Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Mad Poster
#26 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 9:22 AM
In my game, I don't charge tuition as such-unless the family has $20k to send out, and the kid actually does want to go to college. I usually cheat and give them an instant diploma in that case. Can't be bothered to actually send them to college-although I'm thinking of playing it like the kid is a commuter and living at home (Squinge's college hacks).

As for the problem of real life tuition, I'm very firmly of the mind that colleges are not only over-charging students for their education, but unfairly saddling them with life-long debt that sometimes never gets paid. It's hard enough to graduate from a college now, but also to face the prospect of having nearly $100k or more in loans to pay off is a burden I would never give any one. It is simply usury and unethical. Too many banks and loan officers know the truth but they don't want to change the way the system works. Education is the only way sometimes to improve your life. Debt should not be attached at the hip.
Advertisement
Née whiterider
retired moderator
#27 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 12:01 PM
My god, you guys are mean to your sims .

I have grade requirements for getting into the different unis, as well as tuition per semester. But over 8 semesters the tuition works out at 4000 for LFT, 6000 for SSU and 8000 for ALT. So my sims generally don't have to take out loans - they just have to work at the coffee shop instead of writing their term papers. I like the idea of restricting which subjects can be studied at which unis, though I think I might have to further tweak harder harder grades first, 'cause right now it's a struggle to even get most of my teens up to LFT grades!

Despite the low tuition fees my graduate sims still end up poor - my richest lot currently are Jonah and Roxie, who have 4000 to their name, which will shortly be a lot less once Roxie dumps Jonah and moves out.


In the real world I think the idea of completely free education is great, but not always realistic. However, given that several European countries manage just fine with tuition caps of a few hundred to a couple of thousand euros per year, the UK and (especially) US fees are not necessary. Universities are businesses: when you tell them they've only got x amount coming in from tuition and grants, they find ways to raise money elsewhere or cut costs. *shrug*

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Mad Poster
#28 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 2:31 PM
Free Uni doesn't mean Unis get no money. It just means it's paid by taxes, rather than the individual student. Probably not a realistic scenario to try to implement in the US, it doesn't go with the mentality of the people who live there. Me I'm happy I live in socialist central iCad brings up a fair point though, when everyone can go it means majority of people have a degree. There's definitely an inflation in education-level required for jobs.

On the topic of Moniques computer for loans. The interest does get too steep. The number itself I don't mind, but the frequency is a bit too high. I used it in the past, but then the only families with loans were descendants of the car sales owner, and he could bring in 50k a day in his shop. Now that my hood includes more Sims and more families, it doesn't work as well.

Like I said in my earlier posts, tuition doesn't have to be paid until a year after graduating and it's paid to another Sim, so no loan-mods involved. If by then they still cant, then you have to pay interest. So far nobody has failed to, but I'm guessing Max Flex is going to be the first. He'll be charged 4% of his remaining debt, every Sunday. Which assuming one lived in a dorm, is only 1600 even if you didn't pay off anything at all. And I do use Monique's banking system, so they are welcome to save their money in the bank and gain interest on it until the last day they have to pay off Uni.

If a Sim would want to actually take a loan to pay it off, they do so with Cyjons loan jar. Interest of 1% per day. That's the lowest interest I can offer, with the mods I have. I'm too lazy to calculate it all manually, so 1% will have to do. Point being, compared to loans tuition is a lot nicer. Gives you 4 years of college and 1 year post graduation to collect the money, and charges you 3% less interest than the bank does.

Oh and my Sims do get 20k handout. I may remove it in the future when all Sims start born-in game/adopted, but for now everyone gets a starting bonus. I like a few Sims being poor and having to struggle living in a tiny apartment, but not every Sim. It's more fun if they can live somewhere semi-nice.

Creations can be found on my on tumblr.
Theorist
#29 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 4:29 PM
My sims pay 40K for education, however, in real life I'm all for free education. My sims are just too rich, so I had to devise ways for them to spend money. My sims cannot pay in installments or pay for uni later, otherwise anyone of them would do it!

However, there are other restrictions, not only money. The reason being that my sims get to the tops of their jobs too easily after uni and subsequently become too rich. So I thought it was a good idea to make crazy restriction for entering a uni. I installed a harder harder grades hack for school and now only A school students can enter uni. Everyone else goes to a normal college (private school, but I pretend it's a community college) and pays only 10000 for that. Sims who can't pay go to work on a community farm. Sorry if that sounds cruel, but they aren't real people and I find it more fun to play that way!

On a brighter note, A+ school students are admitted to uni for free, but with the the harder harder grades hack A+ getters are extremely rare.

I also have a customized hack to speed down skilling, i.e. a sim has to spend a few times more hours to get a skill point than by default. That prevents all of them from automatically being brilliant in college.

And I use a hack to shorten college time a lot, so they've got limited time to learn, to prevent brilliance and allow for at least some of them to fail.

