My parents never warned me about education debt. I think it's a common trait among baby boomer parents - they're convinced it'll all work out and that education is worth any cost. Heck, my parents (who are both baby boomers and asian, so double whammy) are disappointed that my brother will not leave his Wall Street job to go to graduate school. They can't even articulate a reason how that would help his career--they're just disappointed that they both have masters degrees and he's just got a bachelors degree.

The culture surrounding education in this country is not rational. It's a soup of optimism, hope, preconception, ignorance, and classism, along with the avarice of those in the educational establishment that prey on the foregoing.

I would add that baby boomers either: a) had parents able to pay for their entire education; b) were able to work their way thru school; or c) used a GI bill.

In other words the market effects of guaranteed student loans that permited colleges/universities to charge any tuition fees they want and still have an endless supply of student with the funds to pay. Baby boomers can't imagine graduating with the equivalent of a mortgage payment and the reality of a non existent job market that might put them in a financial position to payoff their student loans much less pursue the American dream (house, car, kids).

Meanwhile culturally we have a media that pushes the narrative of 4% unemployment; that young people don't want to own a car; young people don't want to own a house; and young people don't want to get married and have families. The whole thing highlights US culture from the individual to the collective willing to lie/embellish finances, which prohibits anyone from having honest conversations about guaranteed loans; actually costs of school; lack of jobs; non existent wage increases since the 80's...it's the culture of lying/masking finances and a debt fueled economy that lead to housing collapse and eventually will lead to a collapse in the student loan market.

My youngest is going to Olin college of engineering next fall and we talk about debt a lot. We had a conversation last night about debt. We are blessed that Olin is a needs based school that provides grants (debt free) for families that can't fully afford college. They want their students to have a little debt (skin in the game) but we are talking a little not a lot.

We talk about personal finance, net worth, investing, saving for retirement and many related topics. I am an engineer by training and a computer scientist by career. My wife has done a lot of accounting most of her life.

Also right now the career prospects in engineering are good.

I work at a university so I see the downside often of student debt and bad major choices.

Highly recommend that your son/daughter cross register for biz classes (negotiations, basic accounting) at Babson and a liberal arts class or 2 at Wellesley in junior/senior year.

The best class I took at Babson was a combination biz/engineering course at Olin called Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship. The lead instructor, Ben Linder, is amazing.

Wrote more about the project/experience here if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13312978

Olin is a great school (can't beat the price), and every student I've worked with and learned from at Olin has been great. So congrats, you should be very proud of your kid! Definitely making a smart choice.

@roymurdock Thanks so much. She is planning on taking a class or two Babson and Wellesley. We are pretty excited about Olin. She is doing a gap year this year as an Americorp Vista FIRST Robotics employee. She was mature already but the gap year has really helped her thinking develop in critical ways. So gap years are recommended when it can be worked out.

Edit: added a "Pretty cool"

Pretty cool project. Thanks for sharing.

I graduated from Olin, never took a class at Babson, but would also highly recommend classes at Wellesley.

The major downside to Olin is that it's very small and the humanities offerings are very scarce and not comprehensive at all. Olin has a four class humanities requirement for graduation and you're required to have a "theme" to the classes so that you have a sort of "humanities concentration." Some students don't really think about this until senior year, at which point they panic, take a couple more classes, and submit some sort of hand-wavey statement that tries to tie together all the extremely different classes they took.

I took Russian 101, 102, 201, and 202 over the course of 2 years at Wellesley and it was fantastic. I would highly recommend that she think about, not just her engineering major, but what topic she wants to pursue in the arts or humanities. If you make a decision in your freshman/sophomore year and pursue a specific set of classes it's an amazing opportunity to pick up a new skill/hobby, or expand on an existing one.

No, I think I swung too far in that direction if anything. I decided not to go to Stanford because it would be too expensive (one semester's tuition at Stanford is about one year of median income where I'm from, and that scared me to death). Only years later did I learn it would have been free because of how much (or little) income my parents had. It still upsets me to think about it.

I now have an almost unhealthy fear of debt, to the extent that I don't even want to own a home until I can pay cash for it. (Though, to be fair, living in Silicon Valley right now with housing prices swinging $500k for what was a $500k house in a few years that fear may be somewhat healthy).

Did no one else have boomer parents who refused to talk about finances, even when asked point blank? Mine said it wasn't something you discussed with your children, and that was a common viewpoint where I grew up.

Won't a lot of them be unable to afford kids?