Personally, I would do whatever you think best sets up your child for success. In my case, it's unfathomable in my family culture to not pay for college for the child if you're financially able because that is what we believe will set up the child for success - to be able to freely seek out higher education and realize their full potential without worry of debt and finances. However, the counter point is that there are those that feel the financial constraints will make your child stronger and instill in them a stronger work ethic and appreciation for what they have. An upbringing that combines both elements is likely ideal, but personally I chose to instill the latter values in different ways that doesn't cripple my child with debt.

Less important than the social stigma is the potential for placing your kids at a competitive disadvantage. Exactly what that will mean depends on how the next ~18 years unfold.

"social stigma" is between your own ears. Don't let other people tell you how to parent your child.

I'm glad you addressed the issue of number of siblings. The article didn't slice things that way, and I think that makes huge difference. $Tuition*N can mount up. In my case, since my father died in a farm machinery accident when I was young, I drew social security survivor benefits. My mom stashed that away for college, even though it meant a few lean years for the family as my older brother dropped out of college to hold the farm together. He was successful, and I was able to pay for a decent engineering degree at a modestly priced state university. Private schools were not in the cards. My wife also came from a family of modest means, and she was the guru of scholarship applications. She found enough to cover a state university at out-of-state tuition rates. We both graduated debt-free.

Graduating debt-free made a huge difference in our lives, and we wanted to do the same for our (one) child. Who happened to get in to MIT, not exactly cheap. So since we have the means, and only have to do it for one, we are stepping up to it. I can't say we could do the same for N>2 children.

Personally, I don't see paying for college as a parental obligation. Driving some financial sense into your children is, though. Counseling against excessive loans, especially for degrees that don't pay off (art history is cool and all, but I'd not take on a lot of debt for that degree). Someone else suggested something like covering costs of the local state university, with child coming up with the difference if they want something better. I can respect that choice.

I think education should be free and provided for by the government. But since that probably won't happen any time soon, I will at least live my own values and pay for my kids college as my parents paid for mine.

Also if you care about your child's well being (both emotionally and financially), it's much easier for the parent to start saving a small amount when the child is born per year (compound interest) then for the child to have a houses worth of debt to pay off.

Also my kids don't have to go to college if they don't want to. And if not, I guess I get to take a 150k vacation.

> I think education should be free

It's never going to be since educators for some reason are not willing to work for free.

> and provided for b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ by the taxpayer.

Why would taxpayer have to pay for the education for everyone? Judging by the size of the current student debt it does not look like a worthwhile investment.

A society may decide that its worth educating its own citizens. Several countries around the world do that.

Several countries even do that for internationals.

Of course elected officials may decide that it's worthwhile to spend larger portion of the budget to educate everyone, but why would they? What are the arguments other than "i think it should be" that may convince them and the electorate that it is a good direction to proceed?

That the wealth of a more educated society compounds, likely in super-additive fashion. Basically, the idea is that a society full of educated people is wealthier as a whole and thus in your own interest. In the short term, it is easier to be well off if people around you are well off than if not (e.g. is way easier to be an entrepreneur or to find a well paying job if you are surrounded by other educated people). In the long term, your society gets richer and, since countries that have public education also have things like public healthcare and social security, a richer country is also very directly in your benefit when you are nearing retirement.

Note that the U.S. already buys this argument when it comes to primary and secondary education. It only seems to mostly ignore it when it comes to the university or trade school level.

The U.S. gets by without public higher education, but that might be in significant part for two reasons: accumulated private wealth in a large middle class that got rich from globalization with one of the few intact industrial bases in the post-war environment (now dwindling), immigration of educated workers from all over the world (brain drain from other countries).

Also, note that many countries with public higher education see it as a system where each individual "pays it forward" for the education of the next generation, at a moment in their lives where they have significant more economic safety than they would in their late teens. Simply put: "I'll pay for the education of the next generation, because the previous generation paid for mine". This is something which the U.S. does within families anyways, but some other countries do collectively, resulting, again, in compounded gains from a more educated society and cheaper education costs due to collective bargaining. Things like fancy dorms and millionaire school administrators are hard to justify when they are paid out of the paystub of your average nurse and construction worker...

