I depends on the person/student. Not everyone is cut out for college.

• Is College Worth It? - sm.
  • I depends on the person/student. Not everyone is cut out for college. - Deb
  • I personally know 3 people it was wasted on - but for some it has worked out well
    • college was definitely wasted on me - suprmommy3
      • polaroid-DVR-wal-mart-ebay - suprmommy3

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I have an 18.5 year old who goes out of state to college.  So what ever partying goes on I don't know about it so I don't worry about it.  I cannot have control over something I don't see. She knows how I feel about underage drinking. 

So my DD wants to to a fraternity party tonight, will be home around 1:30 a.m, has to be at work at 9 a.m.  She is trying to tell us it is not a drinking fraternity.  We were not born yesterday.   The people she would go with are not 21 and she has told us in the past they drink and tell their parents they are at a friends house at a sleep over.  (my daughter tends to reveal too much information that she cannot retract later) I am totally against this knowing up front that there will be drinking and reading too many horror stories. In my state if anyone under 21 is caught drinking they loose their license and so do parents if they supply the house and booze. 

My husband is telling me she is an adult and I feel we can say no since we know all of this upfront.  What would you do in this  situation.  

Thanks 

it's not like they have these kinds of field trips often.......and she is in drama and it's to participate in seeing Broadway plays.  I am sure they are getting a good hotel rate as a group, sharing rooms, etc., and perhaps some meals are included in that alone.

It's expensive in The Big Apple and rather she go with too much than not enough.  Since she is such a good student and this is school related and not really extra-curriculum activity, I think it would be the parent's responsibility to come up with the bulk and have her work part-time or save her holiday $$ upcoming for the trip in the Spring.

She could do extra chores in and around the home now, couldn't she, to earn more $$? 

jes sayin.....and no I don't think you're cheap and I'm certainly not rich.....but this isn't Disney trip, it's Broadway shows and she is in drama.....

FINDLAY, Ohio – A student at a fundamentalist Baptist school that forbids dancing, rock music, hand-holding and kissing will be suspended if he takes his girlfriend to her public high school prom, his principal said.

Despite the warning, 17-year-old Tyler Frost, who has never been to a dance before, said he plans to attend Findlay High School's prom Saturday.

Frost, a senior at Heritage Christian School in northwest Ohio, agreed to the school's rules when he signed a statement of cooperation at the beginning of the year, principal Tim England said.

The teen, who is scheduled to receive his diploma May 24, would be suspended from classes and receive an "incomplete" on remaining assignments, England said. Frost also would not be permitted to attend graduation but would get a diploma once he completes final exams. If Frost is involved with alcohol or sex at the prom, he will be expelled, England said.

Frost's stepfather Stephan Johnson said the school's rules should not apply outside the classroom.

"He deserves to wear that cap and gown," Johnson said.

Frost said he thought he had handled the situation properly. Findlay requires students from other schools attending the prom to get a signature from their principal, which Frost did.

"I expected a short lecture about making the right decisions and not doing something stupid," Frost said. "I thought I would get his signature and that would be the end."

England acknowledged signing the form but warned Frost there would be consequences if he attended the dance. England then took the issue to a school committee made up of church members, who decided to threaten Frost with suspension.

"In life, we constantly make decisions whether we are going to please self or please God. (Frost) chose one path, and the school committee chose the other," England said.

The handbook for the 84-student Christian school says rock music "is part of the counterculture which seeks to implant seeds of rebellion in young people's hearts and minds."

England said Frost's family should not be surprised by the school's position.

"For the parents to claim any injustice regarding this issue is at best forgetful and at worst disingenuous," he said. "It is our hope that the student and his parents will abide by the policies they have already agreed to."

The principal at Findlay High School, whose graduates include Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, said he respects, but does not agree with, Heritage Christian School's view of prom.

"I don't see (dancing and rock music) as immoral acts," Craig Kupferberg said.

With me, first child I was out of the bed seriously within 5 minutes of having him.  I didn't tear or have to be cut, he was 7 pounds, 3 ounces.  The doctor did some type of vaginal massage on me though while I was in labor and that was supposed to help loosen the vaginal wall?

