Today’s article is inspired by an email conversation with a complete stranger.
This needs a little explaining.
I have a personal email account with the form of first letter, last name at a very large email provider. For example: jsmith@aol.com.
A few times a year people send me email thinking that they are emailing their friend Joe, Jen, or James. Whenever I get these, I try to help the person out by explaining that their email isn’t getting where it was intended.
This week an email came in from an “@princeton.edu” address. After I let her know about the error, I asked if there was a way that she could grease the wheels for my boys to get accepted there.
She came up with a great idea. As an employee, Princeton gives her 50% off tuition for her kids. Alas, she doesn’t have kids herself. She then offered to adopted my kids.
I explained that my kids were 4 and 5 and it would be a little too much to ask with it being so far down the line.
I hope it’s obvious by now that we were joking back and forth. However, let’s pause and thinking about the idea.
Is there an adoption loophole that allows college employees to make money with their benefit?
Princeton’s tuition is around $43,000 a year. It’s a little more, so let’s round it to $175,000 for 4 years. If my newfound friend were able to adopt one child the cost would be $87,500 with a savings of $87,500. (I love easy math like “divide by 2”.) It would make sense for a student to give $43,750 to the newfound friend to save the other $43,750.
To put it more simply, the employee discount is 2 years free, so a student would pay one year to the employee to get a year free. It’s win-win, right?
Of course the downside is that the adoption process might not be so simple. I don’t know how any of it works. There’s also the pesky problem of having a stranger be the parent of your child for a bit. On the other hand, we seem to have embraced the world of surrogate mothers, so maybe this isn’t so far-fetched? Of course, there might be options where the employee is a family friend and not a complete stranger.
I’m also sure that it might raise eyebrows to adopt a child just before he’s college age for the discount. Maybe colleges have a rule against that. I did a few internet searches and the schools I found didn’t seem to have anything outlined.
College costs seem to keep going up at an astronomical rate. As long as they keep going up, I expect more and more people will “think outside the box” to save money.
Oh, the PC police….you had to know you would get some push back on this, even if it’s meant in jest. As someone with two adopted kids I assure you that they do not find “adoption humor” funny. In fact they will say it works to invalidate that they are real members of a family. TV shows like to joke about the kids that’s different from the others with “you must be adopted”. Since I’m not I can laugh, those that are, maybe not so much.
That being said, I’ve wondered how many marriages, of whatever gender, are just to get one person healthcare.
So far, so good in avoiding the PC police. The humor in this isn’t really about adoption, but in the very serious commitment a stranger would offer.
This is not a “PC Police” comment as I get the overall intent of the article and it was made in jest. But I think you’d be in for more than “raised eyebrows” if someone did this and anyone found out. I’m pretty sure this could be construed as human trafficking since you are transferring the custodial rights of another human for monetary gain. I’m not an attorney but it sure sounds illegal.
I hadn’t thought about the human trafficking thing. I gave the term a simple Google search and here were the results (source uncited):
“The action or practice of illegally transporting people from one country or area to another, typically for the purposes of forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation.”
In this case the student would not be forced labor or sexual exploitation. The student would be receiving the financial benefit (it’s his/her education).
It may be illegal for other reasons, but I’m not sure it’s human trafficking. I think those laws are to prevent people from being victims. I find it hard to see a student claiming to be “victimized” by saving tens of thousands of dollars.
I have heard of people using some fuzzy logic to change their residence to avoid paying out of state tuition. You’d have to plan ahead if you have options, like a relative in that state.
I’m an adoptee from Ireland…I found your article hilarious…great out of the box thinking! :-)
Haha I used to get the “you must be adopted” line as a joke all the time. I have crazy noticable dimples (like someone poked a nail in my cheeks), and neither of my parents do.
I loved living on-campus during my freshman year of college. Doing so put me really close to classes, right in the thick of all the opportunities, and helped me make lots of new friends quickly.However, I quickly learned that living on-campus is expensive. You’ll most likely end up paying far less for your housing and meals by living off campus.