This post might ruffle some feathers…so don’t say I didn’t warn you!
If you’ve ever been to a personal finance blog and read about ways to reduce the cost of college, one of the usual tips is to go to a community college for a year or two and then transfer to a 4 year university to finish the degree. I’m pretty sure I even recommended it in a post from a few months ago.
While this advice is technically true, I’m not sure how good of an idea it really is.
Doesn’t force independence – Community college means driving to school everyday from home. Then driving back. To parents. To routine. To Mom doing your laundry. Not exactly a new independent lifestyle.
Hard to stay motivated -This might just be me, but I think I would find it hard to be motivated for school when I’m only 20 minutes away. It just feels too much like home and an extension of high school. Of course, the “new” feeling at a school that’s further away will wear off, but the location is still going to be strongly associated with “school”.
Not a lot of college life – No room mate craziness. Little if any athletic presence. Less diversity.
Community college of course is way cheaper than any 4 year university. That’s obviously a big plus. If the option is between going to college and not going (and you actually want to go!) then community college should be where you’re headed.
This topic has made me realize how lucky I am. Growing up, it was just a given that I was going to college after high school. No other option was ever discussed. So I never thought of a 4 year school as a luxury. But indeed it is! I’m spending about 8K this year just to live on campus. I could drive everyday to school (45 minutes away) and save a ton of money, assuming gas doesn’t go up to $10 a gallon. But I’ve made the choice to spend thousands of dollars on the “college experience”. Whether or not that’s BS remains to be seen.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
You know, I agree. There is nothing wrong with community colleges, but I feel like there are cheap/decent state universities in every state that offer some semblance of a college experience while still being cheap. Heck, people with decent grades can go to a lot of the state schools in my state for free. And you can still transfer up and out of those if need be.
Oh and, I’ve been looking at this a bit and how many of those blogs mention transfer scholarships? (Merit) aid for incoming freshman is a lot better than it is for transfer students. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t exist, but it is a bit harder to find. There are scholarships for students transferring from community colleges, but not all schools have them. But say your family makes too much money to qualify for decent aid…enough aid to really give you a chance at being able to pay for college. And your “dream school” doesn’t give aid to transfer students…even from CCers, you are SOL.
If your end goal is “dream school”, you might save a lot of money for the year or two that you are going to a CC instead of a 4 year school, but you might lose out on potential merit aid/scholarships that can only be won as a freshman. Don’t even talk about credits not transferring or unfulfilled requirements…
So I say, skip Community College. Pick a different school.
Every decision in life is a cost-benefit analysis. It sounds like you’re spending your parents’ money to live on campus and attend a 4-year university right off the bat. So obviously, the “experience” is worth the $0 you’re putting into it.
Even for your parents, if they have good jobs and little-to-no debt, spending the extra money to provide you with the college experience might be perfectly good value. If they’re anything like my parents, it’s enough money to notice, but not enough to reduce their standard of living.
But lets say you came from a different background, where your parents aren’t contributing cash, but are willing to feed and house you for a few more years. The price gap is what? $15-$20k per year. You’ve got next to no income, so most of that is debt financed.
So, when you finish you’re saddled with monthly payments of $500+ for the first 10 years of your career. And unless you graduated from a name-brand school (Harvard, MIT, UCLA) with good grades and are a good schmoozer, those first 10 years aren’t going to pay that well…that could easily be 25% or more of your after-tax pay when you first start.
So, yes, going to the school you want instead of the school that’s affordable is a perfectly reasonable decision when it’s being paid for someone who can afford it. But for students who pay their own way, the extra costs are probably not worth it, and will hobble their financial future.
Oh, and living in a dorm isn’t independence. You’ll probably bring your laundry home whenever you can, and it doesn’t deal in the life skills that define independence – paying rent, cooking dinner, cleaning house…
Independence is a curve. I still call my parents when something new comes up and I need advice. I had my first major appliance failure this past week, so naturally I called my dad for buying tips and to help with the plumbing (I’ve never had to do plumbing before). You’re never really free of your parents.
My parents aren’t paying for tuition or room and board. Books maybe.
Oh. Well, I guess that’s my mistake. I’m wondering, though, how you are paying for it, then? I mean, you’ve got a decent job, but it’s not really enough to cover tuition and housing. Which begs the question: if you are debt-financing these extra costs, will you still think it was worth it when you are paying them back?
If you just have awesome scholarships, then ignore what I said. Because it’s not really costing you extra money, which is really the whole point of the community college route.
I’m paying for college with federal loans. No private ones, so that’s a good thing. The problem is that there’s no way to know if it was “worth it” until after I do it. My line of thinking was that I can never redo freshman year. I can never do the whole dorm thing if I don’t do it the 1st year. Well…I guess I could as a sophomore but it’s not the same. It may all be overrated and I’ll be saddled with thousands more in debt after graduation, but if I don’t, I’ll always wonder what it would have been like.