Benefits of Staying Local for Higher Education
by Melissa Blair
With all the choices students have regarding adding to the basics of their learning, we can always add one more: pursuing an education at a university away from home or staying local to attend one in town.
Many students are ready to fly the coop and launch into that ‘real world’ they’ve heard about their whole lives to fly their new wings of independence.
For some students? It’s not always possible. Sometimes families don’t have a choice about where their students attend college. Major illness or accident can change plans temporarily for some whose families need extra physical or financial support during a crucial period. For many families today, college is just not something life has allowed them to plan for. Attending a local community college is an excellent option for students staying local to pursue an education and allows a little more time for families to bridge the gap financially.
For other students, leaving home for college is something in the plans still a couple years out.
Whatever the case, there are some definite benefits for students considering staying local for their higher education (and they aren’t small):
Financial
From out-of-state tuition costs or travel expenses for both a student and his or her family, this is typically one of the biggest benefits for staying local. Stacking up a ton of debt from loans that take years to pay off is quite a daunting task for any student entering a brave new world of budding careers or even beginning a new family. Staying local is one smart way to stay off that mountain of debt. Living at home instead of on the local campus for a couple of extra years? Consider that an even bigger bonus: housing is one of the largest chunks of higher education change.
Schedule
I worked my way through, for, and under college…usually with two jobs. Once, I took an extra job as a hostess for a restaurant the day before Christmas holiday. Because I needed the money and went to school several hours away, I was unable to be home for the weeks before Christmas (and for a lot of the summer). Many students work while attending college. Staying local? This enables students to make their cake and eat it, too. Plus? They’ll probably get those hours everybody wants because they’re not always leaving town when school is out. One other scheduling advantage? There will never be conflicts between missing weekend school activities and traveling home.
Family
Staying local for college means extra time with the family. From Nephew’s first birthday to last-minute get-togethers of loved ones passing on their way through town, family is one of the biggest advantages of attending a local college. As a high school graduate, students can navigate their way into the next step of adulthood and still enjoy the good benefits of being in the same town with family. At some point, every student will leave home. A little extra time with family? You can’t put a price on those memories and you won’t get this time back.
Laundry
There has never been a person alive who has ever said, ‘I consider laundry a fun party that I love to pay for.’ While attending university in a co-ed, apartment-style dorm, I left my clothes in the washer and went back to my room to study. When I came back to put them in the dryer, I found the washing machine was empty: a load of my wet clothes had been stolen. As a student away from home, I was also so poor that it might take me weeks to find spare change under the seat of my car for the laundromat that I didn’t spend on Taco Bell. Odds are very great that a load of clothes being washed at home has never been stolen. On the flip side? Odds are also very high that Mom or Dad may still help with the laundry occasionally while you study.
