#WTFWednesday “Affordable” tuition

I have three amazing kids, one in college, one a senior in high school, and the other a sophomore in high school.  This isn’t my first rodeo when it comes to touring universities.  My daughter has busted her butt and has a GPA and ACT score I could never achieve so she’s looking at some good schools because, lets face it, she has the chance of getting in.  Unlike her mother who realized that the local State University was the only one she could afford and therefore managed to maintain a 3.3 GPA because that’s all she needed.  On the flip side, she did get to spend a lot of time at the beach.

Anyway – my “WTF” for this Wednesday is regarding the “affordability of tuition” that each university we have toured has promised us.  Umm, yeah – I call BS.  $60,000 a year isn’t affordable.  Taking out loans is ridiculous – what starting job is going to pay you enough to pay that kind of tuition back?  My daughter is applying to every scholarship out there in hopes of lowering the fees but seriously?  WTF?  My beloved husband works as a surgeon, we both have college degrees, and we’re white.  Basically no one wants to give us money because we’re privileged, right?  Well, yeah, I’m not going to lie and say we are living hand to mouth because that’s not the kind of people we are.  We’ve always lived below our means and saved.  We DID save money for the kids’ college but still – WTF?  60K?  A year?!!!!!  We were thinking that 40K a year would be plenty of savings.

Jeez, and I thought the Country Day PreSchool was ridiculous for having a $5000/yr tuition for preschool.  Whose kid could eat that much paste?  I suppose if we had sent our children to a preschool like that and then private grade school followed by private high school then the sixty thou would seem, I don’t know acceptable?  Like the frog that sits in the pot that slowly heats to boiling and never tries to hop out…

Seriously though?  If you are an institution of higher learning and want students with a 4.53 GPA and 30 ACT score then please, at the very least, be honest about the cost of tuition.  Show us some respect, we’re not stupid, our kids aren’t stupid.  Affordable, my ass.  We’re not freakin’ Bill Gates or Richard Branson.  A quarter of million dollars for tuition is not affordable.  We have three kids – so basically by the end of their college years my husband will have worked enough to purchase a Patriot missle.  Offer REAL scholarships, at the very least something merit based so that her hard work will at least bring her tuition down to in-state prices.  Pretty please?