When I was just a baby, my mom started to save up some money. 

Every month, she’d make it her mission to put a little bit of money into my savings account. And when my brothers were born, she started doing the same thing for them. The primary goal? Get enough money to put toward our college tuition. Although she put in money, every month, without fail, the amount never grew to more than a couple thousand of dollars — nowhere close to the equivalent of a University of Illinois tuition bill. 

It’s really no surprise: today, the amount of U of I tuition is nearly five times more than it was during the 1990-1991 school year when I was born.. She didn’t know it at the time — and most parents don’t — but there’s a way to avoid the inevitable increase of tuition costs. She could have entered into the Private College 529 Plan, started saving up her money and hoped to God that I would choose to go to private institutions such as Illinois Wesleyan or Brandeis University. 

The Private College 529 Plan is a way for parents to save money for their children that want to go to a private institution. It’s like other college savings programs, but the beauty of this plan is that it locks in tuition costs at the moment parents start paying. According to the New York Times, if parents decide to put forth $10,000 for their children’s $40,000 tuition, their certificate would account for one-fourth of the total tuition cost. If tuition increases over the years, to $60,000 for example, the certificate would still be worth one-fourth of the tuition, now $15,000.

Private College Plan 529 is far from flawless, though. First, it only has 273 member schools, or 273 schools that will honor the savings plan. Curiously, that doesn’t include schools like Northwestern or Yale. The plan doesn’t include all of the well-known private colleges — which baffles me, since these are the institutions most kids strive to attend. If my mom saved money in the plan, but I got accepted into William and Mary, well, too bad. However, my bigger problem with the plan lies in the name, specifically, the “Private College” part.

The reason that the Private College 529 Plan exists is because the costs for a private institution are obviously higher than that of public institutions. Public schools have an advantage since they receive state money. Private colleges, on the other hand, don’t have this luxury; in fact, their tuition is rising 6 percent each year. Besides, there are other plans for in-state institutions and colleges, so it’s not like parents can’t save up money for their kids to go public school.

The problem is that the Private College 529 Plan is the only college plan that ensures that parents don’t need to keep up with rising tuition costs. And many of these plans only apply to in-state schools, thus restricting the kid from going to out-of-state schools. There are very few programs for out-of-state tuition — which is a shame, since a kid from Michigan who goes to U of I pays around the same price as private school tuition. 

Either the Private College 529 needs to start adding in public school exceptions (at the very least, flagship universities), or the government should work with other public school programs and make sure that all plans lock parents in and help them with the rising cost of tuition.

This limiting list of universities pigeonholes kids to only attend certain schools, and while the schools on the list are good, they are missing out on other options. Parents see that this plan saves them the most money, but that also potentially puts pressure on their kids to go to one of the 273 schools. They miss out on the opportunities of going to the other 4,222 schools that may be a better fit for their learning styles and course of study. 

As undergraduate and graduate students, we’re past the point where we can benefit from this plan. We are, somehow or another, already paying for tuition. But the plan still affects our future kids, or younger siblings or cousins. Though we may not have a personal stake now, it’s for our benefit that Private

College 529 tweak its plan, because somewhere down the road, it would be nice if our future freshmen could walk into U of I, confident that they were able to pay off even a semester of tuition. 

My mom started saving for my tuition when I was young, and right now, millions of moms are starting to do the same thing. It’s plans like Private College 529 that have the responsibility to make sure more of them can start college and reassure their ability to pay tuition costs.

Tolu is a senior in Media. She can be reached at [email protected].