Second child, same experience.  She was 8 pounds, 1 ounce and within 5 minutes of having her, while they took her to the nursery to get cleaned up and all, I walked downstairs with my husband to the cafeteria to get a drink and stretch my legs.  I had already put my regular clothes back on as well.  My doctor who delivered her was walking in my room as I was walking in and he was stunned a second and said he thought I was a visitor, LOL, not the patient.

I don't think you have to have bed rest in normal cases.  With my son I went home within 24 hours with him and with my daughter we went home in only 20 hours.

I don't get to post very often, but I am kind of at a loss as to what to do.  We are having a real problem here.

My son has always been a very good kid.  He has always made good grades. He has never gotten into much trouble.  Well, he got almost a full-paid scholarship to college.  We always told him that if he got a scholarship, we would get him a car.  Well, he got the scholarship and carefully researched what kind of car he wanted.  We went out and got him a car. 

Subsequently, he became involved with a girl.  I don't have a problem with his girlfriend.  She's very sweet and I do like her.  The problem is this.  I got the first phone bill after he left and he was texting her day and night.  So, we asked him to cut back.  We pay the phone bill.  We make the rules.  We have unlimited messages but 15,000 messages in one month just seems crazy when he is complaining about being exhausted.  We worked it out.  At 10 seconds a message it would be 40 hours worth of texting...

He comes home for the weekend and we take him to dinner.  Fifteen dollar dinner and he is falling asleep at the dinner table.  He proceeds to tell us how miserable he is at school.  We explain to him how sorry we are, but he is stuck there at the very least for this year as he is already enrolled etc.  We also made it clear that he needed to at least try to make it work. 

So, he continues to text day and night even though he promised he would cut down.   He was texting during classes, which just seems wrong to me.  It is disrespectful to the professors and unfair to the students sitting around him.  We threatened to take his phone away.  He finally stopped doing that but now I have my suspicions he is cutting class to talk on AIM to his girlfriend, and he had to drop the only difficult class he had or he was going to fail it and lose his scholarship.  He is lying to us about stuff.  He is being deceitful about stuff.  I am just at my wits end. 

This is a nice girl from a nice family.  We know her parents.  We like her.  We like her parents.  But I feel like she is trying to control his life from 2 hours away and it is working.  It is almost like he is chosing to be miserable to accommodate her.  I talked to her mother last week and one day she called home 15 times.  My husband feels like we shouldn't talk to her parents about this. 

We know that we can't make dating her an issue because that will just make him want to date her all the more.  I am at a loss as to what if anything to do about it.  My husband says that if he is chosing to be miserable then he can be miserable and that college is what you make of it.  I am 95% sure he wants to change schools and go where his girlfriend is going.  Well, that is the most expensive school in the state and he will be giving up a free ride to do that plus he now has an almost new car that we would have to deal with because he would not get to keep that and go to the expensive school.  No way, no how.  I have serious reservations about him going to a school with a party-school reputation when he has a free education at a very good school.  I also do not want to pay $18,000 a year so that he can be with his girlfriend no matter how much I like her. 

Any words of wisdom?

My first daughter was lucky with the scholarships and has just graduated from a private college in state with a degree in Nursing (BSN).   She went to this $34,000 a year  college for $13,000 a year but still has $60,000 of student loans to pay back but she makes $3,000 a month and has no other expenses.  My other daughter chose to go out of state and Massachusetts only  helps in state students.  She goes to Umass at Amherst and there is so many scholarships if you live in MA.  Anyway she is also on student loans.  I told my girls this is the only way you can go to high priced colleges if this is what you want.  They have 10 years to pay for them once they graduate.  Most of their friends are doing the same way.  We also applied the FASA 4 years in a row and it helped with the first child but even when I had both in college it did not help my second child.  She still has to pay the going rate for out of state.  I even called up Umass and said another college  in MA is giving her $10,000 scholarship off the tuition and they said well tell her to go there. I really think it depends on the college.  GOOD LUCK

As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education (www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539)."

