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How do people afford college?
Fizban140
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Right now my brother is attempting to go to college but can just barely afford it. He is actually using unemployment now which gives a lot more money than the job he could pay for. He is going to a community college where they pay half and he still can't afford it unless he uses unemployment which he just lost. When he works a part time job he can't make nearly enough to afford everything.
How the fuck do people pay for college? He lives in Minnesota what options are available to him?
How the fuck do people pay for college? He lives in Minnesota what options are available to him?
Fizban140 on
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That's for a bachelor's though. CC shouldn't be too hard to pay for as long as he's a resident of the state the school is in.
He's going to Community College, not Harvard.
Oh man. Really? FAFSA is how you land FREE MONEY. Pell Grants. I get $5,100 a year in free money from the government and another few thousand in more free money from the Oregon Opportunity Grant (just for living here). The rest is covered with loans. Easy. Tuition here (Portland State University) is only about $2.200 a term for 16 credits so I basically go to a pretty decent state school for free.
I paid for my undergrad by working full-time and going to an (excellent) state university. The place I worked had tuition reimbursement of 5,250 (the max before it becomes a taxable benefit) which paid for half of my tuition.
I also started out at a CC, before transferring to said state university.
My total undergraduate degree in business from an excellent university cost me about $10,000 over 4 years.
I'm now going to grad school, and am doing the same deal. Working full time, work is contributing $5,250 which covers about half of my tuition per year (part-time). The whole degree will cost about $13,000 out of my pocket over 2.5 years.
College is quite affordable if you make smart decisions and are motivated.
Then he shouldn't be in college in the first place.
seriously? why is he in college then? how is a degree from a community college going to help a lazy bum?
How low-income are your parents, and how old is everyone? Financial aid, especially at private universities, is very good. My family is very poor and I got almost a full ride, ~$150,000 in scholarships, and it's not out of the ordinary for low-income students. Currently, Harvard guarantees any student with a family income less than $60,000 goes to harvard for free - no room and board, no tuition. That initiative has lead other schools to follow suit for its students in varying degrees, and financial aid has always been generous.
FAFSA is bullshit in that sense - my EFC was certainly not zero though my required contribution was close to zero at a private school. It's pretty stingy and I wouldn't handicap your odds of getting favorable finaid packages from non-state schools because of the FAFSA.
The earlier you turn in the FAFSA, the more likely you are to get aid because some schools will give out their own, school-specific need-based scholarships on a first-come-first-serve basis based on when they get your FAFSA.
Also, ramen+pasta. You can live for a month on like $40 in food. And that's including Whole wheat pasta, which can be super-healthy on top of being pretty cheap.
Also, if he's into it, Military service will pay for higher education. Though it's a little wonky since you have to go through like a billion years of service(Actually, as a zero college loan fully educated person, I'm still enlisting... but that's a special case)
But if he's just not interested in service/loans/even fucking college in general then maybe college isn't for him. College can be great, but it's not the necessity some people think it is. There are plenty of non-college-graduates who are just fine.
I was a similarly lazy bum at 18 years old in 1995. I didn't finish college the first time.
I'm glad you weren't around to stop me from going back. I'll be getting my Masters in Computer Science in December.
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Most people can't afford to send themselves to college up-front, so yeah, he needs student loans. And you should give him a kick in the butt, too.
Yeah, the student loans I have taken out are a great motivator to not fucking up. Luckily I didn't start college till I was 32, so staying on track is pretty easy. I've gotten partying and fucking around way out of my system.
Getting an exception to this generally requires a lot of work. Like submitting court documents showing that he was legally emancipated. Or if his parents are dead. Short of that, the FAFSA wants his parents' income.
It's still worth doing, but the Pell Grant requires you to be pretty broke, and if you aren't at least 23 the odds of you qualifying for it are slim unless your parents happen to be broke too. Also if he's being claimed as a dependent on his parents' taxes that may also disqualify him.
I wish I'd waited two years to go back to school when it would cost me nothing, as opposed to lots of debt.
But student loans are easy to procure. Debt sucks but student loan debt isn't generally seen as "bad" debt. It's easy to get payments deferred, at least for a while. The interest rates generally aren't extortionate. The payments are pretty low because it's expected to be paid back over a long period rather than just a few years.
If he's got to borrow a few grand to get 60 credits done at a community college, then a bigger chunk to finish at a 4-year state school, its not a catastrophic amount of debt.
If he's new to college, laziness isn't unusual. Most intelligent people can glide through the workload they get in primary school and so have no work ethic when moving into college. Ass on doubts about whether he'll be able to cash in his work for a degree, and motivation is quite hard to find.
He might have some form of depression or anxiety. Depressed people aren't really motivated to do much in life, let alone find a career, or even live. Try to know the whole story before you start pointing fingers and throwing around accusations.
A foreign concept around here, I know.
6.8% is stupid low-interest? In what world?
Also double on the pasta. Around here the grocery stores have major sales all the time. I picked up 10 boxes of whole wheat pasta for $10 last week. If I have it once a day it will last me 5 weeks. I also cook my own pasta sauce which costs maybe $15 in ingredients for a pot full which will last close to a month.
6.8% isn't so low as to be free, but subsidized loans offer the best rates of any loans I've seen. Obviously credit card APIs can be three times higher, but mortgage rates or auto loans also have uniformly higher percentage rates. Some Stafford loan. Also have no interest accrue while in school.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
Like others have said this could be a sign of something involving mental illness. Keep in mind that if it is, he probably doesn't want to be like he is and does want to succeed more. I don't know him obviously, so I can't say for sure, just that people with anxiety issues often feel like it's blocking them from what they want to do.
Regardless of if he has something like that going on, he did say he wants to go to a psychiatrist, so encourage him to do that before he makes any large decisions about school. I know it's hard to be encouraging when someone constantly seems like they don't give a fuck, but usually it's not because they really want to be like that.
Anyways, I'm going to university and a I use a combination of student loans, bursaries, and working different jobs.