School Responsibilities

HoustonSaint68 said
Well, SBTB nails it above -- it's all about the kid. If you've got that kid that's just amazing at X, and expensive school Y will foster that like no other, the debt might be worth it.

I just find it very interesting to read this thread and see others who, to varying degrees, did what I did in projecting my experiences onto my kids' college decisions. That's appropriate in moderation, of course -- for my part though, I was a young parent and so didn't have sufficient self-awareness at the time to see the extent to which I was doing so.

Anyway, I do think this is all related to the original thread topic. A kid that is taught the realities of financial literacy in high school is going to be better able to understand the various factors his/her parents have to consider in a college (or not-college) decision -- as in your case with debt being such a major factor in guiding (or forcing) life choices down the road.

Sure. I do think there are some schools that it makes sense to go into some debt to go to if you have to. I know Rice is one of them, but I didn't know that A&M was like that. I also think that's true of M.I.T., Stanford, and some of the Ivy's. Although I have a friend that went to Dartmouth and she said that given the debt, she might have made a different choice. She still gets to say that she graduated from Dartmouth, and there is an alumni association around here, but that name doesn't carry the same weight in New Orleans as it probably would in the North East. I mean, it's not like she went to Jesuit. :hihi:

But, I guess had she moved back to the North East it would mean more. Problem is that you just kind of never know where life is going to take you.