In England and Australia, it is more common than in the United States for a student to take a year after high school to travel or experience the world before entering college. According to SmartMoney, it may not be such a bad idea.
The argument is that students who take a break from institutionalized education will come back to college — if they come back — with a fresh outlook on what they want to do with their life, their passions, and their attitude for learning.
This concept comes at a great expense. Delaying college for one year can mean increased tuition costs of 8% or more. In addition to higher education costs, the cost of the gap year can be large, depending on the activities the student chooses.
Delaying college for a year will also likely mean delaying the start of a career. The missed earnings in what would have been the first year of income, thanks to compounded interest, can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars forgone by the time retirement rolls around.
All things considered, I might have liked taking a gap year. For all I know, during that year, I might have changed my mind about my career path, which at the time was music education with the goal of becoming a high school music teacher.
‘Gap Years’ Can Be Smart Move for High School Seniors [SmartMoney]
Photo credit: malias
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about options for going to college without going into debt, in response to an article about the near impossibility of doing so.
Commenter “t” shared his or her experience:
I also chose the state school route. I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a state (washington) with an outstanding public university (it wasn’t really luck, it was a conscious decision on my parents’ part), and I went to the best university in the state. With good grades and test scores, I got even that paid for – a state tuition waiver for my HS grades, and a series of scholarships and research jobs that came with stipends.
One thing I didn’t know and just lucked out on was that by applying for so many scholarships, I not only got things paid for, but I developed a great resume. When it came time to apply for graduate training, that made a huge difference – not only did I get in with full funding to every program I applied to including the three most competitive programs nationally, but I even got a 10k signing bonus to sweeten the deal.
Another streak of good luck attached to this strategy: at a large state school, you typically have first rate professors, and a mix of highly motivated students (so you have plenty of peers to challenge you) and less motivated / more distracted students (so your professors aren’t yet sick of students who all want extra attention, and are instead still happy to have you show up with further questions / ask to work in their lab).
I was really unsure when I made my decision to go to a public university when all the rest of my peers were going to private universities – but it’s made all the difference. I would do it the same way again in a heartbeat.
Get good grade in high school, apply for lots of scholarships, and live where the state college system is inexpensive and provides a good education.
According to the Motley Fool UK, the Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) has stated that unless parents are in the fortunate position to provide their children with “absolute financial support” during higher education, that students must accept debt as a fact of life. (Students Must Accept Debt, Motley Fool UK.) The rising cost of a college education contributes to this, of course, as does the necessity of a degree for the “best” career paths — those with the highest earning potential.
In general, individuals with a college education will earn more over their lifetime (though there are notable exceptions), justifying the extra expense up front. The best of both worlds is then to limit the expense where possible, and therefore the debt, and still earn that worthwhile degree.
Here are some options beyond loans for students whose parents are not in the position to provide “absolute financial support.” If these can be combined, the student will have less exposure to debt.
Get scholarships. It is possible for scholarships to pay for your entire college education, but not easy. Most scholarship programs require students to excel in a certain area, academic or extracurricular, and the chances of exceling at enough different areas is low. Some scholarships are based on your ethnicity, as well. If you’re a minory, you may be in luck. Start with the College Board’s Scholarship Search.
Find grants. Grants are the next best things to scholarships. In general, the funds are more limited, and are based mostly on need rather than academic prowress. Grants are also used to encourage students to undertake certain disciplines. For example, as teaching is often an unattractive profession — this comes and goes in phases — grants (and loan forgiveness) are occasionally offered to those studying education. Here’s a good overview of what may be available.
Attend a low-cost college. Attend a public university rather than a private university. Still, rather than a public university for four years, spend two at a community college and finish the degree at a public university. Take into account that the connections you make at college and the degree you receive, in some disciplines, may have an effect on the first job you receive out of college. That first job — if you continue your entire life on that same career path — can affect your earnings over your lifetime. (My first job was for a non-profit organization earning about $550 a week. I could have done that without a fancy bachelor’s degree from my private land-grant university.)
Take advantage of work-study programs. If you qualify, a work-study program is a way to earn income that can be used for paying college and living expenses while still earning the degree. This is my less favored option, as to make the most of the educational process, the stress of a job can be distracting from the true goal of the four years. Not all college jobs are created equal; A minimum-wage job at the university library, would not be too distracting at all, unlike a higher-paying job at the local strip club (not endorsed by the Federal Work-Study program).
Corporate sponsorship. My current company offers significant tuition reimbursement — enough to cover public university tuition in many cases — for those employees earning the bachelor’s degree. Other corporations provide the same benefits. There may be a requirement that the degree be in a field related to the company’s business or the division. For example, a financial services company may require a degree in business, accounting, finance. If you work in the company’s human resources department, you may need to earn a degree in human resources to qualify for reimbursement.
The company will pay the school in advance of each semester, so you do not have to deal with loans at all — though college aid advisors recommend getting a federal loan and using the reimbrusement to pay back the loan immediately. This ends up costing more thanks to origination fees. It also opens up the chance of not using the reimbursement to pay off the loan.
Other options. If I remember correctly, I could have gone to Princeton University for free, if I had been accepted. That benefit would be awarded to me because my mother worked there for the time I was going to college. I didn’t apply to Princeton as they surprisingly do not have a strong undergraduate music program and I probably didn’t have the GPA. (I later discovered, as an undergraduate playing in ensembles when home over the summer with Princeton graduate students, that I might have received a better education and had exposure to better peers in my chosen field than where I was.)
