college

[houseelf]

Re: college

Totally informal poll here.

How many academic jobs out there offer free tuition? Three academic jobs that we looked at offered little or nothing (like a $3,000 discount per year) and two offered full tuition at the same institution if the child was accepted on his or her own merits. What is everyone else's experience with this? Are Universities cutting back on this staff benefit?

Kelly

[McPants]

Re: college

I'm currently not saving any money for college for my future children and I don't see that changing later on. Living in Europe, there's just no reason to save for such purposes as education is either free of charge (for instance Sweden, the country I grew up in) or inexpensive (for instance the UK, the country I currently reside in). I do plan to save money in order to be able to help my potential kids buy their first home, however.

Re: college

Totally informal poll here.

How many academic jobs out there offer free tuition? Three academic jobs that we looked at offered little or nothing (like a $3,000 discount per year) and two offered full tuition at the same institution if the child was accepted on his or her own merits. What is everyone else's experience with this? Are Universities cutting back on this staff benefit?

Kelly

Of the two we considered, one had none (the less prestigious), the other had "the golden handcuffs" - full tuition at basically ANY school in the country (it was an Ivy, so I assume they wanted to be able to deny your child access and pay for them somewhere else).

[Tenacious_D]

Re: college

The university DH attends (same as where I used to work) actually offers free tuition for children of ANY employee!!! They also provide 50% if you attend another university...very nice deal. They used to have the same deal for graduate programs but changed that in the mid to early 90's...to think that DH could have been going here for free!

Edit: You actually have to get in...which is the hardest task!

[SuzySunshine]

Re: college

I know the university where DH went to med school offers tuition for any employee's child that can get in on their own merits.

Re: college

We had saved nothing, we spent all "extra" getting my husband through his med school pre-reqs. I worked really hard to understand the financial aid system and our first daughter had two nice east coast schools dueling with financial aid offers and (with my constant prodding) kept saying "whichever school will get me to graduation with $12,000 in total debt or less I will attend" She would have been happy at either school - but she was a stellar student. Second daughter will be going to a liberal arts school that provides free tuition/room and board to families making less than $60K/year (hard to get into and as DH will be in medschool the income thing is NOT a problem) and son just started at a nice liberal arts school in midwest (B+ student but made college sport team) and he will graduate with about $15K in debt. We felt like they can get themselves through undergraduate but we will help with graduate school tuition IF our retirement savings plans are on track.
Since we are such geezers we have to worry about repayment of DH school loans first!

Sorry for the long post but we are in the throes of it and I help my children's friends with financial aid/college applications.

Also, working at an academic institution can give great tuition benefits but the best programs are through private schools. BIL worked at USC for 15 years (research) and all three of his children can go tuition-free to a consortium of about 35 schools of that same caliber.

[Cumberland]

Re: college

Where we are currently offers no tuition break at all which is kind of shocking to me. I thought a substantial tuition break or 100% free was the norm, as it has been in other places we have been.