If you went to college how did you pay for it?

I grew up without money, went to a public university, was eligible for a ton of grants and the rest I borrowed (myself). My wife did the same, and we are almost done paying off our loans (under $500 left) at 47 years old. But college was far cheaper when we were in school. UMASS in-state cost is around $30k/year.

Way back when I went to college it didn’t really cost that much. I remember it being about $300.00 a semester. I was able to pay for it because I was receiving social security as my dad had died when I was 17. I don’t think social security pays children beyond age 18 now. I went to a community college.

I went two semesters at $850 each. In business and administrative studies. It came from an inheritance. I took two years of liberal arts with a $10,000 student loan each year. I got $4,500 in bursarys and a millennial scholarship for being a student in 2000. In Canada.

I worked part time at a rental company, school news paper, an aluminum extrusion company and at KFC. Took me 6 years (3 years at a junior college and 3 years at a state university) to get my BA.

My parents paid for all four kids to go to college. Tuition when I went to school at the University of California, Santa Barbara was $219.25 per quarter when I started, but then they raised it $3 a quarter to pay for the student center expansion.

I have paid the tuition for both my kids, one graduated from Cal, the other attends a private institute in Massachusetts.

I went to CC first and got half off tuition since my mother worked at a state University. I paid the rest working full-time in the summer and part-time during school. My big cost then was housing. This was late 90’s. After getting my associates what I paid in tuition and books was paid back in the first few paychecks.
Next degree my employer paid about 70 percent but I had to “fit school in” around my work schedule. That one took 11 years to complete. For the next the university approached me and offered to pay tuition if I taught a class as a TA. I still had to pay for books and one semester of books cost more than my entire associates degree cost. This is within a 15 year span. Next one I’ll be starting soon and I hope my current employer will help again. In 20 years the cost rise is so dramatic that it is almost beyond belief.

Federal student loan. June 1974-Dec. 1975.

Parents paid and it was supplemented with TAP and PELL grants.

Myself by working and some family help.

I attended a private university from 2009–2013. My parents paid for it all. I realize I was fortunate. I am currently in grad school, which I am paying for myself.

It was in the 70s. My dad paid for the first 3 semesters. Then him and mom got a divorce, she moved out of state, and my dad pulled funding for school. Said I was a girl. I didn’t need an education. I just needed to find a man to take care of me.
I went back for the last semester, got a loan. It was only $1400 too, for an entire semester.
That blows my mind.

Well, we all know how that “You need a man to take care of you,” turned out. So in the late 80s I went back to finish my last 2 years and got a degree in education. Pell grants paid for all of it.
However, since I was on my own and had a household to take care of and a mortgage payment. So I got student loans of about $10,000. I’ve been paying on them since 1993. Now I only owe $7,000. And this shit is getting REAL old.

I lived at home and my parents split tuition (until I got married at 20). I took out student loans for textbooks and supplies, and later for tuition and fees after I got married. I paid back all of my student loans for undergrad when I defaulted on my student loan due to unemployment (and a lack of ability to navigate systems) and got enough of an income tax refund to send in a lump sum.

My masters degree was paid for out of employment benefits. I paid very little in fees and covered textbooks and supplies out of pocket with no loans.

I took out a parent plus loan to pay for my son’s undergrad tuition for the first year while I was finishing my masters degree.

Now that I’m in a PhD program and my son has one year left for his undergrad (and youngest is in pre-k), I take out the maximum student loans just to cover living expenses and educational fees/supplies. My tuition is covered from a fellowship and working as an instructor. My oldest also takes out max student loans to cover his tuition, while my husband and I pay for housing, food, fees and supplies. I have reached my maximum student loan debt for my degree and will not be able to take out any loans after this current semester.

I’ll graduate with a PhD and approximately $50k debt. I hope to pay it off in 1–2 years post graduation.

I went to a private university in the early 80s. 4 years of full-time student life including tuition and fees, books, room and board, including one year as an exchange student in Japan cost a grand total of $16,000. My parents paid the whole thing plus gave me spending money.

To give you a comparison, one daughter graduated from a university in NYC last year that cost $60,000/year. She got a huge scholarship from a foundation here in Hawaii. The other daughter is going to a school in Western Massachusetts that costs $18,000/year as an out-of-state student. She’s paying with loans, and I have agreed to help her with her loan payments when they start. She’s planning on going to grad school with a PhD as the goal.

The increases in college costs is directly due to the decrease in state support for state schools.

