When
we moved to Hilo, Hawaii in 2007 we rented a house near the University of
Hawaii Hilo (UHH) campus so we would be within walking distance for our son to
attend when he was ready.
The
University of Hawaii system has almost a complete monopoly on higher education
in the state with 10 campuses on six islands including 3 universities, 7 junior
colleges, and 9 education centers. Although the tuition at UH has doubled
since 2005, at $8,664 a year for residents, it is still relatively affordable
compared to many universities on the mainland. Nonresident tuition at UH is
substantially more expensive at $24,912.
The tuition at UH campuses on Maui and the Big Island are lower, however
all UH campuses have been scheduled for tuition increases each year until
2016. Having so many locations around the state has increased the number
of students in the UH system to over 60,000; 85% of them are Hawaii residents.
When
our son returned from a high school exchange in Japan and was ready to enroll
into Freshman classes, UH Hilo admissions told us that we would have to pay out
of state tuition; they claimed our year of residency in Hawaii did not count
since our son had been out of the country. UHH was ranked poorly compared
to other colleges in the US and their struggle to keep up with the flood of
incoming students made us give up on fighting our residency case and on the UH system
entirely. We started looking at other options for college.
Many of the high school graduates in Hawaii
go to universities on the mainland, because other than UH, the only other
universities in the state are Hawaii Pacific University (HPU), Chaminade
University of Honolulu (CUH), and Brigham Young University Hawaii
(BYUH). HPU is a private university with approximately 7000 undergraduate
and 1200 graduate students located in downtown Honolulu. Chaminade is a private
Catholic university located near UH Manoa with less than 3000 students enrolled
and only 1200 undergraduate students. The BYU Hawaii campus is a Mormon
university with 2500 students located in Laie, about 35 miles from
Honolulu.
We preferred a college as close as possible
to us, but the private universities in Hawaii did not seem a good fit for our homeschooled
son. We were looking for a college experience that would allow him to gradually
settle into a formal school environment. We even considered several colleges
in Japan with international degrees. During our search, we were very
surprised to discover that the largest private university system in Japan,
Tokai University Educational System, had a college in Honolulu near Waikiki.
We went to Honolulu to tour the Hawaii Tokai
campus which is contained in a single high-rise building that felt more like we
were in central Tokyo than Hawaii. Our
son felt very comfortable with the students after having just spent a year in
high school in Japan. Tokai’s Hawaii campus offers an accredited AA
degree in liberal arts. American citizens are offered a tuition reduction to
encourage their enrollment which made Tokai’s tuition less than UH’s tuition
for Hawaii residents. The English language courses and AA degree program at
Hawaii Tokai are comprised of mostly Japanese students who live in dorm rooms
above the classrooms in the high-rise building. The classes are small
with 8 to 20 students and the professors are attentive to helping the students
with their English skills to prepare them to transfer to an American
university. Each term crams 16 weeks of a normal college semester into 10
weeks, so the college has 3 terms plus summer terms every year allowing two
years of college to be squeezed into a year and a half. Getting good grades
gives parents even more of a reduction in tuition. After a year and a half our son had accrued 50
credits and was ready to transfer to a university and take upper level courses.
One
of the challenges of transferring between colleges is getting credit for classes
already taken. Most colleges have a method to determine in advance what credits
will transfer. If a lot of the credits taken do not transfer, it may take
a lot more time and money to get a degree.
UH has a online tool that compares courses from most colleges in the US
to their equivalent course at UH and tells you whether the credit counts toward
a degree or not. In some cases a class from a particular college will be
eligible for credit one year and not another.
Other universities in Hawaii provide a free evaluation of a student’s college
course work to let you know how many credits will transfer and what
prerequisites for graduation they fulfill.
When
evaluating universities for our son to transfer to, our biggest concerns were tuition
and living expenses. We again considered
universities in Japan including Tokai’s main campus near Tokyo and Temple in
downtown Tokyo, but the earthquake and nuclear disaster in March 2011 made that
option impossible. We decided against
UH after talking to students who were frustrated with class availability and having
difficulty getting what they needed to graduate. Our son visited the 3 private university
campuses on Oahu and was most excited by the degree programs at Chaminade. Fortunately,
almost all of the courses he took at Hawaii Tokai transferred to Chaminade and
fulfilled many of the lower level prerequisite courses for a degree.
The
combination of federal loans, grants, and generous Chaminade scholarships has
made tuition the past two years very affordable. However, covering the
cost of living expenses in Honolulu has been a challenge. The cost of a dorm is about the same as the
cost of a tiny apartment after factoring in the need to find another place to
live when the dorms are closed and having to buy a meal plan. Sharing a house or condo can create other
problems if roommates are not compatible or able to pay their share. The cost of living in Honolulu is much higher
than our cost of living on the Big Island. A tiny studio apartment in Honolulu
costs the same as a 3 bedroom 2 bath condo on the Big Island and our prices for
fresh produce and meat on the Big Island are much lower than the prices for
food in Honolulu grocery stores. However,
the benefit of having our son in the same time zone and only a short plane ride
away has been worth the extra cost to us.
Our
son has helped to offset his cost of living by working, but part time jobs in
Honolulu pay low wages. When adding the cost
of clothing and transportation to a job and subtracting taxes, the amount of
income does not cover the high cost of living.
Furthermore, there are risks of having a job in college if it jeopardizes
scholarships by lowering a student’s grades or requires additional semesters in
school when classes are dropped. We have
calculated that some scholarships are worth much more than the potential
post-tax income from a part-time job in Honolulu.
College
today requires a substantially larger financial investment from parents to insure
that their child’s degree does not come with crushing debt. We think it is harder to get a degree now
than it was when we attended over 30 years ago because so many more courses are
required to graduate. As home schooling parents
we feel lucky to have found great college opportunities for our son in Hawaii.
