Top 10 Best Value Colleges

A column in Financial Advisor caught my eye.  For those  who have children who plan to go to college, this may be worth reading.

For clients with college bound children, a study by The Princeton Review ranks both public and private colleges and universities to determine the ones that offer the best academics at an affordable cost.

Based on criteria including academics, costs and financial aid, the study also considered the percentage of graduating seniors who borrowed from any loan program and the average debt those students had at graduation.

The following public colleges are the top 10 of 75 , with No. 1 offering the highest value.

No. 10  State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University)
No. 9 Truman State University
No. 8  College of William and Mary
No. 7  University of Florida
No. 6  University of California—Los Angeles
No. 5  University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
No. 4  North Carolina State University
No. 3  University of Virginia
No. 2  New College of Florida
No. 1  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Whether you agree or disagree with these rankings, the cost of attending college has rocketing into the stratosphere and sending your children to college requires a plan well in advance of their matriculation.  A few things to keep in mind is that in-state tuition is often a fraction of the cost of sending your son or daughter out-of-state.  Setting up a college savings plan is always a good idea since it allows the college funds to grow tax-free. Taking out a college loan has become so popular that today, the college loan debt exceeds a trillion dollars.  However, college loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, if the student does not graduate (and many do not) the loan still needs to be paid, and college loan payments often extend for decades after the student has left school.