Questions you want answered.

I have to do a quick survey for a class - looking for 5ish volunteers that wouldn't mind answering 10ish questions and sending me an email:)

Survey is super softball, non-political(is for an entrepreneurship class for my MBA). It will be extremely appreciated.

If interested/willing, please send me a PM by 7 pm central Thursday June 27th, and I'll ask you to send back by end of day June 28th.

Did you get enough people?

Sure, send me a pm

Sold two IKEA tables on Facebook Marketplace.

about paying them off or getting them?

I ended up going through citizensstudentloans.com for private loans for my kids a handful of years ago. Painless process, didn't even have to talk with anyone. I, admittedly, didn't do a ton of research due to urgent time constaints at the time, though.

I'll be looking into this in a few years as well... One thing I've heard is that college tuition sticker prices are mostly paid by students from very wealthy families. If that's not your demographic, it might not be as expensive as it looks.

I'm out of the academic game at the moment, and I never worked on the admin side, so any advice I have is fairly generic (and maybe out of date, since I paid off my last student loan a long time ago). But hopefully this is helpful.

There's a few options. Is there a specific school you're looking at? The two big strategies are in the choice of school and the financial aid for the chosen school.

It can be a lot cheaper to go to Community College or another two year school and transfer to a four year program. (Plus, you can get an Associate's on the way.) There's some downsides (less involvement in campus life, harder to get involved in research, etc.) but in general community colleges have a lot of instructors who really care about teaching and put in the effort.

Some states have a three tier system; California, for example has Community Colleges, California State University, and University of California. The big difference between CSU and UC is that UC is focused on research while CSU is focused on teaching. Professors at UC are expected to do research first (and also teach) while professors at CSU are expected to teach (and do some research).

For a student, both options have value: the research school is likely to have the entry level class taught by a lecturer or grad student rather than a professor, but will have more opportunities to get involved in research projects. The teaching school will have less research going on (but not zero research) and more focus on instruction.

Other states have a less formal separation, but in general you can sort all schools into research schools or teaching schools. (The actual classification system has a massive flowchart and more categories, but that doesn't matter as much from the student perspective.)

Private schools tend to be more expensive (since they don't get state funding) but still get federal funding (via grants) and often can give out scholarships to make up the difference (because the real money is in the endowment).

There's also for-profit schools (not to be confused with private schools) and generally that's a much worse deal for the students.

If you've already chosen a school, you'll want to talk to their financial aid office. Ideally you'll have access to scholarships, federal grants, work-study, federal loans, and private loans (in that order of preference). The federal government has a ton of information about student loans and other funding,

True to a certain extent; scholarships and other funding provide a massive discount off the sticker price.

It depends on the school, but at the state schools I'm familiar with, the cash cow students were:

• Out of state students
• Foreign students
• Professional masters students

Which is basically a list of the people who weren't covered by the state's educational mandate and had someone else paying the bill (or, in the case of the professional masters, had very concrete career benefits and often had someone paying the bill). Different schools can have very different characteristics, though, so it varies a lot. Plus, Federal grants can offset some of the price, and that's dependent on the parents' income. Fill out the FAFSA as soon as possible.

All of this assumes that you're going to a US university, but student loans and high tuition are more of a thing here than in other countries, so they're less likely to need the help. (Though that's been changing.)

Yes, they're bringing just such a set here via https://godzilla.com/

Thanks all for the input on the loan stuff. My oldest is starting Worcester Polytechnic Institute next month to study Robotics and Aerospace. Full cost of 85k, about 50k of that is covered with grants and scholarships and teeny Federal loans. So 35k to be done with private lenders. Just making my sphincter tighten looking at those costs for him. The path forward is just seeing what the best deal we can get is. Anybody who has this in the future, start a 529 account now.

85 (35) a year? Yikes. Good luck, buddy.

I'm not sure if that school is in the same state that you live in now. Have the kid go to a local state community college 1st. You'll pay a tenth of that and the content is the same the 1st two years. In a lot of states, if the community college and state college is in the same state, once they finish the two year degree they automatically get accepted into the school but will have to apply to the dept they wanna be in plus the community college will be able to set a schedule to get all the classes they need.

TBH, especially in today's world, I would not spend all that money for a college degree unless that amount will not hinder you. For like 99% jobs, a degrees from most schools will get you a check mark for a job.

I don't know, but The Fifth Element is way more fun to watch.

Frozen 2 is a more convoluted take on The Fifth Element.

Also my alma mater! My tuition after all the financial aid ended up being something like 20k freshman year, then a bit less than that each following year, but this was 25 years ago now. It took a good 15 years to pay off those student loans.