Tuition is killing us

sky

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 9:16 am

nylon wrote:

amother wrote:

if a family is making let's say 150 K and spends 80K on tuition for let's say 4 kids, there is still 70 K left for the six of them to live on. This can be done. We live on half of that. However, they will be living very modestly, perhaps in a simple rental apartment, no cars, etc. very simple. Is it crazy in many ways yes, but it's a choice they make for sending the kids to a Jewish school. If that's the priority.

$150K gross = at least $30K goes on taxes. Let's use the upper limit. So, 120K - 80K = $40K.

Do you seriously expect people to spend 2/3 of their income on education and live at an income which, were it really all they had, would entitle them to benefits? It's not realistic. This is not about driving a Mercedes or going on Pesach vacations. This is about health care, retirement, groceries. While I agree that the degree of gashmius in many communities is too high, I do not think tuition should come at the cost of owning an ordinary (not outrageous) home, a 401K, even a car (you'd be dooming American Jewish families to living in NYC, which comes with its own costs). Or, for that matter, college expenses, when they come.

This already expects people to make an upper middle class living--and yet, not live like they have it, which may not be tenable. When you make more money, you often have more expenses that go above and beyond keeping up with the Cohens. You may need to live in a more expensive area to be close to work; you may need to have better clothes; you may have childcare expenses above and beyond tuition.

More importantly, tuition is only going up. You can only sacrifice so much. Schools don't expect you to spend 2/3 of your take-home pay on tuition either, which is part of why we're in this mess. Everyone knows it's unaffordable.

(By the way, Ruchel, I do know of public high schools that have gyms. However, they also have enough students to spread out the cost--I know of one with nearly 3,000 students. Sports are also a much bigger thing in American schools than in French ones.)

Tuition for 4 kids should not 80K. That is 20K per child. It should be anywhere from 20K - 40K. That should still leave a family making 150K (in this example) with 80K - 100K - which isn't crazy to live on after taxes and tuition. Isn't that only a 1/4 of their income. Am I missing something (or bad at math) the numbers seem really inflated.

amother

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 10:06 am

You're forgetting about maaser, savings and retirement. No, the latter two aren't 100% necessary but as a middle class educated person I would not feel comfortable with nothing in the bank, no emergency money, no retirement etc etc And after you deduct all this (plus a whole lot of junk that comes up like repairs and medical stuff), the usable income left over is about enough, but no one is living it up. And I think the point of the thread is that we put in all this education and work to make a nice living and at the end of the day we're not living nearly as nicely as the averge Joe down the street utilizing the public school system. $150K for us is nothing like $150K for Joe. And it seems unfair.

Because day school doesn't feel like a luxury.

Hashem_Yaazor

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 10:17 am

amother wrote:

For some, maaser might not be a requirement. Speak to your rav in terms of obligations, if tuition can be used as maaser, etc.

Anyway, you're looking at it wrong.
You're saying "I went through lots of advanced education to get a good paying job and I have nothing better than someone down the street who didn't work hard for a good job and just sends his kids to public school"
Do you REALLY think that's the truth? That the hypothetical public school kids have it just as good as your kids will in a private school?
At the end of the day, you're going to have a lot more good coming out from your children (hopefully) and though it's intangible, it matters so much more than luxuries in life you'll have to forgo.

Hashem_Yaazor

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 10:24 am

Bottom line:

Life isn't fair. At least the way we perceive fair to be.

I mean we have to be Jewish and we have to be frum and therefore we can't buy the local supermarket's weekly ham special. And we have to use our vacation days for Yom Tov. And we have to skip our work picnic because it's on a Saturday.

But is this what we want from life? Is this what matters at the end of the day?

Or is life about striving to be a better Jew, strengthening our connection with G-d, passing on the mesora to our children?

I get that tuition is too high. I understand it's a big, big problem. I'm also frustrated with it.

But looking at it with the attitude that we should be having all these other luxuries in life because we are entitled to them because we did all the right things: went to the right colleges, got the right job, etc is looking at it from the perspective of the average American, not the average Orthodox Jew.
Being comfortable in your lifestyle is second to the main purpose of being in the world. It's extra. It's not a matter of fair or unfair...at the end of the day, with children who will be ovdei Hashem because they got the chinuch you felt was necessary for their spiritual development, you come out ahead. That is infinite...l'sof kol hadoros. Don't underestimate its worth.

Maybe we should say it's not fair that the average Joe doesn't have such meaning in his life.

Think about what matters, and then think if what you have is fair.

chavamom

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 10:59 am

yummymummy wrote:

so please tell us what is very wrong? it's simple math really, where do you think that there are thousands of dollars worth of waste and inefficiencies in our schools?

I can tell you what is wrong. No school - even the Horace Manns and Country Days out there - are able to survive on tuition alone. In most cases, it is the endowment that provides the bulk of the income. We have several problems. One is that the community is growing exponentially - 2 grandparents might have had 3 or 4 children who then produced 20+ grandchildren. Yet those 2 grandparents are probably the only ones in the whole scheme of things that could donate to an endowment at this point. The second is that there is a problem with fundraising among people who have graduated from institutions. They may be too strapped paying their own children's tuition OR we have the phenomena of people feeling like they already spent 6 figures in tuition over the years....and now you want them to KEEP paying? And thirdly, you have the problem of ever diversified institutions. Yes, it tailors your child's education to more nuances of hashkafa, etc. BUT it also produces a huge increase in cost by now having to support 2 institutions (or 3 or 4 or 50) instead of one.

black sheep

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 11:22 am

chavamom wrote:

yummymummy wrote:

so please tell us what is very wrong? it's simple math really, where do you think that there are thousands of dollars worth of waste and inefficiencies in our schools?

