houselouse1

25+ years ago, when I went to in-state school all 4 years, it was $75/credit hour for my undergraduate. My friends that went to CC for two years paid $35/credit hour for CC.

Right now, the community college that one went to is $100/credit hour. The private school is $1200/credit hour, although they charge a flat rate for full time admission. There are a lot of fee waivers in there that lower the actual amount to about $700/credit hour. For both, books ran about $500/semester, and that reflects strategically not purchasing some books.

For all of the above, the targets were 30 credits per year.

We gave our kids the same amount of money toward school. One went to community college, graduated basically debt free. The other went to a brand name private school and has taken on a painful amount of debt.

The difficult advice I would offer is this: If you are not a top X% student, and the only way for you to pay for your education is to take on debt, you are making a mistake. Full stop. Find a cheaper school. Find another way, work part time and go to school part time. See if your church/mosque/community group/etc will give you even $500/semester toward school. Live at home or with a relative. If you still get gifts for Christmas, ask for money instead and put that toward books for Spring semester. Stop eating out, learn to make your own food, the meals on campus are too expensive. Find something that you can buy in bulk and sell one at a time on ebay. And of course, the best choice is to go back in time and be born into a wealthy family.

You can make it work, but you have to be willing to set aside whatever vision you have about how college should be. Take what is available and make it your own.