The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight and a half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. Even though a majority of students are grossly under-prepared to do college-level work, each year colleges admit hundreds of thousands of such students.

While colleges have strong financial motives to admit unsuccessful students, for failing students the experience can be devastating. They often leave with their families, or themselves, having piled up thousands of dollars in debt. There is possibly trauma and poor self-esteem for having failed, and perhaps embarrassment for their families. Dr. Nemko says that worst of all is that few of these former college students, having spent thousands of dollars, wind up in a job that required a college education. It's not uncommon to find them driving a taxi, working at a restaurant or department store, performing some other job that they could have had as a high school graduate or dropout.

What about students who are prepared for college? First, only 40 percent of each year's 2 million freshmen graduate in four years; 45 percent never graduate at all. Often, having a college degree does not mean much. According to a 2006 Pew Charitable Trusts study, 50 percent of college seniors failed a test that required them to interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, and compare credit card offers. About 20 percent of college seniors did not have the quantitative skills to estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station. According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving.

Colleges are in business. Students are a cost. Research is a profit center. When colleges boast about having this professor who has won a science award or that professor who has won the Nobel Prize, very often an undergraduate student will never be taught by that professor. It is a "bait and switch" tactic and very often your youngster will take classes not taught by a professor but taught in large classes by a graduate student. Faculty who bring in large grants are more highly valued than faculty who teach well. Teaching excellence is so often undervalued that the late Ernest Boyer, vice president for Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, quipped that, "Winning the campus teaching award is the kiss of death when it comes to tenure."

Parents and taxpayers cough up billions upon billions of dollars to the nation's colleges and universities. Colleges make money whether students learn or not, whether they graduate or not, and whether they get a good job after graduating or not. Colleges and universities engage in "bait and switch," confer fraudulent degrees and engage in other practices that would bring legal sanctions if done by any other business. There is little or no oversight of the nation's over 4,000 colleges and universities that enroll over 17 million students. There are some colleges, such as Grove City College and Hillsdale College, that do a fine job of undergraduate education. Useful information about what colleges are doing what can be found in the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute's "Choosing the Right College" (http://isi.org/college_guide/choosing_right_college.html).

the tuition.  Parents have a responsibility to their children to see to it that they are educated in a manner that prepares them for a career, not flipping burgers.  I know that that wasn't always the norm and that college was a privilege, but now it is a necessity.  You can't make it in the world without some kind of degree and not helping your children with their education is selfish. 

That's not to say that the child shouldn't bear some responsibility in this.  He/she can certainly get a part-time job to help with books, living expenses, etc.  I see nothing wrong with the child taking out the standard student loan either, but dumping them out the door at 18 with nothing more than a high school education is not being a responsible parent.  Perhaps that's the problem today.  So many parents don't have time or are too selfish worrying about themselves to make sure their children are set.  It's not about money, it's about responsibility. 

Judging by your responses, I'd say your husband's divorce was quite bitter and perhaps the animosity you feel should be directed toward his ex-wife and not the children.  They obviously had no control over that money that was given to their mother.  While my children aren't ready for college yet, one thing I have learned already is that you never stop being a parent.

I have an 18 and 21 year old (both girls) that go to college.  Both of them have boyfriends out of State.  So they come to visit and these boys sleep in another room because my daughters know I would not care to have them sleep in the same beds in my home. I told them I am not running a hotel.   I always tell them there is  a diference between a college dorm and our home.  What happens at college I don't see.  Last night I asked the 18 year old when you go to your boyfriend's house who is 20where do you sleep.  (I never met the parents.  She said the stepmom said she would not have a problem sharing the same bed in her home but knows that her stepson does not share one in our home so she wants to respect our wishes. I know when my daugther went off to college she was never sexually active and had morals.   This woman is 38 and I am 52.  There is also a 10 year old boy that lives in that same house.  My daugter told me they are more like hippies compared to us.  Am I being a prude or does anyone feel the same way I do.