And more on education from the NYtimes today:


How do Parents Pay for College?

Lisa Belkin, in her NYT blog, Motherlode**, talks about the rising cost of college tuition. Her answer to the question her post's title poses: in her words, "they're not." But really, she goes on to say, they pay for most of it. She advises parents to save one third, to pay for one third while their kids are in school, and have the kids borrow the other third.

If parents have the money to provide for college expenses, it is an admirable, and wonderful thing for them to give their children the gift of education. But there is something in me that feels that it is just that--a gift, a luxury. I do not believe that parents who are struggling to make ends meet for themselves should also be burdened with the expenses of their grown up children.

For FAFSA purposes, students cannot be emancipated from their parents until the age of 25 without due cause. So, parents are expected to provide some of the cost of tuition for their children, even if they have taken six years to complete college.

Parents have a responsibility to provide for their children and, in an ideal world, to help secure the best possible future for them. But a college student is still an adult and should bear some of the financial burden that comes with attending college--especially if they do not come from a background that allows their parents to pay for the tuition easily (this means that not only will the parents' quality of life suffer, but after graduation this student will not be able to rely on their financial support as a safety net).




So, perhaps, an even better gift is the gift of experience--namely, work experience. Students should be expected to take on some of their college expenses, if only to learn how to balance work with life, to gain a sense of work ethic, to keep their drinking in check, to learn how to cook rice and beans, and how to live without a lot.

And that, in the end, is what I am grateful to my parents for. They couldn't help out too much with school and, sometimes, I wished I didn't have to have two jobs while scouring craigslist for random gigs so I could afford to pay rent and eat a peanut butter sandwich. But all of that work made me appreciate the value of money, and really made me learn how to stretch a dollar, how to prepare a good, cheap meal and how to live like a real person.

And now, as I watch my friends struggle with bills, job hunting (finding, and hating), I am thankful that the gift of education my parents gave to me was not the one that Belkin describes.







**What is with these NYT mother blogs--Belkin and Wife/Mother/Spy? I appreciate the complexities of the life of a working mother, but they are so incredibly boring, and indicative of a certain class and way of life...