Here’s something that makes me hopping mad: parents who refuse to help their children pay for college–and a financial aid system that’s set up in such a way that if parents don’t pay, students fall through the cracks.
And no, I’m not talking about parents who really can’t afford to pay–as the children of these parents will probably be eligible for financial aid. I’m talking about parents who can afford to pay for college–or who can do so with some sacrifice–but refuse to because they don’t feel it is their obligation.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if the federal government, for all practical purposes, didn’t consider parents responsible for a student’s education. If parents don’t consider it their responsibility to pay, then a student has limited ability to pay his or her way. The government’s position is basically this: if the parents won’t pay, why should this be the government’s responsibility? Read about the difficulties students face if their parents won’t pay for college.
And the thing is, it’s gotten so much harder. Before 1992, if a student could demonstrate financial independence and was off his or her parents’ taxes for two years, then this student could be declared a dependent by the financial aid system–and could therefore be eligible for much more financial aid, regardless of his or her parents’ involvement. Currently, you can only be declared an independent if you’re 24, in the military, a ward of the court, or married.
What really makes me angry is when parents refuse to fill out the FAFSA. By refusing to do so, students aren’t eligible for government grants or loans–which can help a student get through college even if the parent won’t pay for what the government says they should. Filling out the FAFSA doesn’t obligate parents to pay a penny–so by not doing so, all they are doing is hurting their kid.
Of course, parents aren’t the only ones to blame here. The fact that education has become so expensive that it’s really difficult for a student to pay his or her own way is a serious problem. Students shouldn’t have to rely on their parents to get a college education, and the government really needs to make education truly affordable for everyone who is qualified. The way things are now, students who aren’t lucky enough to have good family situations are falling through the cracks. That is an injustice that shouldn’t be happening in the United States.
posted on August 9th, 2008 by Naomi
Tags: fafsa, Financial Aid
Posted in Financial Aid, Uncategorized | 19 Comments »
August 9th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I can’t believe some parents would even fathom not supporting their children! it is concerning and i think they should take a hard look at what find of parents they are really being! College tuition is not cheap and without it good luck getting a decent paying job…
August 10th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
This has happened to my sister. My parents split and their finances are a wreck and b/c of that my sister can’t file the fafsa. It breaks my heart and I wish there were something I could do. She’s in a committed relationship…. but I’d hate to see her rush into marrying him to break free of my parents for tax purposes.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:18 am
[...] how it works. The current FAFSA takes an ungodly long time to fill out in part because parents and students have to report all of their tax information. It’s kind of like having to do your taxes [...]
August 15th, 2008 at 8:14 am
[...] at Urbana Champaign, Sarah Zehr, suggests Generation Y has “close relationships with their parents” and that the usual stigma associated with living at home don’t apply. It’s a [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I am one of these students! My mother makes approximately 85,000 a year and lives way below her means. She has enough to pay for new T.V.’s, a new car, etc. but refuses to pay for anything having to do with school. I have been working hard since age FOUR to go to music school…I went one year and took out a 10,000 dollar loan for that one year since I was not eligible for financial aid. Now I am working a 10 dollar an hour job, living on my own and paying all my bills (barely) and hoping that I can someday get a music scholarship…if not, I am screwed. This has been my dream and it’s heartbreaking : (
January 9th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
This very thing happened to be 12 years ago. My parents cut me off after my sophmore year, and refused to fill out the FAFSA. As this article describes, I was pretty much screwed. I ended up putting myself though an AA program and have been employeed full-time ever since, but now I’m 31 and don’t have an Bachelor’s degree.
The bright side is that I’ve been debt free all this time, and make a decent living at what I do. But… not having a BS has really held me back, and I have no real “job mobility” to speak of. I basically have to stay in my current feild forever.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:40 am
This is a really important issue. I’ve been screwed over by my parents because they didn’t file their taxes on time, or didn’t fill out the FAFSA on time. It is rather sad that some parents won’t pay for their child’s education when they have the money, but some of them have just reasons (as in, they know their kid will party and fail out).