P.S. Seriously, with default game play all my sims had super marks and it was rather typical of them to land on a 7th-8th job level right after uni. It was extremely boring.
Mad Poster
#30 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 5:48 PM
Free university education was introduced in my country in the 1940's when the country had just fought a major war and was near bankrupt. It was progressively abolished in the 1990's and 2000's when the country was much richer. As for it being un-American I don't know. I have adopted a very American principle into my game: my Sims have "inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". I hold that saddling my Sims with massive debts at the beginning of their adult lives is incompatible with the last of these rights. Tuition fees are therefore struck down as unconstitutional!

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Instructor
#31 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 6:22 PM
So how do people pay for education in England? Do you have student loans?

Elephant! Handcuffs! Naughty! Tee hee!
Mad Poster
#32 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 10:35 PM
Quote: Originally posted by fruitsymphony
So how do people pay for education in England? Do you have student loans?
Answer spoilered as it's long and a bit off-topic:


As for my Sims, I want them to have as good a time as I had (or better!) and not suffer the financial misery to which young people are subject today.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Née whiterider
retired moderator
#33 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 10:39 PM
Yeah, you can get a loan from the Student Loan Company (government backed) for your first degree, which has relatively favourable terms and gets written off after about 25 years.

ETA: Which Chancellor was that, Andrew?

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Instructor
#34 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 10:47 PM
Well we never had any grants in Sweden. We have student loans. I still haven't paid mine since I went to art school in the 1980s.

Elephant! Handcuffs! Naughty! Tee hee!
Mad Poster
#35 Old 15th Mar 2015 at 10:52 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Nysha
Yeah, you can get a loan from the Student Loan Company (government backed) for your first degree, which has relatively favourable terms and gets written off after about 25 years.
Yes, but not nearly as favourable as the grants that we got!

Quote: Originally posted by Nysha
ETA: Which Chancellor was that, Andrew?
Gordon Brown. He was Rector of Edinburgh University (a post elected by the students to represent them on the University Court) while he was still a student himself in the early 1970's. I'll warrant that he wasn't elected on a platform of abolishing student grants! In some ways I like him, but I find it hard to forgive his betrayal of the students.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Mad Poster
#36 Old 16th Mar 2015 at 10:16 AM
I went to university as a mature student five years ago. I literally snuck into the last year of the £3k fees, which meant that as a low income student, my tuition fees were paid by grant. My childcare, however, was not. It was supposed to be covered by a "hardship fund" through the university itself, but the application rested on showing proof from the Student Loan Company that I was indeed getting full funding. As this didn't turn up until term 3, and my childcare needs were much lower in this term (just two revision sessions plus exams) it didn't get covered.

So, I worked part time when my son started preschool (15 hours per week, free) which increased childcare costs, but unlocked access to Tax Credits, which had (have?) a childcare element. There was no requirement that the childcare be to cover the working period rather than any other period, just a maximum amount I was eligible to claim, so I claimed that and they covered part of my childcare that way. It was still tough but just about manageable.

Several years later, they have now decided that I never sent any proof for this childcare and are demanding all of the money back, all of it which was legitimately claimed at the time with proof which I now can't prove that I did send - about £10k. So, effectively, there goes my "student grant" in a roundabout way. We all end up paying in the end! It really frustrates me, TBH, because the system is so needlessly complicated. I was told several different stories as to whether university as an (at the time) lone parent was a possibility or not, and you can't exactly fault somebody for trying to get more qualified and improve their life! Anyway, we ended up moving to Germany, and I now work as an English teacher. That really confuses them. We have to phone up and explain how international payments work so that they will actually take our money to pay off the debts!

No, I do not charge my sims for university tuition. Only living costs.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Mad Poster
#37 Old 16th Mar 2015 at 11:59 AM
simsfreq, I've clicked on "love" as a token of sympathy -- NOT because I love the way you've been treated!

In my day mature students were positively encouraged. In my first year at university I sat next to a 63-year-old man in Economic History lectures. He had been made redundant and was in his final year of a 3 year Ordinary Degree that he was taking before retirement. It was clearly a case of education for its own sake, not to get a better job. He had of course been paying tax throughout a 40 year working life, and am sure had more than earned his right to this little "luxury". Today I don't think he'd even be considered for a student loan, because he wouldn't have a long enough working life ahead of him to be able to repay it.

I think I was put off Sims university because I thought it was based on the American system, and would therefore be inaccessible to poorer Sims unless they could get a scholarship. I think Peni has convinced me that, unmodded, it is in fact free, and therefore, as I see it, better than the American system. I don't think it does much for mature students though. I believe there are mods to help them. But what about Elders? -- Especially since Sims seem to turn Elder at about 50. Has anyone managed to get an Elder through Sim university?

By the way I think I was rather flattered by the designation "mature student". I was certainly older than most of the students, who had come straight from school, but I don't know about "mature". And now as an Elder myself, I'm addicted to a video game!

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Mad Poster
#38 Old 16th Mar 2015 at 1:35 PM
Thanks Andrew Yes, I wasn't all that "mature" myself, I think I was 21 in fact, but it was that same fact of having not come straight from school. I found the university fantastic for the help and support offered to mature students, they really made me feel like I was doing something worthwhile, not wasting my time or getting in the way.

