Since the 1990s, the yearly price of attending a four-year private college including living expenses has almost doubled — from around $31,000 in 1992 to over $53,000 in 2022. Public four-year colleges haven’t fared any better, their price more than doubling in the same period.
The sticker shock has meant that more and more students have turned to loans. Less well known is the debt that parents have incurred by tapping the equity in their primary residence.
If you have recently sold your home to pay for your child’s college education, or are considering doing so, we would like to hear from you.
We would also like to hear from you if you have taken out a second loan, or used another form of financing that has used your primary residence as collateral in order to pay for your child’s degree.
We understand that you may be at a vulnerable point in your life. Our interest in speaking to you is in an effort to spotlight the growing price of college and its financial ramifications on families across the country.
To that end, we are also interested in speaking to financial aid officers, real estate agents, bankers and loan officers who have guided families through this financial minefield.
We might contact you to learn more about your story, and we’ll never publish anything you put in this questionnaire without talking with you first. We don’t share your contact information outside the Times newsroom and we use it only to contact you. If you’d like to get in touch with us anonymously or in a more secure way, you can do that here: nytimes.com/tips.