The thing that really gets me is that I’ve been living in my own apartment, paying my own bills, for over three years. But not until this year could I claim myself as “independent.” I’m sorry, but I’m not going to marry my boyfriend just to prove I’m “independent”– in fact, isn’t that kind of the opposite?
That very fact has kept me from going back to school after I dropped out following my Junior year. Plus, I’m still paying off the student loan I had to take out the first time, with absolutely nothing to show for it.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
I have a friend in this situation. As well as these responses outline the loop-hole in the Financial Aid system, that causes ridiculous problems for students with radical parents. I haven’t seen any offered solutions…
I have spent weeks digging, I have found a few scholarships unique to the school my friend has applied too, and there are always freelance scholarships(nothing large enough to serve as effective aid), and the competition for these is high
(This thing with parents not helping pay for their children’s education when they can easily afford it, simply because it is inconvenient to do paperwork or the child is not doing what they think is right ‘major chosen or something along these lines’, happens more than I think many Americans would like to admit.).
My interest lies in alternative Grants or Funding that doesn’t require payback except to keep grades high.
Grants or catered programs designed for combating this issue would be appreciated. Help me solve the problem. It’s not little trust me. And now that the problem has been identified, instead of continuing to just complain about it, think about it and ways to solve it!
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:20 am
I totally agree. I’m currently in my 2nd year at college/university and I’m in this exact same boat. It’s so frustrating!
My parents make a lot of money, but they aren’t paying a dime. I’m 19, not living at home, take 6 courses and work 2 jobs. It is so unbelievably difficult and I’m struggling with everything.
I applied many times for financial aid/student loans, but I can’t get anything because my parents make too much money. All I’ve got are entrance scholarships but obviously that’s still not enough for rent, utilities, groceries, transportation, sky-high tuition, and books.
It makes me so angry when I see other kids at school whose parents are paying for everything. I see them slap down 5 dollars for a latte at Starbucks and I’m thinking to myself…man those 5 bucks can buy my groceries for the week! I skip meals to save on grocery bills, steal soap from public bathrooms, load up on condiment packets at the cafeteria, liberate the occasional slice of bread from roommates, attend functions with free food at school, haven’t been shopping in 2 years, buy expired produce to cut costs, haven’t eaten out since I started school, don’t have any friends because friends require time and all my time goes to working my 2 jobs, and I’m always, always, always late on my tuition fees and rent.
The way the government has this set-up is profoundly inadequate. Not everyone’s parents feel an obligation to provide for their children once they’re no longer minors.
April 30th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
What I hate is the punishment clause. I screwed up a couple of years ago and now my son is getting punished for it. Thru my own error I lost my job and ended up running up credit cards to cover things till I got a new job. I have had it for about two years, but am still paying on those huge bills. The FASFA rates everything on your income and does not take even the slightest concideration into the parent financial situation. Enough to pay the bills but not enough to pay for his education.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
What about the parents? My parents paid for 3 semesters, then I had to take over. I worked a lot of jobs and made it through in 5 years and some student loans, and don’t think I wasn’t bitter about it. Now I have 2 stepkids – 1 is a junior and 1 is going to be a freshman in college, and we will be paying $25K a year for them to go through. I’m sick with the idea of how we’ll swing this. Jeopardize my own future for theirs? I won’t deny then this, but everyone needs to chip in and that includes the kids. If kids want a Bachelors so bad, they can work 60-70 hrs a week to get there. Anyone can get a degree if they want it bad enough. Don’t blame the parents.