It’s going to take a combination of all of the above to completely avoid debt when it comes to paying for higher education. I believe it can be done, but in some cases, such as working and maintaining eligibility for scholarships, may put too much of a strain on the student.
I’d like to hear stories from anyone who has managed to graduate with a bachelor’s degree without incurring any debt. What choices did you make and were there any sacrifices? Please feel free to share.
Photo credit: jasonhe
If you are a student, the New York Times will now allow you to have access to their premium content (TimesSelect) for free. Technically, you don’t have to be a student. All that is required is an email address with the “edu” top level domain.
Some universities offer “edu” email addresses to their alumni as well, so if you’re lucky enough to have one of these addresses, you can still access TimesSelect for free. Visitors to Freakonomics have noted that many current students located outside the United States do not have “edu” email addresses. Unfortunately, they will miss out on this offer.
Upromise is a loyalty rebate program which rewards its members by investing a percentage of purchases into accounts for education expenses, namely 529 College Savings Plans. Just register your credit cards and your supermarket membership cards and the different rebates are credited to your account to be invested at a later date. These rebates are in addition to any you may receive from your credit card.
The primary intent with Upromise is to use the cash back savings and investment to pay for your children’s education. Some lenders also allow you to apply Upromise’s balance directly to your own student loan.
Personally, with no children, I prefer to receive my rebates in the form of cash back. Upromise doesn’t publicize this option much as they would prefer you invest directly in the accounts from brokerages who have negotiated a partnership with the company. Hidden deep within Upromise’s website are the instructions for requesting a check for the balance of your rebate to be sent to you within 12 weeks. Here are the instructions, out in the open, for everyone to see: [click to continue…]
A while ago, I started a series reviewing my experience with the University of Phoenix Online. I attended this school through its online master’s degree program and I earned my MBA several months ago. So far, I’ve discussed how I decided to go this route, their admission philosophy and policies, and what it’s like attending a course online.
The next part, a review of my curriculum is long past due. I’ve procrastinated this section as I originally intended to take a quick look at each course and write about the merits of each. This was a daunting task hindering me from continuing the series. I’ve decided to take a different, more general approach.
The bottom line is that there were only a few courses from which I feel I gained useful knowledge. The first course was a three-week, 1 credit course called “Managerial Communication.” The class allowed the students to get their feet wet with the format, which for some students was quite foreign and a major change. It forced us to rethink the techniques we’ve learned throughout our lives for effective learning. My prior experience with technology and online learning helped make it a quick transition for me, but others were not as successful. Here are the “highlights” of the rest of the curriculum.
- Human Relations and Organizational Behavior: the theory behind behavior I’ve observed in the workplace, and how to manage people and projects.
- Statistics: I’ll still need to use reference materials if my job every required statistical analysis, but the classes was good practice.
- Accounting: I’ve been “in accounting” for a while but never had an overview of its theories and practices, just learned on the job. The class added some technical knowledge, but not much practical ideas.
- Finance: These classes were helpful in terms of reading and analyzing financial statements and preparing budgets and forecasts.
- Project Management: I did pick up useful tools and techniques for running projects, something which I didn’t have extensive experience on the job.
- Information Management and e-Business: Nothing I didn’t already know from my own experiences, these classes added very little.
- Cases in Decision Making: This class did a good job of bringing together everything from the two years of classes and running decision-making scenarios.
My path at the University of Phoenix involved a curriculum of 46 credits for a general MBA. The University’s program description is a little different as it provides this information:
The MBA consists of 39 credit hours and includes three proficiency courses (MBA 501, MBA 502, MBA 503) which may be satisfied using an undergraduate business degree, undergraduate coursework or graduate coursework. Students may also waive an additional nine credits using graduate courses and may qualify for a 21-credit hour residency.
During my time enrolled, the University updated the curriculum several times. In the middle of my degree pursuit, I dropped to part time employment at my job to teach music full time in a high school for six months. (This time also coincided with a hiatus on Consumerism Commentary.) I paused my degree for a year, and when I returned, there were several changes to the curriculum and to my overall experience, but I’ll get to that in Part 5.
This is Part 4 of a series about my experiences with the University of Phoenix Online. Here is what has been published so far.
* Part 1: The Decision
* Part 2: Admissions
* Part 3: Course Logistics
* Part 4: Curriculum
* Part 5: The Team Experience
* Part 6: Administration
* Part 7: Finishing Up
If you’re an undergraduate student at Princeton University, you may be happy to hear that tuition for the 2007-08 year will hold steady at $33,000, or only $3,000 more than a seminar with the Maui Millionaires.
Don’t get too excited, tiger. While tuition isn’t increasing, the costs for room and board will be substantially higher. Total cost to attend Princeton on campus next year will be $43,980.
Princeton was able to keep tuition costs at bay thanks to donations and strong performance in their endowment, now totalling $13 billion. At a safe withdrawal rate of 4%, that’s $520,000,000 each year that the University could withdraw and use for scholarships or programs.
According to Wikipedia, Princeton University has the fewest students graduating with debt. That’s an interesting statistic, but it’s provided without a source.
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