manuel said:I disagree - I feel the market is the only and thus the proper arbiter of the value of one's education, etcWow. I am genuinely surprised that you would go this far... I don't deny the existence of non-financial factors but they're too individual to use for valuation. Same reason we don't get to sell our old car for another 5K because we 'love' it.But doesn't this beg the question at issue, namely that the value of an education should be measured like the value of a car?

I understand that it might tougher to quantify "non-financial" factors for use in valuation, but how can the rational answer simply be to ignore them as a consequence? This might not be the best example, but if people can't or won't pay for preserving endangered species, should we simply turn wetlands into more (short-term) economically productive parking lot? I'm sure you're well aware that collective action problems and other well-documented market failures often will result in financial/economic misallocations in many such cases. I'm honestly not being flip or sarcastic here...I'm just amazed that you'd write off non-market considerations--not to mention massive issues of "market failure"--so casually.

Indeed, the premise that "market valuation is more determinate is itself highly debatable. Mr. Market changes his valuations of various educational credentials constantly. No high schooler can have a very fine-grained idea of how much their degree will command, or how its "worth" relative to alternatives will change, by the time clear much idea of simply because of their large subjective component...

I'm genuinely curious how you will advise your kids RE their college educations when the time comes. Will you suggest that they look up current data for starting salaries based on degree and major, and suggest the pick the highest one? If not, what are you thinking?

Note - there are many fairly low paid lawyers; and many barely qualified teachers with seniority making 70-80k. I think it's impossible to postulate that there are 'too many' or 'too few' of anything - the market and the incentives it creates are a much better judge of this than I.Again this begs the question: is "market valuation" the best judge of value. As an ethicist, I'm all too aware of how hard such valuation questions are to answer. But if we simply throw up our hands and defer such questions to market valuation, then I think we are in very serious trouble.

Witold said:For every story of some parents cutting their kid off and the kid 'seeing the light' and achieving financial success, you have many stories where the kid's career and financial situation lingers because finances hold them back from overcoming certain hudles like getting more education, changing jobs, etc.

Perhaps this is true, however, I'm not sure if there's any correlation between the two. I know plenty of directionless, unhappy people whose parents paid for there education. I wonder if a few of them might have done better if they were entrusted with a little more responsibility earlier in their life.



Many of my former classmates recieved help from their parents. Their parents bought them a house/condo, paid for school, and all they had to do is focus on getting good grades. Today, their houses/condos have doubled/trippled in value (putting their net assets above 1M) and they have cushy lawyer/consulting careers. In contrast, a lot of the hard working students without parental support were so broke by undergrad time that they didn't pursue grad school - nor had the means to pay for it - and today they don't own a home and probably won't be able to buy one, and definately don't make as much money.


I find the former quite sad personally. There are few monetary things in life that I would appreciate if given to me. Having a house bought for me would be kind of depressing. It would be a kind of emotional slavery, always thinking in the back of my mind that I had to act a certain way because of what I was given. Consistent with this, I've told all my relatives whom I would otherwise stand to inherit money from that I would rather that they spend the money on themselves while they're alive, donate it to charity, or give it away to someone else(plus I've seen too many families torn apart over money after the death of a loved one. I don't need that kind of headache in my life - at any price). I don't think any of them take me seriously, but if and when I do receive anything, I will be at a quandry with what to do with it. This might make me unusual, but yet I don't mind.


My point is that good kids + help = great idea (investment). Bad kids + help = bad idea (subsidy).

Sounds ok. The tricky part is knowing who's who ahead of time.

I think the two sides on this larger discussion have similar goals, the difference is in how we get there.

DaveHanson said:This really isn't an attempt to offer a facetious example, or to bait you...I'm just having a hard time seeing how someone as thoughtful as you are could seriously think this way...

I'm too busy being a mediocre systems guy(no computer scientist me) to read your entire post. But I can't resist the temptation to respond to this comment. This is the core of why debating this point is a waste of time - you preface any discussion with your consternation that any thoughtful person could feel differently. My experience has been that on almost any subject of import most the thoughtful people I meet disagree with me in substantial ways. That's life.

On college funding I think the basic positions have been fairly well stated. I understand why you feel the way you do (I think) and just disagree.

manuel said:This is the core of why debating this point is a waste of time - you preface any discussion with your consternation that any thoughtful person could feel differently.Huh? What does my difficulty understanding this part of your position have to do with the substantive debate on the merit of said position?

-It has nothing to do with the market failure point.
-It has nothing to do with the love of lower salary work = eventual higher income point.
-It has nothing to do with the implications of letting market valuations govern point (paving over wetlands, selling the presidency, etc.

As I say, I won't badger you again to respond to these points, but my confusion about the basis for your view is really irrelevant.

