theory is that providing an education for free of charge to the students
has a significantly better payoff for the economy as a whole as well as the
individual students vs loading individual students with the burden.

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jedmeyers
Your argument is very similar to the "i think it should be" argument that I
mentioned before. Are there any studies or some other justification that might
substantiate that your theory is indeed true?

Does all tertiary education should be "free" for everyone? English history,
art, etc? How does the price setting works: government just pays whatever
educational institution asks for? Does it forces institution to accept the
amount of money being provided?

Also, what does "better payoff for the economy" mean? Does it mean that the
median wage rises, amount of taxes collected increases, productivity
increases, something else... ?

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dv_dt
First, if you're skeptical that the gov't should just pay educational costs
with a blank check, I would agree. Our current system of paying a grant and
allocating loans to students blindly is pretty stupid. It increases university
cost inflation as students shopping for an education don't have the experience
needed to make a good cost decision to serve as a signal to control university
spending. (and their parents have out of date information) too. It would serve
a better cost control as well as be administratively cheaper to pay fewer
public universities directly with strings attached for low or no cost
tuitions.

As to why one would want to do it, economic activity would be higher. Lets
compare two cases:

One a student goes to college, ends up with $40k worth of loans, starts
working a job which they start to pay back almost immediately. The loan starts
to reel back in the cost of the capital almost immediately, and it offsets the
net income of the student. They spend less than they would have, they save
less, and have less time to compound interest on smaller savings (creating a
higher social burden). In the early portion of life you have a lot of economic
activity. Moving into a first apartment, then first house generates all sorts
of ancillary economic activity. All of this is delayed by higher student debt,
and reflected in data.

On the other path, the same student goes to college, gets the same job at the
same gross income. Now though, they have more disposable income and savings.
More disposable income, means more spending, which means more economic
activity. The gov't, even if it goes into debt itself to fund the education,
wins in the short term with more activity and more tax receipts, and in the
long term - better savings translating to a lighter load on backend gov't
services. Students and parents benefit, the economy benefits, the govt doubly
benefits, society improves...

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cheald
This would be a lot more useful with information on distribution of
scholarships (and more generally, the distribution of all means of financing
among these groups).

For example, the data points showing that that men receive more help from
their parents _and_ graduate with higher levels of debt seems contradictory
absent additional factors not considered.

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Geeek
I was thinking the same. There is a missing variable that makes this article
incomplete.

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klipt
Spousal support? They look at people age 25-54, a lot of them have to be
married, and since men earn more and the majority of marriages are
heterosexual, you'd expect more women to be supported by their spouses through
college.

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occamrazor
They did not consider at least three very important factors: field of dergree,
type of institution, age.

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akhilcacharya
Either that 45% number for no help is high or I seriously need to check my
privilege.

I knew my situation was somewhat rare, but I didn't know it was 9% rare.

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ladytron
You are lucky.

I wish I could have just enjoyed college without worrying about food, gas, and
keeping a roof over my head.

Working to pay for all that as a science major was no easy task. I cut corners
and sometimes took too many credits to graduate in a timely manner.

It wasn't Animal House or Legally Blonde.

~~~
geebee
I met a guy in college who was trying to take vector calc, physics, and data
structures and algorithms, while supporting himself in San Diego working part
time at Nordstrom. He had to drop data structures. I didn't stay in touch, of
course I hope he did alright.

I find it depressing that a promising student, who has gained entry into a
college like UCSD with good grades in math and basic CS, is struggling to
afford to continue. We live in a state where multi multi billionaires lament
the shortage of highly educated engineers (who are essential to their
billions), but this guy has to drop out because he's having trouble balancing
paying the rent with a very rigorous curriculum.

~~~
dikdik
I managed to get about 70% of my entire undergrad (tuition, books, and living
expenses) covered by academic scholarships.

Even with working every summer, every Christmas break, and through 3 of the 4
years while at school, I still had to miss many classes to pick up extra
shifts at work (thankfully only a handful of courses are strict about
attendance, so my GPA only suffered by about ~0.3). And I still came out with
the "average student loan debt" of about 22k.

Unfortunately, despite how "smart" I am. I was too retarded to see what a
mistake the life sciences were and I'm still working on that debt.

College is a scam if you're at least decently intelligent. It's an 80k stamp.

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helthanatos
I have a loan from my parents... But that's just because I'm not allowed to
borrow more than $5k per year. My tuition is around $35k/year and I have some
scholarships but... Expensive. And since the government says my family can
contribute an absurd amount of money, I just have to pay them back...

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Mao_Zedang
How much does each degree rake in per semester, and how many staff are
required to run that semester, It would be very interesting to see the flow of
money into a university and where it is actually spent.

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nickthemagicman
Who is parents pay for the college's yo?

~~~
StudentStuff
My parents are paying for my college, but I'm 22 now and 2 quarters into a
second run at college. The first go around I went on the state of Washington's
dime (Running Start, only had to pay $200 in fees plus books), and had a
spotty experience with a GPA to match (3.9 in one class, 0.0 in another).

This go around I fully researched what I needed to take, and plotted my course
in the most economical way possible. Currently at North Seattle College we're
talking about a bit under $1700 a quarter in costs for 15 credit hours, which
will increase to $5,530 at UW Bothell 3 quarters from now.

I am wholly unenthusiastic for this significant price bump, but at the very
least my parents have decided to fund my second attempt, so hopefully, come
late 2019 I'll have an Applied Computing degree or better (depending how Calc
2 goes...). Gonna spend $41k, mainly paying UW so I can get my damn receipt.

If a degree weren't so important when it comes to getting a job, I'd likely go
without, but the earnings hit in the Seattle market is so severe that it makes
sense to invest in a degree. $60k to $80k w/o a degree, versus $120k with a
degree is pretty clear cut.

I assume at some point I'll end up financially supporting my parents, but that
is (hopefully) ~18 years away. Supposedly there have good pensions & have
saved a bit, but who really knows?

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dvanwag
My uncle paid for my college. My Uncle Sam that is, and it was called the G.I.
Bill.

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efficax
whose?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Who's parents didn't make sure they took some English classes...

~~~
Hydraulix989
And then became a professional writer...

