Devoted Dad Works Night Shift as Janitor to Put All 5 of His Kids Through College

What a great man!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/devoted-dad-works-night-shift-020242410.html

 

I had a classmate in high school whose father was a professor at Wilkes University. Around junior year I made a comment to her about how nice it was that she was going to get a free ride. She scoffed.

"I'm not going to Wilkes. I like the program at Kings better."

Kings College is about a five minute walk away from Wilkes. Both are private non-profit. Kings is operated by the Congregation of the Holy Cross, the same order of priests and brothers who operate Notre Dame.

She ended up getting a degree in the same field that her father taught. The biggest difference is that she could have had the degree for free. Instead, she took out nearly $60k in student loans to get the degree at the school next door to spite her father for some reason.

Today, on Facebook, she laments both her debt and her "useless" degree.

So I think this dad is great. I hope his kids appreciate it. But I do think that if mom or dad hands you a free education, through hard work or otherwise, it can impact the kids negatively by not allowing them to feel the value of the gift they were given.

My father refused to fill out my FAFSA unless I also got a job. And he was only willing to pony up a relatively small amount in tuition. And he refused to cosign any loans. I thought he was kind of a prick at the time (also, he was). But I was one of the few kids in my class who had actually seen a tuition bill. It became very difficult to screw around when you realized how expensive the whole thing was and that you were expected to contribute to it.

 

We are working this plan as well. My husband took his current job so our kids could have a free 4-year degree from a private university.

I wanted to add- people anywhere can do this. Programs like Tuition Exchange are reciprocal agreements that allow you to work at any of the 600+ colleges and use your tuition benefit at a participating school. The problem with TE, is that it has a lot more limitations than just straight-up working for a college. If my kids attend Johnson and Wales, they'll have 100% free tuition. If they attend a college in TE, they are capped at $34k per year (believe it or not, there are schools with tuition higher than that on the list) and the university only opens X slots per year. So, a certain school might only accept 10 TE students that year. Furthermore, they cap how many children can do it- I think it's only 2 of our kids can do TE but all of our kids can do Johnson and Wales. It's open to all full time employees.

http://www.tuitionexchange.org/

 

I've toyed with the idea of taking a job at Cornell, Syracuse or Colgate. Heck, even Lemoyne would be a worthwhile venture. The benefits vary somewhat. At Syracuse it's 100%. At Cornell, they only give you 50% off for dependent children (though they, unlike Syracuse, are willing to pay 30% of tuition at any university if your kid doesn't go to Cornell).

But I've also been saving in their respective 529 plans so that they will, hopefully, be able to graduate either debt free or with as little debt as possible. I figure if I can provide the undergrad education then, worst case scenario, they are on the hook for any graduate or professional school studies.

 

If a person were choosing a job to get the tuition benefit, it isn't worth it to look at schools that pay partial tuition or even the 2 year schools- the real money is in the private 4-year universities that pay 100% and there are TONS of them. Policies can change from year to year, so I didn't make a list but it's several thousand. Public universities, not so much - partial tuition is much more common. Community college tuition benefits are useless- best case pay out a few thousand per child. At J&W, the benefit for each of my children exceeds $100,000 and that doesn't include my hubby's MBA tuition (75% online, 90% butt in seat) or the degrees I have yet to earn (100% butt in seat undergrad)

 

God bless this man. And he's very smart to do this.

Had my father survived cancer, I would've had the same privilege. Ah, la vida... que vueltas da la vida...

 

Sorry to hear that hermano. I am sure your dad is proud of you.

Vaya con dios

 

One of my mother-in-law's cousins worked at Northeastern University, and both his children got their degrees for free, other than the cost of textbooks.

 

This father is to be commended for his labor of love. Unfortunately, we hear far too few stories like this, I guess the media wants to focus on those who graduate with $100K student loan debt and say they can't pay it. There is a four-letter word that always helps, it's called WORK.

My last two years of high school, I worked a full (3:00 PM --11:00 PM) second shift job in a local factory. After getting married and having our only child, I began college in my late 20's. I worked full-time through an undergrad degree, two masters, a professional doctorate, and finally a PhD. All student loans are paid in full. Yes, it was difficult. Yes, it was tough. But never once did I expect the "guvment" to bail me out or forgive my loan. I paid it all and in full. It is difficult to have sympathy/empathy for those who scoff at the idea of working to pay their student loans.