teaching degree and starting at a 2 year college

[Only me]

My daughter has always wanted to be an elementary education teacher so even though the outlook for teachers isn't very good right now she still plans to get that degree.

 

She only applied to two colleges and was accepted. She has a great GPA (over 4.0) but just an average ACT. She only took it once. She did great on the english portion but not very well on the math. She was offered a moderate scholarship at one of the schools (24k over 4 years). This is a private school and was her top choice. The other school is a state school and she wasn't offer any kind of scholarship (we really didn't expect her to get one). All along we thought that the decision would be whether or not she should go to the more expensive school. Now we realize that we can't afford to send her to either of them. If she goes to the private school it would still cost her over 25K the first year and of course more after that. The state school would still cost her over 25K (including books, etc.) and that school said that there tuition might even go up before the fall.

 

We would probably be able to afford about 10K this year to help her with college but that would still mean that she would have very big loans when she graduates. A few nights ago my husband and I approached her with the fact that we felt that she should probably go to the local community college (5 minutes from home). She was a bit disappointed but was ok with this decision.

 

Yesterday she sent an email to her admission counselor at the private college telling her about the decision. My daughter also asked her if she recommended any certain classes that my daughter should be sure to take at the community college. My daughter got a reply back today. Apparently many of the classroom hours already start freshman year and if my daughter didn't transfer until her junior year at she would be behind the rest of her class. Most likely she would have to go there for another 3 years to complete all of the necessary classes and student teaching, etc.

 

Now we're not sure what to do. Just based on a spending 25K a year (after her scholarship) this would mean that we would spend 75k just to send her for 3 years in addition to the money it would cost to send her to the community college. The community college is quite reasonable and would probably only cost her about 5K next year but still this means it would be around 85K for the 5 years instead of just sending her there in the first place, which would cost about 100K. Of course I'm just using the current tuition amount and know that it will go up.

[TravelingChris]

Why does she have to go to that college after community college? There are over 3000 colleges in the US and many, many of them offer teaching degrees. I would have her go to community college, if that is all you can afford, and then transfer to a 4 year college that would have the courses and experiences she needs. I would not have her take on large debt to become a teacher.