Pre-qualifying

My son's travel coach would have these conversations with parents. He would ask if only given 25% can you afford $X? Are you willing to incur $X in student loan debt?  Otherwise let's not waste our time here. He also instructed parents to ask about total cost and also consider the cost of traveling home during breaks and miscellaneous expenses I.e. laptops, etc..

If a coach got burnt on this a couple of times, (Big time recruit bails at the last minute because of money surprises) I would think he wont let this happen again thus being the standard.

 A car salesman wont spend 4 hour's letting you test drive a new Hummer just to find out later you have no job and no down payment. But I keep hearing about these poor families getting their world tossed around at the last minute.

I think I might be missing a salient point. I can understand a coach wanting to be clear the what the costs will be for a prospective student-athlete, but isn't it the family's responsibility to know what the net cost of attending a particular university will be?

I agree.  The coach can help with this but ultimately this falls upon the recruit (and parents) and the Financial Aid office.  There are many expensive schools that will advertise retail price.   It is wise to understand the college pricing marketplace relative to your son's financial/academic/athletic situation.  Typcially the school's that have the highest prices are need based financial aid and they have an extremely high demand to get into their schools (very little price elasticity).  Other schools have higher prices and some price elasticity but will reward students financially in the top 25% of incoming students with incentives...that is where you want to be.  Everybody's FA situation is different, so it is best to ask their FA office before making assumptions and crossing them off the list.  JMO. 

This is my first post on this site after lurking for quite some time.  I was motivated to join and create an ID because of this thread.

I'm am continually shocked at how little all parents, not just baseball parents, educate themselves on their child's higher education.  All the information is available on-line.  Each school posts annual total costs, and if you have further questions, there are a ton of ways to contact the school.

All baseball athletes will incur costs, and most players/families will be responsible for the MAJORITY of the cost of college.  Look up the schools!  Find out the costs, the class profiles (which show what level of students are on the campus), if the college offers what your child wants to study!  It is YOUR job to educate yourself...not others to do it for you!! 

Welcome to the High School Baseball Web community, Matty!

I couldn't agree more with your conclusion. Since when is it the coaches' responsibility to pre-qualify the financial conditions of their recruits' families!?

That's not to suggest that coaches don't try to get some sense of a recruits' ability to pay; but, the overwhelming responsibility for determining what a college costs and trying to figure out if it fits the family's budget has to be..(3 guesses, and the first 2 don't count)...the FAMILY'S!

It's all about preparation, folks. It's much better done when the lion's share is done by the recruited player. He ends up coming away with a realistic sense of what schools of interest cost and what his family can afford. However, if the recruit won't do it, then at least one parent needs to step in and help figure it out.

If a can't afford to pay for college, there are plenty of colleges that have the money to help them.  A little googling will find those schools easily.  Try the term "colleges that meet 100% of demonstrated need".  That's the easy part. The hard part is getting the grades and test scores to get admission to those schools.