"Parents paid for my college" meaning

I would always assume that the parents paid with their own savings. It's not impossible for a parent to take out a loan for their child but it's probably very rare.

I wouldn’t make either assumption. They’re both possible.

Either way, it's the parents taking on 100% of the financial responsibility, not the child. What matters most is that the student doesn't have to worry about student debt.

I think if they say " parents paid for college" it usually means their parents paid the tuition fee out of their savings throughout their life .. I may be wrong , feel free to correct me..

I would assume they just paid for it from their savings. Typically, student loans have a pretty low interest rate and can be deferred several years, so if your parents could not afford to pay for it it would make more sense to take a student loan as opposed to your parents taking out a more expensive loan.

I've always assumed it meant they paid with money they had (or investments they sold). That was my experience. I had never even considered that parents would take a loan for student education. I'm not even sure how that would work. It seems like the interest rates would be unacceptably high - since student loans are significantly cheaper than an everyday loan that a parent could get. Then again - I'm not even sure if a parent could, however, get a student loan for their child. Maybe. Hmmm.... Honestly - it's something I've never heard of, so I doubt it's common at all. But maybe it's possible and does happen.

Both are possible, but a lot of times it's more of the first. There's many savings strategies, but for example in my state your parents can start saving "pre-paid" for in-state public schools, here they can put aside savings with tax advantage and it locks in tuition for each credit hour at the current time of saving rather when the kid goes to school. But sometimes the parents just make enough in salary to send their kid to university. You should see what the annual tuition is for some private primary and high schools these kids went to. Sometimes its more than college.

There are often certain accounts you can open for a child when they are young to save for their education where you can later withdraw the money with no penalty as long as it is going to an approved expense, similar to how retirement accounts work. Some people’s parents or other family are able to put in money over their lives and be able to use that money for their education. Others use their own personal savings and still others do take out or cosign loans but the first two are usually what people think of when that phrase is used. If someone did use it for the third one I wouldn’t say its necessary incorrect though.

I would assume 90 percent chance their parents had saved up to send their child to college and paid that way. If the person meant their parents are super rich and could pay for it without having had to plan for it, I would not expect the person to admit it. If the person meant their parents took the loans, I would expect the person to phrase it in a way that acknowledged they intended to pay back the loans.

In my mind, I'd probably assume the former, but you can't know for sure. Probably no one clarifies because the intimate details of someone's family financial situation aren't super relevant to conversation.

It depends on the family…. If there from a nice family then they probably had investments from 40 years ago to cover it

If someone tells me their parents paid for their college, I assume that their parents had money and some sort of savings or retirement account and paid for their tuition that way.

Can you explain your motivation for wanting to know and why you feel it is important for English speakers to specify whether or not their family took out any kind of loan to pay for some or all of their education?

No one seems to clarify which one because there is no distinction. "Parents paid for my college" means exactly that - someone's parents took full responsibility for paying to get them through college *HOW* the parents paid for it is a different sentence

What a very odd question. It could be either. Why would anyone presume anything about the source of the money? Weird.

Either is possible. There's no implication on how they paid, just that their parents managed to do it.

they are both a possibility. or you live in a country where you dont have to sell your organs to afford college...

The phrase doesn't tell you anything about how they got the money. That's a totally separate and private question.

It means the parents took the full financial responsibility so the student didn’t have to pay. How the parent pays is a whole different conversation and often comes from multiple sources. No one needs to clarify how they chose to spend their money or why they may or may not opt to use a loan.

What my parents did was have a college savings account called a 529 Account which is a tax advantaged savings account. I don't know all the details but I'm guessing money was contributed from the time I was born until I went to college. That money is invested in a way similar to a retirement account until the child gets close to enrolling in college. That was the scenario for a lot of people I knew. In my case, it was a set maximum amount that my parents would pay for my education. The rest was up to me to cover.

a speculation i'd make here is the happiness for the individual to not have such financial stress

My parents paid for my college that wasn't covered by scholarships. Well, mostly, I had to take extra time to finish my degree that I paid for, but that's another story. I'm 37 now, and still have no idea whether they paid cash or took a loan. They are extremely tight-lipped about anything financial. I had no idea what their annual income was until a couple years ago when I was helping them go through some stuff and saw a tax document, which my dad immediately grabbed and shredded when I asked him if he needed to keep it.

I would assume the student contributed nothing towards their tuition, and would make no other assumptions about how it was paid for. There is not enough info in that sentence to know.

It can mean either. My mom paid for my undergrad with her own money but paid for my sister’s law school with loans.

It means the money came from the parents to pay for college. The sentence does not contain any information about how the parents got the money. Just like saying "I paid for dinner" does not give any indication of whether I paid with cash or with a credit card.

When you pay for something, what you are paying with or how you are paying is not implied information, just that the thing you're buying/paying for, is.

I'd assume the former, the latter hadn't even occurred to me as a possibility.

I'm not sure which is "more likely." But as a parent, I didn't take loans out for my kids. I saved for 18 years.

I would assume that either is possible. The main thing is that the person I'm talking to didn't pay their way through college, and didn't start adulthood with thousands in debt hanging over their head.

Could be either. The person you’re speaking to may not even know which it is. 

Parents taking out loans for their children’s undergrad education is a multi billion industry in the USA. I can’t speak to other countries.  https://www.kiplinger.com/article/college/t042-c000-s002-the-problem-with-plus-loans.html

Depends! The main thing is the kid does not have the debt. More on the “actually paid” side.

If your parents took out loans in your name to pay for college, they didn't pay, they filed paperwork. Paying for college would mean it was their dollars, paying their child's tuition. Because America is fucked, famalies save tens-of-thousands if dollars for tuition (a college fumd) so they can pay their child's tuition. They may also have recieved more assistance then that.

If I hear that, I assume that the parents paid with their own money.

I’ve never heard of parents taking out loans to pay a child’s tuition, but I guess it’s possible. I would assume the parents paid tuition in cash, not a loan. 

I wouldn’t assume either. If I wanted to know, I’d ask for clarification.