Why would they make it so much harder for her to go back to school? 

If your parents paid for your college education, you should consider yourself lucky. A lot of young people feel forced to take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans because they want a degree, and their parents can’t afford to foot the bill. Even if they don’t take out loans, some of them have to live at home for the duration of their college experience, which makes it so much more difficult to be a socially engaged student. Kids whose parents pay for college have a much better time during those four years than kids who worry they won’t be able to pay their bills. 

If you saved money for your kid to go to college, you might be pretty disappointed if your kid decides not to go to college. After all, saving $30K is not easy for most people, and you don’t want that money to go to waste. Sure, you could roll that money into an IRA for your kid, so they have some money for retirement, but doing that when they’re 18 might be a little premature. Just because someone says they don’t want to go to college when they’re 19 doesn’t mean they won’t want to go when they are 22. If I were a parent of a recent high school graduate who «doesn’t want to go to college,» I would hold off on spending that money unless I was 100% sure they wouldn’t go to college. They might need that money to attend trade school or another type of education that doesn’t fit the traditional 4-year college experience. There’s no harm in keeping the door open for your kid to attend college. In fact, there’s harm in doing the opposite. 

The dad in this story could not wait to spend his daughter’s college tuition money on a kitchen renovation. She dropped out of school, worked for a year, and decided to go back, but the money was already gone by that time. Now her dad is wondering if he made the wrong decision.