I agree. one of the biggest issues is the lack of donations outside of the parent body. this is due to a combination of a bad economy and an overall dissatisfaction with the schools and people already over-donating to other things that are also important. you have an interesting point about having too many different schools, I never thought of that but its very true. so schools are relying on the parent body alone to support them, and unfortunately it just isn't enough.

and I know I will get some rotten tomatoes thrown at my screenname for saying this, but this is another side-effect of encouraging every single boy to never go to college and instead learn and go into chinuch. less money overall in the communities, and donations are going instead of the schools to kollel families. and wealthy grandparents are spending all their "charity" money on supporting their grandchildren in kollel.

and yes this affects our MO schools as well, because the grandparents would have been giving donations to the MO schools, and when the communities have less money in general, this affects all of us. the economy is connected. those who understand finance know that even what is happening in the economy of other countries affects our economy. and we have a system that encourages NOT making money....

there is of course mismanagement of finances on the part of the schools, which is big enough to deserve a mention in almost every post. which poster said they should hire a finance expert in every school to manage the spending? brilliant.

black sheep

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 11:27 am

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

oh, yes! good point! life isn't fair, so let's never fix any problems. why try making things better? that would be an American notion that we should try to make the world a better place. it is much more jewish to just take it and never say anything. you get that tuition is a big problem, but you are apparently a better person than all of us because you would never try to fix it. because, as you say, that is so unjewish to try to fix a problem.

Hashem_Yaazor

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 11:32 am

black sheep wrote:

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

Please stop twisting my words.

Did I say I was against coming up with new solutions to help with the tuition crisis?

No, not at all.

I was upset at the ATTITUDE that "why should we have to pay for tuition and not have luxuries like people who get to send to public school".

THAT is what I was talking about. Please re-read my post and see if you can find any of your preconceived notions in it.

black sheep

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 11:42 am

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

black sheep wrote:

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

even giving you all the benefit of the doubt, at best I think your post is a cop out. posters are not complaining that they want to live lavish lifestyles but cannot do so because of tuition. if they were, I'd agree with you partially that it might be a matter of priorities. but posters are complaining that they are making six figure incomes and are not able to make their basic bills, let alone save for a house or retirement because their tuition is close to and sometimes greater than 100K! this is no longer a matter of prioritizing your child's chinuch over the comforts of life.

saw50st8

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 11:52 am

shalhevet wrote:

I don't have time to quote and answer properly here (almost Shabbos_ but, black sheep, who told you what is more important - kolellim or schools? And which kind of school? what made you say that it's a problem that people are designating money for men learning vs. children learning.

And you make it sound like our purpose in this world is to find jobs which make lots of money to fund how the community chooses to educate their children. Kind of like measuring a person's worth according to how many $$ he makes. Hashem gives parnassa - maybe He has a different system in mind.

Shalhevet, I just want to clarify something. If you had enough money to either give one child an education for a year OR support a man in Kollel for a year, what would you choose? (You have to pick one or the other - no cop out answers)

Ruchel

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 11:52 am

sky wrote:

Ruchel wrote:

Every school a gym?? wow.
I went to a big, affluent, wealthy public school, and we went to the local gym, made private for the kids.
What next, a pool? Every single addition = other families who won't be able to send.

[Totally off topic - yep, my son's school has a pool, his tuition includes the month of July so it makes sense for them to have a pool on site, its cheaper then busing them to an offsite pool. The extra summer program with busing only costs me $250 which is significantly cheaper then any summer/camp program out there. ]

It's a totally different set up then.
By me, school is school. Not summer camp, not extra curricular, etc.
Kids walk to the gym and pool, except in the coutryside where it's too far.

black sheep

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 12:02 pm

shalhevet wrote:

well I dont think its a matter of what is more important. it is just a matter of facts. there is less money being donated to schools because the money is going to kollel purposes, and because less fathers are earning money because instead they are learning. we can have a separate thread and debate the pros and cons of kollel, but that was not my point at all. we are discussing why tuition is such a problem, and this is one of the factors. why didn't you ask me why I thought the declining economy was a bad thing? you have a trigger button for when the word kollel is mentioned.

and where did you get anything about my ideas of our purpose in this world? or about measuring a person's worth by how much money he makes? this is not a philosophical discussion, this is a practical discussion. schools have no money, parents cannot afford the tuition, teacher are not being paid on time, and tuition is increasing every year. if your answer is that Hashem gives parnassa, and that a person is not measured by his financial worth, I think you meant to post under intellectual discussions rather than under Finances. let's not mix discussions. I will gladly debate the purpose of our lives with you, but not on the same thread trying to discuss the tuition issue.

and may all our machlokes be leshaim shamayim! good shabbos!

saw50st8

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 12:05 pm

sky wrote:

nylon wrote:

amother wrote:

In NJ (in my area), tuition is between $14-18,000/elementary and $25-30,000 for HS. If you have 2 in HS and 2 in elementary school, you could be on the hook for almost $100,000.

b from nj

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 12:25 pm

saw50st8 wrote:

sky wrote:

nylon wrote:

amother wrote:

In NJ (in my area), tuition is between $14-18,000/elementary and $25-30,000 for HS. If you have 2 in HS and 2 in elementary school, you could be on the hook for almost $100,000.

We must live in the same area of NJ b/c these are in fact the prices where I live & it's even pricier when you have a child that has learning disabilities & needs to be in a separate class in order to address their different learning styles b/c then you need to ADD $8-10k to the cost of basic tuition in addition to various therapies (language, reading, vision etc) that kids with LD often require. I agree that tuition is a HUGE issue & something drastic must change if we want our children to continue to be able to send their children to yeshivos in the future.