Come on and collapse already! My kid will hit college age in four years. I would like to have some newer/better/cheaper options to consider.
You want a newer/better/cheaper option?
DREAM on.
I mean that. Literally. Have your kid renounce citizenship, move to Mexico, illegally cross and BOOM!
Golden.
Have him consider trade school. The average age for an electrical line man is the mid fifties. These guys make six figures.
Cuban right on on this one. Listened to him live about an hour ago.
Here is a better option, but it’s not necessarily cheap:
HILLSDALE.
I would strongly encourage anyone near college age to consider their local community college. An intro to chemistry class, for example, is the exact same course whether it's at the community college or at the much more expensive university.
Get the basics out of the way at a community college, then transfer to a university for the upper level courses.
The only possible exception I'd make to that is for engineering majors. It's tougher to transfer in to an engineering program as an upperclassman than it is to get accepted there as a freshman.
Oh, and one more thing. Strongly encourage your kid to pick a local school, and commute from home. Independence and all that is fine, but room and board is very expensive. Why take on that debt if you don't really have to?
This is my recommendation.
Sources of Free College Credit and Continuing Education Classes
http://hubpages.com/hub/Alternative-Sources-of-College-Credit-and-Continuing-Education-Classes
Get your kid in Pre-AP or AP courses as early as possible to get dual credit in high school.
Take online classes and CLEP or AP tests to shave up to a year and a half off college.
Test drive career paths so the kid knows they don’t like kids and shouldn’t go into teaching (happened to 2 friends of mine) or work as a candy stripper to decide before Junior year you don’t like medicine.
100 Million Asian kids want a US education and will pay for it.