How to Pay for Your Degree

By Alcides Hoy Jr.

You've been waiting for this moment for nearly 18 years: Your baby is almost ready for college. Your finances, not so much. The market's protracted free fall means that your college fund is now worth just a fraction of what you need. Your home's value has no doubt dropped sharply too - no help there. The only thing that keeps going up, you guessed it, is college tuition. So it's goodbye, Dream School U., hello, Central State, right?

Wrong. While there's no denying times are tough, you have more options to help pay for that BA than you think. From targeting the right schools to taking advantage of new financial aid rules and tax breaks, you can get the price to a manageable level. These steps will ensure your kid ends up at a great school you can really afford.

1. Use your savings strategically

The typical 529 college savings plan of a high school junior or senior has dropped 12.5% in value over the past year. And if you didn't invest in an age-based portfolio that automatically shifted into safer investments as your child got older, your losses may be far worse. The big question before you: Should you try to hold off withdrawing money from the account to give your savings time to bounce back?

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Is College Worth The Cost

By: Alcides Hoy Jr.

Everybody when they hear the name of this post they ask Is This Writer Crazy? No Not at all. Sometimes we all think about the positives of college but we don't even realize if the money we invest is even worth it. Syracuse University next school year is going to be approximately 50,000 US dollars and at the year we have to ask ourselves are we getting the same education as a student in a 20,000 US dollar institution? Possibly. Everything financially seems to unbalanced when we look at how the salaries decrease but the price of college increases. In actually its as if we are paying for the name of school rather than the knowledge provided inside of those multimillion dollar buildings. In a recent chart produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will see how college has increased drastically higher than living necessities such as medical and energy. At the end of the day we have to ask ourselves are we receiving in return what we pay for college?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/20/pf/college/college_price.moneymag/index.htm

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/oct/14/business/chi-college-costs-14-oct14

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0327/039.html

Financial Fit

By Alcides Hoy Jr.

This video will give us a better knowledge of finanical fitting when it comes to applying for graduate school or to help our following generations with undergraduate enrollment.

Bad Economy, Community College Enrollments Surge

By Shu Zheng

As the economic downturn hits hard, community colleges enrollments go record high. People who lost jobs are now seeking to add skills or training, and some students who might have gone away for college look to save money by living home while attending classes. The current tough time are fueling eagerness among unemployed workers to upgrade their skills, but in the meantime, the recession is forcing the traditional four-year colleges and universities to raise their tuition. Thus, the inexpensive community colleges have to struggle to absorb the load even when their own budgets have been hacked.

In New York, a report shows that there’s been a 70% surge in the number of public high school graduates entering the City Community College system over the past seven years. Mayor Bloomberg also pointed to a 37% growth in CUNY four-year colleges.

Demand for the classes at community colleges is at record high, but on the other hand, there isn’t sufficient funding for the community colleges to meet the demand. It ends up that many community colleges have to turn away a great number of students. So although the overall enrollment has been surged over the recent past years, there are still a lot of people that have been shut out of the colleges.

Sources:
1. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29375476/
2. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/18/league
3. http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/126598