My experience has been that on almost any subject of import most the thoughtful people I meet disagree with me in substantial ways. That's life.Absolutely! And yet you, like me, spend time not just deal-hunting (e.g. for economic gains), but also just debating on message boards like FWF. Why waste the time there if isn't something to be gained by debate?

On college funding I think the basic positions have been fairly well stated. The positions, yes. But not the reasoning behind them. Here's how it looks to me thus far:

1. You claimed that the market, while imperfect, was a better valuation mechanism than any competing alternative--and you showed how you've lived by that belief with your career choice.

2. Once I saw how far you were taking this (not clear to me at first) I gave a few distinct reasons why I thought the market was a highly inadequate valuation choice in contexts like these.

3. You then suggested further dialogue was pointless because (a) we disagreed (well, yes, else why debate?), and (b) I was surprised that you held the view that you did.


I don't see why 3 follows from 1 & 2. On the contrary, presuming someone is thoughtful, I generally learn more from them if they disagree more sharply with me. And, believe it or not, if I didn't respect your thoughts on this, I wouldn't waste my time.

As a mid 20's person, living at home near San Francisco, working in IT, earning a decent salary and from an middle/upper class family I know the situation. The simple answer for the kid living in manhattan is MOVE!!!

Its sooooo typical for americans to spend above their means, and this is exactly what this kid is doing. If you make $30k a year, then move home, move to a place with lower rent, don't live in the most expensive neighborhood in NYC. Buy a used $2k car, you can't afford something better. Maybe this lifestyle will give you the drive and incentive to earn more.

This is a good reason why wealth only lasts 3 generations. There's no real appreciation of money without the struggle to make it.

While I firmly believe in an education, and even a parental financed one, after graduation and worst yet post graduate school, kids need to learn about the real world. Where money isn't just a phone call and a sob/beg story away.

If you need parental financial help to support a middle class lifestyle, then maybe you should be living so well off. Rent too high? Move home. Bills too much? Stop shopping for clothes. etc. etc.

I'd be ashamed of myself for taking my parents hard earned cash AFTER getting an higher learning degree.

~Ranting is complete~

DaveHanson said:
slimcustomer said
As far as receiving gifts goes, I've always had a problem with it since childhood. My parents said I was polite and said thank you, but you could always tell I wasn't happy getting gifts. It made for wonderful birthday parties.At the risk of getting even futher OT, and with the greatest of respect for your motives here, I wonder if this might be something worth reconsidering.

Good people often get more pleasure by giving to other good people than they do by receiving. Why diminish that legitimate pleasure by entertaining reactions like guilt, shame, and embarrassment that you've had since childhood? Assuming you're a good steward of the funds, what possible rational basis could there be for dread here?

Dave was one of your college Majors in Psychology? I don't know what the cause of my disposition towards getting gifts in my later childhood was, but it certainly fits well with my adult view of gift giving and receiving. Every few years after Christmas the WSJ has an article about the lost economic value of gifts that are unwanted. It's a huge waste bound by social convention that's completely awkward to get out of. Perhaps this may sound ungrateful, but my family really doesn't want for anything that we need. Toys have taken over the fourth bedroom in our house to the extent that our kids say,"I don't want any more toys. Let's just throw them all away"(of course if you try doing that, each toy upon examination merits being saved by the owner). We are in a unique situation I realize, since up until recently my four children had more great-grandparents than siblings. With no first cousins to speak of, three generations of pent up giving on each side of the family funnel their gift giving towards our kids. I appreciate how fortunate we are to be in the situation we are in, but I would rather have my children enjoy their extended family without all economic waste that is even obvious to my kids.

You don't have to worry about any odd emotions or dread on my part about receiving gifts. Long ago I was able to largely fix my own gift receiving situation. At Christmas, because my wife and I are the only ones with young children, we've asked most people to give only to our kids so as not to go broke giving gifts to our family alone. The few goods I do get from mom or dad often don't fit or aren't in my taste so they end up in the large bottom drawer of my dresser. When that's full, it's off to charity or a younger brother. We stopped celebrating my birthday a long time ago. When one out of every two weekends a year is already a family get-together, its easy to drop your own birthday from the schedule.

So how does this tie in to parents providing economic support? In addition to the potential of creating perverse economic incentives and nurturing dependancy, there is the whole issue of economic waste. Although parents may see a "need" for an adult child, if it truly was a need for the intended recipient, wouldn't it be better to let them decide what they think their needs are by letting them fulfill them theirselves? In one respect, gift giving is a way of exerting your power over others through economic influence. When the recipient is of the same mind as you with respect to their needs and/or goals and none of the other harms mentioned above are a threat, than you probably are ok. I think its difficult to know when however. If your values don't coincide with the recipient's, our society's polite manner of saying "thank you" for things we neither want nor desire just conceals the economic waste and inefficiency that often goes along with gift giving.

