Day 289 - Poison Ivy League

Our friend, Michelle, took a trip to Boston and returned with gifts for the kids: Harvard t-shirts. I suppose it is the dream of every parent that their child will be smart enough to go to a prestigious university. My dream for my kids is a bit more simple: I want Andrew to grow a mustache, and I want Emma to yodel.

But just in case we find out our kids are really smart, I decided to do a little research on Harvard. Mainly the cost of going there. After looking at the tuition, I really hope Andrew grows facial hair and Emma loves Alpine folk music.

The current tuition cost to Harvard is $32,557. When you add health services fees, student services fees, and room and board, the new total is $47,215. And THEN if you add personal expenses and travel costs, the final total is $52,650. Multiply that by two and you get $105,300. BUT you need to figure out how much it would cost us in about seventeen years. The difference between this year's tuition and last year's is about $2000. For simplicity sake, let's multiply $2000 by 17 years. That's $34,000. Multiply that by two and add it to my previous grand total and you get $173,300. FINALLY let's multiply that by four years and you get a depressing $693,200. Looking at that number, my dream for my children has plunged to the even more simplistic "don't f-up."

Now what can you get for $693,200? How about the following:

1,733 Playstation 3s
25,674 Hello Kitty dolls
154 ,044 gallons of gasoline
693,200 dollar bills

Since it seems pretty unrealistic that Lisa and I will ever be able to afford Harvard's tuition (or any private college for that matter), I came up with a couple of alternatives for the kids. The first one is Los Angeles Community College. It's only $20/unit and the kids can live at home with us. So if you take 16 units each quarter, the total cost for both kids would be $2560/year! All I can say with that fine figure is: I Love LA!

The second option is trucking school. The Trans Union Truck Driving School in Tacoma, WA has a tuition fee of only $2895! Multiply that by two and you got a final total of $5790. Even better...you don't even need a high school diploma! Keep on, truckin'!

It's a little ridiculous to think that at a young age of nine months you can determine how smart or dumb your kid is going to be. But the fact that you can't determine it is why parents probably put so much hope into their kids. Babies are just these gigantic sponges that soak up everything around them; you just hope they're not the sponges you use to clean up around the toilet. So I guess we'll just hope for the best and see how our kids do in the future. Although once again there's nothing wrong with facial hair and yodeling.