Letter on parents not paying for college strikes a few nerves

Suzan, you really started something!

Last month, I shared a letter from a reader named Suzan who wanted to know why Utah parents don't pay for their children's college education. Parents back East start saving the moment a baby is born, she said, but in this land of cheaper tuition, parents seem unwilling to pay even a small amount.

In a follow-up column, I shared several readers' responses to Suzan's question. But that has not stopped the flow of e-mail to my inbox, so here are a few more.

Tina said she could think of at least a few reasons why the situation may be different in Utah.

"One reason is because there are some families that are living below poverty level, so they are basically just barely surviving," Tina wrote. "I know about that since I came from one of those families. In that case the student goes and applies for scholarships and grant money and works to get through college.

"The other reason is a lot of families are saving to send their sons on (church) missions, which ends up being more expensive than a college education. Due to the time spent on a mission, it also delays when they will get through college. So a lot of students could be finishing as fast as back East, they just started later."

Carol, who like Suzan is a transplant to Utah, wrote that she also found the "go where it's cheapest and have the kids pay for it" attitude about college was prevalent among friends when she moved here.

"Many of them had their children work minimum-wage jobs in high school to start saving on their own," Carol wrote. "While our experience would not fit every circumstance, our choice was to have our children focus strongly on academics, with an eye towards scholarship money. As an example, our son attended a private out-of-state college and was eligible for a full-tuition scholarship worth over $45,000 during his college tenure based upon his ACT score only, in addition to other scholarships he earned. This was because of early preparation and 'paying the price' academically, so to speak, before he graduated from high school. . . .

"I think this type of long-term planning is often overlooked, as parents here stress learning the value of 'work' in the short term over what might happen if priorities were placed differently. Studying hard is work, too, of a different kind, but it has certainly reaped financial rewards in our home!"

We're also stressing academics in the Kratz home in hopes that our children will be able to nab scholarships in the future. I'm not saying that should take the place of saving, but there is money out there if you know where to look and have the credentials to get it.