Nine Ways Parents Can Make College Pay Off

The following is excerpted from 25 Ways to Make College Pay Off: Advice for Anxious Parents from a Professor Who's See It All (an excellent book IMO -- I'll be featuring more of it in the weeks to come) by Professor Bill Coplin (AMACOM 2007). Today we'll cover nine of the 25 tips in the book -- the ones dealing with the parents' part of college planning. Tomorrow, we'll feature what the kids should do. (FYI, the intro below is for all 25 tips and is included even though the tips are broken up.)

Although there are far more than twenty-five specific tips and strategies presented in this book, this list represents the twenty-five key ideas I would like to convey. If you take nothing else from my book, incorporate these twenty-five principles as you help your child find a satisfying career through the college experience.

This list is divided into two groups. The first group describes things you can do (or avoid doing) to be sure your child is on the right track. You can think of it as advice to you as an investor in your child’s future. The second group addresses actions your child must take, but you have a lot of influence on those actions.

For Parents

1. Use the Goldilocks principle—not too hot and not too cold. Just the right mixture of hands on and hands off.

2. Have your child prepare a written or verbal plan about how college is contributing to his career focus.

3. Perform a ‘‘focus check’’ every four months to check his commitment to that future career.

4. Require your child to pay for at least 20 percent of his college education.

5. Don’t be held hostage by the fear that your child will not earn a college degree.

6. Don’t worry about your child’s GPA if it is 3.0 or above.

7. Take strong action if your child’s GPA is heading below 2.0.

8. Don’t fight your child’s urge to transfer; just try to minimize additional costs and lost credits.

9. Tell your child before she enters college that you will not pay for more than four years (unless it is a longer program, such as architecture or pharmacy).

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As noted above, the tips for kids will be shared tomorrow. In addition, you'll be seeing more on this book here in the future. IMO, it's a VERY practical guide to getting the most out of college (starting with what you should do when your kids are in high school). Since my kids are nearing this age, it's especially interesting (and has been useful) to me.

Comments

[bill]

My parents version of this:

1- Its not where are you going to college, it is where are you moving to go to college. We learned a ton being out on our own! We all chose schools 1-2 hours away.

2- You pay the tuition, we will pay for room and board. My siblings and I worked hard during the summer and had part time work to pay tuition and it gave us incentive to do well in classes since it was our money we wasted if we failed a class.

3- You got 4 years to be done (in may case, I got married in my 3rd year which made the cutoff earlier)

[Apex]

I don't know how much parents can do to impact a student's GPA but in general I find the advice on GPA to be low balling the numbers.

Don't worry if the GPA is above 3.0? 3.0 is basically what I consider average. If you want to come out of your degree with average grades and get an average job then fine, but as a hiring manager if you aren't atlest 3.0 I won't even consider you. If you want to be a good candidate, you should be shooting for 3.5.

Get concerned if the GPA is heading below 2.0? Heading below? Will 4 year colleges even give you a degree if you are below 2.0? If you are heading below 2.0, you are in the wrong field or college just isn't for you. Even if you get it back up to 2.2, you can expect to have a very hard time finding a job and get the worst paying and work condition jobs available if you can get one. College isn't high school where you need a D- to pass. This is where you are supposed to be well trained in a profession and if you can't get better than across the board C's then who will want to hire you as a supposed well trained professional, certainly not me.

If you just want a piece of paper so you can go manage a Taco Bell then I guess it doesn't matter, otherwise I would say don't worry about the GPA if its in the area of 3.3-3.5 and get concerned when it starts heading below 3.0.

[David]

I like Bill's parents idea,

"Child pays tuition, parents will pay for room and board."

But here's an extra twist on that idea designed for families
who may have previously given money for good grades.

Provide another incentive, after the semester is over and the
grades have been released, design some kind of cash back
reward program.

Say, for every 'A', refund 5% of the tuition (which the child
already paid for, whether from their work or their scholarships
or their loans or their savings) as cash back to the child.
Make 'B' grades super small, aka 0% or 1%, all grades lower
than a 'B' are always 0%.

A student with a large load of 6 classes who gets 6 'A's
could get 30% of that semester's tuition as a cash back
reward at the end of the semester.

The savvy student who does well will use that 30% reward
money towards their next semester's tuition. (Hopefully)

[Apex]

@David,

How many under water basket weaving classes can I squeeze into the semester ..... :)

[mapgirl]

This advice is insane on a certain level.

"2. Have your child prepare a written or verbal plan about how college is contributing to his career focus.

3. Perform a ‘‘focus check’’ every four months to check his commitment to that future career."

I knew NOTHING about what I wanted to be when I graduated from high school. The lawyers in my life all counseled me away from the profession, expressing doubts about the field for a younger generation. I never would have ended up in geography as a major if I stuck to some crazy made up plan from my senior year of high school. I'd be a miserable, ulcerated attorney. (I am a happy but ulcerated IT professional.)

Geez, half the pre-med kids at school were washouts in their majors, but still ended up with very fine degrees and very fine careers. It just took them more than 4 years to get there. (Side tracking to a master's in epidemiology before med school is not so bad. Neither is buying into a $1mil dental practice instead of being a doctor.)

This is the kind of insane 'helicopter parenting' that is just crap. If your kids can't be savvy enough to figure their crap out with lots of threats, then don't pay for them to go at all till they are ready.

I nearly washed out of college myself, thinking I would take a year off from school. It wasn't until I realized that if I left I would never come back, that I dug in and finished school on-time in four years. Let kids suffer consequences from their adult actions and decisions rather than force them into mission statements and careers they don't even want. Because you know there are parents that are going to pervert this to their own desires to have doctors and lawyers in the family. Asking a kid to write this stuff down subverts the first lesson of not too hot, not too cold, but just the right amount.

[vga]

I agree with mapgirl. Numbers 2 and 3 are crazy.

Expecting some 18 year old with no work experience other than maybe grocery bagger to know exactly what they want to do with their life and how to get there is a tall order.

Realistically you can expect them to make a guess, do some work towards it and probably change it a few times. Then once they get out of college and discover that the actual job is totally different than the education you can start placing bets on whether they'll change direction again.