It’s heartbreaking to know that parent are suffering from so much just to make their children well educated.
Every student deserves a good education.
Students and their families told BuzzFeed News they have extreme lengthy bills to pay for college: withdrawing money early from retirement plans, moving in with relatives, and even taking out second mortgages on homes. In some extreme cases, parents are giving up custody of their children to qualify for financial aid, ProPublica reported this week.
People asked BuzzFeed Community to tell us how they paid for college and received hundreds of responses.
“Anyone who says costs like this are manageable is sadly ignorant about people’s real-life situations,” one reader wrote. “Sometimes ‘just work harder’ doesn’t work.”
People shared their own stories: One person said they have $200,000 worth of debt. Another took out private loans even though they and their parents were working seven jobs combined, it “wasn’t enough.” A few were only able to pay for school with a dead parents’ life insurance payout or legal settlement. “In truth, my mom’s life insurance paid for my bachelor’s degree,” one said.
Stories like these raise concerns about how much sacrifice universities can expect families to make. Read the following stories.
“I’m the daughter of immigrant parents from Hong Kong. My parents ran the local grocery store for 360 days of the year, seven days a week, 12 hours a day for over 25 years. We lived behind our store as kids and were the main source of our parents’ labor and help at the store.
Truly, my parents and this store is what paid for all FOUR of us to go to school. I’m currently 29 in the health profession (I am paying off those LOVELY loans by myself) and so dang proud of how I got through college.”
“My mom moved us back in with her parents. It was a huge hit to her confidence (a forty something moving in with her parents). But she was able to save what we were paying for rent and put it towards tuition.”
“My mom is in hundreds of thousands of student loan debt herself from pharmacy school. She has taken out thousands of parent PLUS loans for both my brother and me so that we could afford university, living, groceries, and more. She works countless hours.”
“I’ll graduate, but is about $100,000 in debt. My parents only make around $30,000 to $40,000 a year. Between owning a house, a child living at home, and paying off their college debt, there was no other option.”
“My dad worked at weekends as an event DJ. Weddings, retirement parties, etc.”
“My grandmother was a huge contributor to my college fund. Not only was she working in an era when most women were expected to stay at home, but she became a partner in an accounting firm that she helped build. She was able to save a lot of money and put a good portion of it aside for my dad’s education and eventually my brother’s and mine as well.”