slimcustomer, thanks for taking my perhaps presumptuous suggestion in the constructive spirit in which it was intended. While not suprised, I still appreciate it. As far as your interesting post: Although parents may see a "need" for an adult child, if it truly was a need for the intended recipient, wouldn't it be better to let them decide what they think their needs are by letting them fulfill them theirselves? In one respect, gift giving is a way of exerting your power over others through economic influence. When the recipient is of the same mind as you with respect to their needs and/or goals and none of the other harms mentioned above are a threat, than you probably are ok.You raise a good point. This is why I generally think it's better to give "unrestricted" gifts rather than strings attached. Not only does it mitigate the power/manipulation issues you righly highlight, but also potential manipulation on the part of the recipient. lost economic value of gifts that are unwanted. It's a huge waste bound by social convention that's completely awkward to get out of....I appreciate how fortunate we are to be in the situation we are in, but I would rather have my children enjoy their extended family without all economic waste that is even obvious to my kids.I agree that gift-giving conventions are extremely inefficient and wasteful. Aside from you points, there's also the time that must be spent obtaining gifts for people. If you're a person who genuinely likes shopping for someone else, that's one thing...but I know few people who do, and we certainly don't.

Consider though that cash gifts, especially unrestricted ones, have none of these problems. And something like a matching gift, or perhaps even an outright gift for a major "investment" (house down payment or schooling in certain circumstances, for example), likely won't either.

The huge issue with these remains incentive problems. And that needs to be thought about very seriously. Sometimes, it should just mean that gifts are appropriately tailored so as not to sap initiative or independence. Often it will mean forgoing gifts altogether.


Shandril said You don't try as hard IMO if you have a cash cow to boost your income. That's certainly the conventional wisdom here, and I agree that in many cases, it's true.

OTOH, witold's observations above are consistent with my own. Many people who barely scrape by despite working hard slowly become bitter and cynical, despite their good-faith efforts. That's doubly true if a hardship that isn't their fault hits them: big medical bill, victim of a crime, etc. In many such cases, a well-designed gift not only helps such a person better their situation, but sends a message that someone is looking out for them.

Shandril said:But the theme of the article didn't seem to me to be addressing those special cases. More towards warning parents that they might need more than just saving for college. To me, that hints of a more systematic approach than you're talking about I think. That's what I have a problem with, with a de-facto accepted general tradition of parent-provided welfare.I think this is a fair read of the piece, and I agree. No doubt the writer is trying to stay PC and avoid offense...

Anyway, outside of extraordinary circumstances, at some point you gotta wonder why you're still in the hole after all the hard work. Are you in a bad career path? Do you need to step down lifestyle to give yourself breathing room? Some of those may be hard to grasp by graduation time (due to lack of first hand experience) but after a couple of years in the work force, you would be able to tell and do the necessary adjustments. If you're earning $15k/yr and want to live in NYC and your job prospects suck/having hard time making ends meet, whose responsibility is it if you stay there and don't relocate/look for better job/do career change/etc.? I think someone in their late 20s, early 30s should be more than adequatly equipped to make those judgement calls...Sure there might be special cases, but those desperate situations aren't really all that common, at least on the order of magnitude that gets them the headlines....

There has to be some point where the transfer of responsibility is complete and the thought of having mom&dad as safety net is a very distant one. And it should remain a last resort for very special situations, not a baseline welfare supplemental income.Well said.

EricGo, apologies if I missed your reference, but what did you mean by I sincerely hope the SO has, and continues to be, highly valued by the market.

Ah, now I get it.

Seriously, in fairness, he didn't say that market valuations were the sole arbiters of value. manuel said:That's how I choose - needed money to eat and live. Looked up the highest starting salaries...Every time I considered a MBA I made the same calculation - never had a ROI for me....Disagree on valuation - I think our society is in much worse trouble if we begin assigning values based on a person or a groups subjective sense of what is important. No idea if the market's perfect or not; but it's better than any alternative I've seen.Since his neg of your post shows he's still following the thread, maybe he'll comment on why he didn't consider skipping college altogether and, say, sell crack? Since he's a bit thin-skinned, I'm afraid he'll think I'm making fun of him, but I'm actually half serious...While I'm no expert on the drug trade, I'm sure he's way more intelligent than than your typical six-figure-netting drug dealer. That likely means that the market would have valued his drug dealing more than computer science. And if a person doesn't believe that laws or social mores are a better valuation mechanism, then its illegality shouldn't be a problem, no?

One could reasonably answer that the costs of getting caught, going to prison, etc. might offset the monetary benefits. Fair enough. Let's suppose selling drugs were legalized. If the market still valued drug dealing more highly than comp sci, then why not follow the dictates of Mr. Market and become a dealer at 18 instead?

For me, the answer is pretty obvious...but not without resorting to non-market based valuations that would have to resoundingly trump market-based ones. And that, of course, is the point of this little hypothetical example.