Every autumn our kitchen table turns into an admissions office. Prospectuses slide under the fruit bowl, someone's laptop is open on a virtual tour, and my teenager says the name of a course as though it were a country she has already decided to emigrate to. And every autumn there is a fresh wave of headlines about graduates struggling to repay what they borrowed, about which institutions leave students worst off. The headlines are useful only in one way: they remind us that borrowing for education is a financial decision, not just an emotional one. The trick is having that conversation early, once, properly, and then going back to being excited.
Start with the total, not the yearly figure
Teenagers process the cost of education the way they process a monthly phone contract: in small, survivable slices. Parents do the same, because a single year of tuition sounds manageable in a way that the whole thing does not. So the first job is arithmetic done out loud, together. Write down tuition for every year of the course, then add the parts that never make the brochure: rent for the months she'll actually be there, travel home at holidays, a laptop, course materials, a deposit, the first month before any part-time job starts paying.
Then separate that total into three columns: money that already exists (savings, family help, whatever you can genuinely commit without straining), money that has to be earned during term time, and money that would have to be borrowed. Seeing the borrowing column as one number, in her handwriting, does more than any lecture. It also opens the far more interesting question, which is not "can we afford this?" but "is there a cheaper route to the same place?" Commuting for the first year, a local institution with a strong department, a course that includes a paid placement, or starting somewhere less expensive and transferring are all real options, not consolation prizes.
