How Your Child can help to lower Cost of Education

By Francisco J. Colayco, Ph.D

It is the ambition of every parent to send their child to school. But the cost can be prohibitive. In previous columns we talked about the idea of sending your children to a less expensive school that still provides good education, choosing a course with a vocational or technical subject that has more earning potential instead of a college degree, taking advantage of discounts and payment schemes that may be available.

Here are other ways of lowering the cost of education. You must not forget to ask if the school you graduated from gives a discount to the children of their graduates.

Availing of scholarships is definitely ideal. However, this requires that your children are competent. You are blessed if your children have the natural talents to acquire a scholarship. For many, this can be acquired by training your children early in life to be disciplined and to love acquiring knowledge. If they understand the value of a good education early on and if they know that one of the sure ways they can get a good education is through a scholarship, perhaps, they will be more determined to work on it. Even while they are small, help them already by researching on what is needed and what they have to do to apply for scholarships and to be accepted.

There are so many schools to choose from now and there is competition among them especially schools that have recently expanded and need to attract more students quickly. Some will even allow your child to graduate in three years for a four-year degree through an accelerated program. This would mean savings in tuition and other expenses for one school year. However, this also means that your child will have a heavier load during each semester and will have to study through the summer.

Your child could also opt to take ladderized courses where he could start with vocational courses and proceed to take on degree courses as and when he has the time and resources. All the subjects taken from the vocational course will be credited to the degree courses. Thus, your child could stop for one year, or every other year and return the following year without losing any credits. This could help you raise funds for your subsequent school years. Or you could have your child take a part-time job provided it will not interfere with his studies and his learning process.

Distance learning is the latest available opportunity for everybody. It just requires knowledge of the computer and the internet. It opens a whole new world at a much lower cost for everyone with real ambitions to receive a good education. Your child could do most of his learning from your home or a nearby facility and just go to the actual school for a designated period of time.