LearnmoreMN Blog

Families find ways to make college affordable

By Jesús Hernández Mejía, October guest blogger

In my first post I talked about saving for college. That’s a good place to start, but what else is out there?

Dual Credit options are another way to save some green. Students can earn college credits while still in high school. These programs include Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO), International Baccalaureate (IB), Advanced Placement (AP), Career/Technical Education and Concurrent Enrollment (College in the Schools).

It’s possible in some cases for a full-time PSEO student who starts in their junior year to earn enough credit for an associate degree. That might save two years of college expenses. Some colleges have a limit how many credits can be transferred and ultimately have the last word on particular courses.  Even if this is the case, with PSEO your student is exposed to the rigorous work required in college and will be college-ready when it’s time to enroll.

For families looking ahead to college, realize that not all schools offer these options. But any research you do now is an investment in your child’s future.

Is there anything else?

At the start of every school year I have at least nine or 10 students who stop by my office because they are having a hard time paying for school. Looking through their awards I see a common theme: most of these students did not apply for any scholarships. Most don’t believe they would qualify but a lot say they were not aware of scholarships.

In simple terms, a scholarship is money that you don’t have to pay back. It is given to you for reasons such as merit, athletic ability, affiliations and the list goes on. Scholarships can be used to pay for tuition, fees, room and board, depending on the stipulations of the donor.

View a partial list of scholarships offered by Minnesota institutions. There are also scholarships offered through private entities. The best way to locate these is through Internet searches (try Fastweb or FinAid) or through personal connections with various companies.

Another good place to go for scholarship information is located right where your student attends school. Most high schools have a resource center or a counselor to whom donors send this information.

I have to say one more thing about scholarships.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It should not cost you any money to access information to scholarships.

Are there any other resources?

There are three additional resources that come to mind when trying to find ways to make college more affordable: AmeriCorps, Peace Corps and military service. If these sound like options for your student, consider checking them out.

What if my student is graduating next year?

The first thing is not to panic. Has your child settled on a college choice yet? If not, think about all the different options. Starting your student’s education at a community college would save you some money. Your child can complete the first two years there and then transfer to a four-year institution. Have your student contact that four-year institution to make sure that his/her credits will be transferred.

If you have already settled on an institution, meet with a financial aid advisor at the school. They will probably ask you to complete the FAFSA or a Financial Aid profile in order to give you a more accurate answer as to what your student might qualify for.

It helps if you plan ahead for college, but even if you haven’t, it is still feasible. There are many resources to help families pay, including the new video series, Paying for College.

College affordability is something to really think about

By Jesús Hernández Mejía, October guest blogger

How do I pay for college? This is the question that is most often asked when students apply to a postsecondary institution. The typical answer is, “you can get financial aid.” For some students that might well be the case but for others it is not. In some instances, even with financial aid, students are faced with stark decisions of giving up the college of their choice and enrolling in a more affordable institution, taking lots of student loans, or giving up on college altogether.

There are several steps that can be taken and many ways to accomplish the dream of a college education. One of the first steps is to start saving. View a short video about saving from the new Paying for College series. (There’s also a 16-minute video, Paying for College in Spanish.)

As an assistant dean of financial aid, I often meet with parents who did not plan for the reality of their student going to college. It’s as if it came to them as an afterthought when their student burst through the door one day and said, “Mom, Dad, I want to go to college!”

The panic on their faces and the awkward conversation that follows is understandable. College is something that we really need to start planning for as soon as we start thinking about having kids — and continues until the day they graduate. Yes, you read that correctly.

Planning for college is essential and there are a variety of tools (see the MassMutual Financial Group resources) that can be used to predict the future of college costs. For example, a child born in 2013 will expect to pay $30,627 in 2029 at a public institution and $67,767 at a private institution.

If you are betting on your future student using government financial aid to pay for college, keep in mind that it will still exist in some shape or form, but it might not resemble what it currently looks like.

So it’s important to start saving now. Here’s a hypothetical example from MassMutual: save $50 per month on a savings plan for 18 years and you would end up with $12,339. This assumes a 6% earning rate. Even if you don’t put that money on a savings plan, $50 per month for 18 years gives you $10,800 or about a third of the cost for the first year. Obviously, the more you save, the more money that your student will have to pay for school.

I know you have a life and saving a lot of money might not be convenient or possible. After all, you are also thinking about buying a house or paying for rent, purchasing a vehicle to get to work, vacations and many other things. But think of the advantages that your student will have: less debt in loans after graduation and more time to start thinking about college for their own children.

Watch for my next blog post to learn about other ways to truly make college an affordable option.