I went to a Cal State and then a UC. At that time (1996–2002) 3 quarters at Cal State was about 3K and UC about 4K, not including books. I had Cal Grants in the beginning, but that ran out and I had to take loans. I also worked anywhere from 1–3 jobs, and never less than 30hrs per week. I was 22 when I started college so I had to provide for myself. It also took me 6 years to graduate, because there are only so many hours in a day. I still owe about 5K on my loans.

I’m $40k in debt.

That’s all I’m willing to divulge.

Could be worse, that’s what cars cost these days.

Not mine. I paid $2,500 for the last car I got.

Me either, $4700 for my last new to me vehicle but new mid size cars are that high. I know someone who bought a regular half-ton truck but decked out with options and it was over 70k. Even 30k for a car seems like an astounding amount of money to me but it puts perspective on these huge school loan numbers. Not that it’s anyone here but I know several people whining about their loans with a 50 thousand dollar SUV sitting in the driveway.

Campus jobs (Rare Books and Archives, Chemistry Library) and Financial Aid. It was a State university, but excellent and had everything I needed right on campus.

Also, I never bought any books, or read them.

How can you not buy or read text books @Yellowdog.

I know they can get insanely high. We have a 2006 Escalade that was $70,000 new.

I bought the Astronomy books and a few Jewish Studies books because they were interesting,

But really, the proff’s lectures and notes taken were all you really needed,’

Only in a History class did I find a few test questions that had not been covered in class, but I remembered the events from High School and a technical school history class,

I just remember the insanely high cost of the books and knew from a two-year technical college I had been at that I hardly ever cracked a book. I doubted I would ever study a college textbook. If I discovered I needed one, there would be a chance to buy one later. And thought of what else I could do with the money.

Oh, yes—I bought the two Nortons’ Anthoogies of English Literature—it WAS hard to get by without that one, and Ioved the material.—I think I bought the books for two electives—Nineteenth Century at Play, and Creativity, the Mind’s Best Work—- but only because I liked the books / material.

I still have mine.

I bought the record set for the Music Appreciation class, too. It was good classical music which was hard to come by, And I loved William Warfield’s rendition of Simple Gifts on those records,

But that was it. Never bought any other books and never read any of them

I didn’t have to buy any music for Music Appreciation. All I had to do was show up.
Same with Theater Appreciation.
And Beginning Bowling (ha! I had been on leagues since I was 12 and had a 160 average. Ha!)

I went to community college in Maryland where I grew up part-time for 1.5 years. Then I transferred to Michigan State University (out of state for me, so the tuition was pricey).

My parents paid for all tuition, housing, books, and they had bought me a used car.

During community college I was working about 25 hours a week, so I paid for all of my spending money on clothes and food when I wasn’t at home. I stayed with my boyfriend a lot. So, actually, when I was in community college my parents didn’t pay for housing for me, I was still living with them technically.

When I transferred to MSU, the first year I didn’t work so my parents paid for everything. Dorm, food, tuition, everything. The second and third year I worked a little for part of the years and I used that money to pay for clothes and other spending money, but again my parents paid for all tuition, rent, and books.

I was always really careful with my parents’ money. I always spent it like it was my own, and in fact almost too careful, my dad had encouraged me to take more classes I was interested in, and I think he was right. Part of the reason I didn’t was the high cost. He didn’t want me to work at all when I was in school, it was me who wanted to. He would have given me the spending money.

My college was free. There was this kind of government policy back at my time to provide free tuition for pedagogy majors. So apart from small things like books and stuff, I went about my college time without paying for anything. I saved a ton of money for my parents indeed, also by studying hard enough to avoid retaking any courses, which took extra money.

I sold drugs.

^lol

I worked 30 hours a week while in college and full time over the Summer to pay for undergraduate school. I also maxed out 12K worth of credit cards to pay for supplies and books. That took me a few years to pay off.

It was a good plan in that I did it all by myself and had little debt at the end.

It was a bad plan in that I worked so many hours my grades weren’t as good as they could have been. I also had little time to interact with my fellow students outside of school and didn’t have that “college experience”. It was basically school, work, sleep for five years.

^^Know that all too well!!

My dad paid my tuition to the U of Texas @ Denton in ‘62. Then I married and paid for three of four community colleges throughout the years.

Tuition is only about $700 a year in my area (Germany). I paid that through odd jobs like dog sitting and tutoring. The bigger issue was cost of living. I applied for student loans, but those are only approved when your parents don’t make enough money to cover you. So my dad ended up paying for rent and utilities.