Don't get me wrong, I did my undergrad in a (developing) country with public higher education and my graduate studies in the U.S. (on school support). There are definitely benefits to the U.S. system if you have the money or are in the top percentile for talent/luck. But overall, for the majority, the lack of a strong free public education option is a huge disadvantage, it seems to me, even after six years here, that this is one of those things where the U.S. does well despite of it, rather than because of it. Like private healthcare and lack of public transportation.

My theory is that providing an education for free of charge to the students has a significantly better payoff for the economy as a whole as well as the individual students vs loading individual students with the burden.

Your argument is very similar to the "i think it should be" argument that I mentioned before. Are there any studies or some other justification that might substantiate that your theory is indeed true?

Does all tertiary education should be "free" for everyone? English history, art, etc? How does the price setting works: government just pays whatever educational institution asks for? Does it forces institution to accept the amount of money being provided?

Also, what does "better payoff for the economy" mean? Does it mean that the median wage rises, amount of taxes collected increases, productivity increases, something else... ?

First, if you're skeptical that the gov't should just pay educational costs with a blank check, I would agree. Our current system of paying a grant and allocating loans to students blindly is pretty stupid. It increases university cost inflation as students shopping for an education don't have the experience needed to make a good cost decision to serve as a signal to control university spending. (and their parents have out of date information) too. It would serve a better cost control as well as be administratively cheaper to pay fewer public universities directly with strings attached for low or no cost tuitions.

As to why one would want to do it, economic activity would be higher. Lets compare two cases:

One a student goes to college, ends up with $40k worth of loans, starts working a job which they start to pay back almost immediately. The loan starts to reel back in the cost of the capital almost immediately, and it offsets the net income of the student. They spend less than they would have, they save less, and have less time to compound interest on smaller savings (creating a higher social burden). In the early portion of life you have a lot of economic activity. Moving into a first apartment, then first house generates all sorts of ancillary economic activity. All of this is delayed by higher student debt, and reflected in data.

On the other path, the same student goes to college, gets the same job at the same gross income. Now though, they have more disposable income and savings. More disposable income, means more spending, which means more economic activity. The gov't, even if it goes into debt itself to fund the education, wins in the short term with more activity and more tax receipts, and in the long term - better savings translating to a lighter load on backend gov't services. Students and parents benefit, the economy benefits, the govt doubly benefits, society improves...

There's a stigma if you're capable of paying for all or part of college and you don't. But if you can't there isn't.

But I do think its a good idea to have them pay for some of it regardless - either loan repayment after graduation or by working while going to school. My parents floated the idea of me working my first year but I didn't want to. I had 18 hrs of class and there was too much course work since it was designed to weed people out to worry about making some small hourly on a part-time job. I paid a year of school after I graduated.

Nowadays it is implicitly expected by most top universities that parents WILL pay for their children's education, and sometimes explicitly stated when it comes to applying for financial aid. I wouldn't expect any student to pay the astronomical tuition for college (50K x 4 years) all by themselves without any assistance.

I believe your parents' income is a FAFSA question if you are under 22 or thereabouts.

You could maybe agree to pay for the lowest cost state school and the cheapest housing arrangement. A resourceful kid may also find the cheap loopholes for books, faking commuter status to avoid overpriced dorms or food plans, etc.

My parents told me growing up that I'd have to pay for it myself, but by the time I was graduating from high school they decided college was too expensive for someone to pay their way through on their own. So they helped out.

So given the above experience, I think it'd be good to do some math and see if there isn't a middle ground. I think there's a lot to be said for students contributing something to their own education, but I don't think that means it's realistic for them to pay for all of it.

(Assuming college makes sense for someone to begin with.)