kodokan

I explained to my friend once what was involved in getting an L visa - the time, the paperwork, the year limits, the uncertainty of having it tied to your job, etc - and again what we did to get GCs. She was flat out amazed, having thought it was simply a question of having a good job. She was aware her country didn't want jobless, uneducated deadbeats, but thought that anyone else was very welcome - the idea that people with degrees up the wazoo in well-paid professions couldn't just waltz into a country in the majority of cases was entirely new to her.

robin1234

This is not helped by articles that appear on a regular basis in magazines like AARP, Money, Kiplingers Personal Finance and other lifestyle/ finance mags. They'll have titles like The Ten Best Places To Retire Abroad. Some of the places are Mexico, Panama and the like - where I believe people can more or less buy a residence visa - but others will be France, UK or Italy. Usually the article hardly mentions the immigration hurdles, and also glosses over health care provision.

Bob

No.

kodokan

Didn't they just announce something here about linking federal loan repayments to income... max percentage of income you have to pay, something like that..? Didn't follow it closely, as we're not planning to use loans.

I know the 4 years can be extended involuntarily if a kid can't sign up into required classes because they're full. But mostly it seems to be personal choice - wanting a lighter load, changing majors, etc. Kids at my son's high school are encouraged from their freshman year to plan a path that will include AP classes, and shown charts of how much college it will knock out; having a year's worth of credits by HS graduation seems to be the standard goal there for college-bound kids. (It's nothing that clever or exceptional; they're simply taking the equivalent of A levels, and therefore not needing the foundation level of US college, resulting in a 3-year UK-a-like degree path.)

Plus it's not just US-specific - I have a number of UK friends whose kids bombed out of their first year, and had to restart the clock, either in the same or another degree. These are bright, well-supported middle-class kids with good prospects - one was at Cambridge - so it can happen to anyone. Their only choice was to drop out halfway through the year, with no credit for the work they'd already done, no refund - just a full year's tuition gone with nothing to show for it. At least here they could've kept the credits already earned, dropped some classes but kept others, filled in missing blanks with summer school during the absurd 3-month vacation, etc. There just seems much more flexibility, even allowing for the 4-year default.

kodokan

Dunno about France and Italy, but Spain certainly has a visa you can buy, a Non-Lucrative one where if you can prove you're self-supporting and won't need a job, you can go and live there. It's mostly aimed at retired people, but I'm following an interesting blog about a USer who's just moved there for a sort of gap year with his family to get his kids fluent in Spanish.

kodokan

Gosh, I didn't realize we'd accidentally moved to such a generous state. I assumed most or all public unis would be offering to cherry-pick the bright kids and give them a vastly-reduced college ride.

Nice to learn something positive about the much-maligned AZ education system for once!

Pulaski

Presumably he's heard that Mexicans speak "Spanish".

scrubbedexpat099

What was wrong with Arizona?

Sally Redux

There's no clear-cut best option - we looked into it in some detail when my son was considering both countries. Depends on what they want to study, their individual motivation, and so on. Fortunately he got a place at a good state university which is affordable at about $8,500 pa. (If he had wanted to go to a UC, the higher-level California state system, it would have been about $12,500, and these are the ones that students are having difficulties getting enough classes to graduate in 4 years from). So the cost worked out roughly the same. I think he would have preferred not to have all that general ed. but a few classes he has found useful.

Of course, you have to hope that your son is happy to go to ASU

Yes I think there are various proposals around federal loans.

kodokan

Well, there was more in the 'experience the world, become a global citizen, expand boundaries' area too, but yeah. Plus I had to break it to him that my kids attended a French-speaking school in Switzerland for nearly 4 years, were utterly fluent, and within two years of arriving here, had forgotten pretty much everything.

Bob

I didn't realise many courses were like that still...apart from the academic classical type courses, it seemed like nearly everything was either modular or heading that way when I was at uni and I graduated 12 years ago.

kodokan

He's just done a residential week there at the ASU Honors college, on a scheme designed to keep high-achieving kids in-state when they're choosing their college in a few years: https://eoss.asu.edu/bss. They did such a good job in wowing him with amazing dorms, classes, facilities, teachers, etc, that the problem now is getting him to consider other options!

Sally Redux

That's cool. Much easier if they are not too far away.

kodokan

These were boys doing things like maths, physics, other science stuff; perhaps it's different for other, less-traditional courses, but they were doing the standard 'Maths degree full-time for three straight years' sort of course, with no alternative routes.

Sally Redux

I think Spanish is pretty useful here, and will become ever more so.