This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Parent Guide to College Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 26, 2006
Cost of college hits $30k !!
Talk about a startling intro! I saw a report on a local TV station that said the average cost of a private college education has hit $30,000 a year. The reporter went on to project the cost of a year of college (in 15 years) if costs continued to increase at a 6% inflation rate. (You don’t want to know). He finished the report by saying families should start saving right away. While that is good advice, there is a good way to save and a bad way to save. And while you’re saving, why not take some other pro-active steps to prepare your child for college?
Then I open the Wall Street Journal to an article entitled: “As tuition soars, federal aid to college students fall” (WSJ, 10/25/06, Marketplace Section). The gist of the article was that changes made in the federal calculation of families need made it look as though the need was not a great, so families that qualified for federal grants in the past no longer qualify, or qualify for a smaller amount. A Pennsylvania State Univ. professor observed, “They are getting killed on the aid side, and they are getting killed on the tuition side.”
With everything seemingly going against todays college students and their families, it no wonder that a college planner is becoming more of an option. My service takes a pro-active approach to preparing for college, with the desired result of less emotional strain on the family and a better financial aid package. Like so many things today, it’s an investment in your student that (hopefully) pays dividends in the long run. If you’re investing $30k or more in your child’s education, why not do it right?
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