robin1234

Our daughter was hoping for a scholarship to play ice hockey at a Division 1 school; she'd played on a regional team that had reached the finals of the nationals during high school. However she's only 5'2" the poor wee mite. Women hockey goaltenders in Div 1 run about 5'10" and up. So she had to settle for a Division 3 school (and no hockey scholarship) where she had a very distinguished career over four years. Basically, her team was so bad she was able to save 60 or more shots each game.

Plus it was a school with a good geology department, so she discovered there's more to college than hockey!

Macca67

There's a vast range in education costs. It depends what you're willing to pay for and what you believe is good value.

A colleague of mine sends both his daughters to private universities where the fees are c. $40 - $50K yearly. I believe they're both doing liberal arts degrees and he thinks this is good value - probably hoping they'll make the right connections and marry some rich dude.

On the other hand my son is going to a local state university. Fees are $10K a year - which I believe is comparable or even less than what is now being charged in the UK.

The first, maybe even second year(s) of courses seems to be a lot of bollocks - general education requiremenst, which makes me wonder what they were teaching them over the last 12 years. A less expensive way of getting these GER credits is to spend the first two years at a local or community type college. My son's room-mate did this and it cost him about $4K a year, before transferring into his third year.

robin1234

That was the case for three or four years. Colleges went into retrenchment mode in response to the financial situation. Now, the annual increases have started to ramp up again in response to the pent up pressures of deferred maintenance, wages etc.

Sally Redux

Agreed about the Gen Ed bollocks.

A lot of people are onto that Community College thing though, so it's getting harder to transfer.

Sally Redux

I think so; what choice do you have? You have to get a degree and they know it.

robin1234

Here in New York, in the SUNY system, students are guaranteed a transfer to a university or liberal arts college with two years of community college, so long as their GPA qualifies them..

Macca67

Education, like everything else in the good 'ole US of A is a commodity. Not wanting to generalize a lot of parents I know simply believe higher cost = better education for their kids. That, and the expensive bragging rights.

Macca67

Similar thing here in Wisconsin. Lot of kids are now going down that path and transferring to UW Madison which appears to be well liked.

Welshgator

After dealing with much paperwork and visiting colleges for my son, many of them offer or indicate awards - often what they really mean is they can offer an award in the form of a repayable loan. You have to be careful on this, the wording can be quite deceptive. My son was offered scholarships at a number of schools. When we looked at the total package it looks at first glance like a free ride. When you look deeper part of the awards outside of the scholarship are in the form of a loan.

Sally Redux

Maybe it's just that they can't get the ones they want...I don't think there's a guarantee here though.

Bragging rights, definitely. They like to brag about scholarships too, but...

Michael

California is similar but has two systems, the UC system (UC Berkley, UCLA, etc.) and the state system (San Diego State, San Jose State, etc.). If grades are not good enough to get into the UC system, the state system has to take them but the student could be on probation if his grade point average was below a C in high school or community college.

ChocolateBabz

This is similar to what our son is doing but at High School. The dual credit courses he takes count toward his high school diploma and give him college credits which can be transferred to any state college or university in Texas (other schools may not accept them). We pay for the college courses but basically he is getting the 2 years of general education courses out of the way and leaving High School as a college Junior. Time will tell if this was a good bet...

Welshgator

If your child is going on to pre-med or some grad school courses, some of those AP classes may or may not be accepted depending on the subject and they may have to retake the course at college level. My son did very well in several AP classes but may have to retake some at college level as he wants to do pre-med.
Also, FWIW, he retook calc 2 as a freshman rather than go straight into calc3 in college. He didn't have to take it as he had a really high AP grade. Once he elected to do this though his AP result would be thrown out even if it was a better grade. He regretted it at first because he said the university course for calc2 was way more challenging than the high school AP .
course.I think in the long run it was a good decision as it will give him a much better grounding when he does calc3.

steveq

...and all because we really need >50% graduates.
Yeah right.

Sally Redux

Yes they don't always align exactly with what is required on the course.