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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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I'm torn on the student debt thing, here's a story I have saved:
People get tricked into loans they can't afford. "No, no, see, it's cool, once you graduate, you'll be rolling in it!" Queue 20 years of service industry jobs paying barely subsistance wages (happened to my wife).
Here's the experience with our kid, he graduated debt free 4 years ago.
When he was in high school, we got all these emails and memos about "FAFSA, FAFSA, FAFSA" and we went to the school and did all the seminars and all the forms and everything.
Kid got his first choice school - UC Davis - "Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."
Yeah no.
Kid got into his second choice school, Lewis and Clark, we thought "Great! In state school! This should be better..."
"Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."
🤔 That's the same oddly specific number the out of state school dropped... if we could afford that, he'd be going to UC Davis.
Want to guess what his 3rd choice school came back with (University of Oregon Honors College)?
"Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."
So three schools, 1 out of state, 2 in state, all working from FAFSA all came back with the same oddly specific number. What are the chances of that? OTHER parents would have been sorely tempted to go "Well, I guess that's just what school costs..."
WE bailed on the FAFSA system, enrolled him as a normal student at the University of Oregon. Tuition was about $10,000 a year, he had a scholarship that paid $5,000 a year, I ran the other $5K through my Amazon card for points, paid his rent, and gave him a $300 credit limit card for food and expenses.
4 years later he graduated with a CS degree, no debt and went to work at Intel making 6 figures.
Edited to add: the reason it's worth discussing is because people shouldn't think that applying for student loans will increase the cost of attendance. It won't. The costs of public universities are fixed, publicly listed, and don't change based on your need for financial aid. If you need student loans to pay tuition, it is ok. Just try to avoid financing housing and food costs of at all possible.
Something about the story here is off. I work in higher Ed, have multiple degrees I paid for partly with grants, scholarships, and student loans.
The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The way it works is you report your financial assets and your parents income (unless you are considered an independent student, over 25, etc), and the FAFSA calculates an expected family contribution towards your education and determines eligibility for Pell grants, subsidized student loans, and unsubsidized student loans.
The school you are admitted to looks at the total costs of attending school, and then calculates the amount of student loans you need after applying grants and scholarships.
In the story above, the only way to get the same number for student loans (or parent loans) poping out is if the cost of attendance is identical. So something about the story smells from the start. Then it ends with them applying as a "regular" student and just paying tuition. But there is no tuition difference, or enrollment difference. FAFSA is just financial aid and doesn't impact what the costs are at all or what kind of student you are enrolled as.
So if tuition at Oregon was $10k, applying for a FAFSA wouldn't change that. All it would do is give you access to grants and student loans.
Being generous, maybe they were confused by the attendance costs including things like dorms and meal plans. But they could have opted out of those costs, just like they did at Oregon.
Long way of saying that the story just doesn't match reality so I would take it with a grain of salt. Higher Ed has many faults, but this story is more one person's confused anecdote rather than an exemplar of what is wrong with the system.
You're right--this doesn't make sense at all.
When I was applying to colleges (public universities) the tuition was the tuition. Schools didn't care whether the money came from scholarships, federal subsidized student loans, unsubsidized student loans, grants, parental loans, or cash.
I don't even know how what the OP is proposing would work. Tuition is public and you would already know what type of loans you would be eligible for. Utilizing FAFSA wouldn't suddenly make a public university 46k/yr more expensive.
Well, it is our story and I stick by with what I wrote, and, yeah, it was including the dorm and all of that.
I just found it weirdly suspicious that all three schools settled on the same number, almost like it wasn't the cost of education, but rather how much they thought they could milk us for.
But using student aid doesn't change that cost. Now, UC Davis and Lewis and Clark State college are both on the expensive side, but they publicly list the cost of attendance. All the FAFSA and their financial aid system does is take that cost, and match it with available aid.
It really sounds like you were offered similar aid packages at multiple universities that included tuition, fees, housing, and meal plans, were sticker shocked, and went to a fourth university and just paid tuition and found cheaper living arrangements. Which is a great way to do it, but not a fair apples to apples comparison.
The reason the distinction is important is because you could have opted to pay just the tuition like you did, but using grants (which aren't paid back) and student loans. Some people can't afford to pay for school out of pocket and they shouldn't come away from this thread thinking that applying for student loans increases their costs, which they don't.
That doesn't make any sense. The only thing that using the FAFSA does is get you Pell grants and Stafford loans. I don't think that amount of aid changes based on the cost of tuition.
FAFSA does more than that, it feeds your financials to the schools you apply to through it.
This is presented as "convenience", you submit your info once and apply to a bunch of schools.
Isn't that the Common App, not FAFSA?
FAFSA might make your info available to colleges when you apply, but it's not related to applying in and of itself.
Couldn't say at this point, too much water under that particular bridge at this point. I do recall each school specifically referencing the FAFSA application.
Tuition at Oregon was $10,000?
Like 9 years ago when he went, yeah. Probably higher now. He graduated in 2018. First job? Straight to Intel, then flipped to Oracle, now he's some director of generative AI and makes 3x the money I do and I do OK!
That’s great. Wish everyone had that opportunity. Tell him to volunteer on Lemmy. Lol
Just looked it up. Looks like it’s doubled.
Somehow that doesn't surprise me!
Edit Oh, OK, it's not THAT much more... remember it was $10K but he had a $5K/yr. scholarship making it $5K for me.
Now in state is $12,512 which is only about $2,500 more a year than it was 9 years ago. Not awful.
If he was going today that would be about $7,512 a year or $2,504 a term (every 3 months). I was paying $1,666 every 3 months, then rent and food and such.
This is why I'm against student loan forgiveness. When a thing costs $10, and the government offers to pay $8, the cost of the thing tends to rise to $18.
We need overall student loan reform. Then, maybe forgiveness as a secondary thing to compensate those who won't benefit from the reform (ie people who borrowed before the reform). But overall reform of the system should be the primary goal, not a one-time payout to those lucky enough to take out their loans before x date.
OTOH I can see parents not questioning the numbers from FAFSA (which were INSANE) and going "Well, I guess that's just what college costs now..."
There needs to be relief for people trapped in predatory loans, worthless degrees and useless for profit schools.
My wife got a good degree... in print journalism, just before that industry folded in like a wet newspaper. She's STILL carrying $40K in debt that she just can't get rid of, worked in her chosen field for 90 days 20+ years ago, and hasn't been able to use her degree since. :(
She got trapped in a cycle of low paying service jobs and here you go...
Eyyy
That all sounds totally reasonable, I'm just worried about future generations. If loan payoffs now cause inflated tuition for them, that's not fair and they will rightfully curse us like we curse boomers.