August 5th, 2009 at 4:46 am
I have a friend in this situation. Her parents are kinda freaky. They think it’s her ‘responsibility’ to pay her own way through nursing school. I think they live in a fantasy world where everybody works hard and gets what they deserve. Yeah right … I’m thirty years younger than them, and I’m not half as naive.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I am a parent of a child who falls thru the cracks. I fully expect him to blame me for years to come for not paying for him to go to college. My sons father died 3 years ago with no life insurance. he received ss benefits until he graduated high school-child support would have continued thru college. My son was able to control his ss benefits the day he turned 18. guess what? he had a great summer with all that money but saved none for college. His dad and i planned to work together to send him to college, but thats not going to happen now. Now my son is mad at me for making just enough to not let him qualify for grants but not enough to actually be able to help him with college. i am looking for a second job, which will give me even less time to spend with my other child, and will probably push me further over the line for help, but still not in the clear to help him without much sacrifice–its very easy to blame the parents–and i do blame myself for not having planned better–but he is just as able to work as i am, but would rather blame me than take on any of the responsiblity himself or even for one moment think that it would have been nice for his dad to have planned better also-i am willing to make sacrifices to help-but so should the kid wanting to go college
August 9th, 2009 at 1:23 am
I do believe children should pitch in. I paid my undergraduate tuition myself, however my degree got extended to six years because I was working full time. And my GPA fell too..so I worked so hard to pay, and in the end, it was barely worth it because my GPA is too low to move on to any other degree. I didn’t have any car and had to ride my bike to school everyday.
If I was a parent, I would pay 100% of my kids tuition at a public school, but if they wanted to go private, I would have them take out the loans themselves. I fully expect kids to work part time for job experience and financial responsibility, even during school to cover their day-to-day expenses. Many of my friends have parents who were very demanding of their kids but at the same time they paid 100% of their tuition. Now they are all in med schools or working at good jobs….my parents often get angry at me that why couldn’t I become outstanding….but parents need to be realistic, it’s not fair to make comparisons when you can’t offer the same level of support.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Over past two years my husband & I have shelled out over $20,000 in education for my daughter. Her biological father has paid nothing since the last child support check after high school graduation.
We have also had to deal with my son’s bills. He was diagnosed with cancer just weeks before my daughter started her first classes.
So over the past two years, we have paid for college, very expensive medical
treatment, and my husband was forced to retire!
The financial aid officer still thinks we can afford to pay without and assistance!
Oh… they may be able to help once my son’s bills have us virtually bankrupt.
Writing congress… what a freaking joke! Talking to financial aid officers is an even bigger waste of time. I had four 3 inch binders of medical bills that they never even opened!
Stepfather and I are blamed for being the bad guy while “dad” who pays nothing is the one skating by .
Don’t blame parents! Blame the system!
October 26th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
My boyfriend has recently been cut off from his mom. She pays nothing for him. He doesn’t even live in her house. She doesn’t claim him on her taxes. Because of all that she doesn’t do, she doesn’t see the importance of her filling out her information on the FAFSA. So even though my boyfriend is in every sense independent, FAFSA doesn’t see it that way. Therefore, he would have to take out alternative loans to continue his education, but his mom refuses to help him with that by co-signing. So now what is my boyfriend to do? I thank God every day that my mom was willing to co-sign for him, otherwise he would have been screwed out of his BA half way through. The system does need to change to acknowledge that parents aren’t perfect–and that if it doesn’t change, (as Naomi explained) good kids with ignorant parents fall through the cracks. I hope this issue is dealt with in the next couple of years…
November 21st, 2009 at 7:32 pm
I had those kind of parents – did not contribe one thin dime towards my education – but they could pay the church 10% of their income every sunday.
January 6th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
On the flipside: I have the money to pay for my son’s college but I refuse to finance his quixotic journey without his sacraficing something.
His tuition at CC is $1000 per semester- I told him I would pay HALF- he had $300 and only needed an additional $200 to pay for his education… and he did nothing to raise the money. He didnt seek employment, he has never held a job…. he had the $300 from a bank account that I set up for him (his birthday monies). He has expensive gaming systems, laptops, gps devices, TV’s… I suggested he sell something on craigslist to raise the remaining money: He did not.
I conclude that it’s entirely possible that some people are not college material.
March 13th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
[...] education”, wrongly implying that parents are legally required to pay for college. Let the whining and moaning commence. Parents who have college-aged kids have already fulfilled their responsibility to their [...]