I don't usually accommodate mature students in my sim universities, though, I have to admit. Because for my sims, I do have the benefit of both hindsight and foresight. I can plan their lives out for them, and choose whether they go to university or not. If I really really want them to have a degree later for some reason, then I use the counterfeit college diploma by Christianlov to "award" them a degree in whatever subject, usually based on their life experience. Because I use the hack which requires certain degrees for certain careers such as medicine, education, law etc, (I'm always baffled as to why they didn't include Law and Education and perhaps Oceanography, or Intelligence, with University! Instead they had the Art, Show Business and Paranormal requiring a degree! Odd indeed. Natural Science is believable.) - and that allows sims to qualify in those careers in one of two ways; either they go to university, qualify and get the required degrees, or they take the career as a teenager and work their way up. In the second instance, losing the job means they are unable to get it again, which might be ridiculous - so I will usually award a sim with several years' experience in the relevant career track an honourary degree in that subject, enabling them to look for related jobs even without having actually been to university.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#39 Old 16th Mar 2015 at 1:43 PM
I just posted this on the other thread but I'll post it here too. No more stupid uni to job links. http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=460959 Now your sims can know their surgeon actually went to uni. and didn't get their degree of the back of the milk carton.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#40 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 12:19 AM
Oh cool. I didn't know Phae had made one I use the customisable one made by SyberSpunk waaaaaay back.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Field Researcher
#41 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 1:12 AM
Quote: Originally posted by PanAm103
I'm trying to introduce tuition to my hood, but I'd like to have something to guide. I don't want to overpay or underpay, so I'd like to know how much do you pay:

- for Sim State
- for La Fiesta Tech
- for Académie Le Tour

I guess Sim State is the cheapest one and Académie Le Tour is the most expensive, but how much do you pay, and how do you pay it? Do you pay it all at once, every semester or what?


In my game, all students must pay tuition once per season. Most of my Sims are having their higher education paid for by their parents. In those cases, I simply have the family pay the tuition when I play the household during my rotation. I keep track of who owes what and who is paid up in a notebook. I use Monique's Hacked Computer to pay tuition and to take out school loans. Scholarships can be used to supplement the tuition fee.

Sims State University is the least expensive in my game, at $10,000 per season. ($15,000 per season if you live in private housing) La Fiesta Tech is considered an out of state school, so tuition is slightly higher at $15,000 per season if living in a dorm, $20,000 per season if living in private housing. Academie Le Tour is the Ivy League school that all aspire to get into but only the wealthy elite can afford - it's $20,000 per season for dorms, $25,000 per season for private housing. I have found that charging tuition adds a great layer to the game that makes earning money and getting ahead in the Sims career more meaningful. It also prevents everybody in town from accumulating tons of money at a rapid rate. I charge tuition for private school as well, $5,000 per child per season. Once more families in my neighborhood begin accumulating more money then I'll raise the tuition fees.
Instructor
#42 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 2:30 AM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
I just posted this on the other thread but I'll post it here too. No more stupid uni to job links. http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=460959 Now your sims can know their surgeon actually went to uni. and didn't get their degree of the back of the milk carton.

I used to have that mod and enjoyed it, but now I just restrict the promotions. You can be a receptionist at a law firm or a cement mixer without having to go to college. If a sim gets promoted by chance card into a career that seems like a degree is required, I'll drop them back down with the blender, but let them keep the promotion money (like getting a bonus).

As far as free education IRL, I'm all for it also. I was fortunate/smart/lucky enough to go to school for 11.5 years for free (there is a lot of money out there for underrepresented minorities in sciences) and ended up with two masters and a PhD. Only my last 2 or 3 years of my PhD did I have to pay about $900 a semester in fees. Student loan debt here is crippling. One of my best friends pays more to her loan than she does in rent! If I had had to take out loans, I would not have gone to college at all. Same goes for my sims. If they don't get scholarships (or some sims parents save up money for them) then they don't go.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#43 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 3:08 AM
I just give jobs like cement mixer with the sim blender. But I do like Doctors, scientists and lawyers to go to uni.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Theorist
#44 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 11:12 AM
I don't really get it how three unis can cost differently. In the game they're all the same, there are no benefits to either. The boss in any career track never cares if a sim finished a famous foreign uni.
Scholar
#45 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 12:27 PM
My sims have to pay 500 simoleon for dorms and 1000 simoleon for private per semester.
Because i haven't so much rich sims and i have halved wages, higher bills, taxes and a faster university mod most students seem to struggle a bit.
They have to work in the cafeteria or need to paint. Or they need to have a bunch of scholarships.
But if someone is best friends with a teen-sim who has rich parents they may pay the tuition.
Scholar
#46 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 7:04 PM
My one (custom) university has an academic, social and/or connections requirements. All Sims must have an A- regardless of intended course. Most Sims will pay tuition in the first 12 hours of, each semester. The university is a Royal possession, so royalty and those sponsored by royalty pay nothing. Nobles pay $250 per semester, Middles pay $500 per semester. You'd think this would be easy to pay back, since the lowest level of pass earns $400 a semester. However, students who are overextravagant about their budgets and then land in probation have been expelled for this in the past - probation terms cost just as much as any other. All tuition monies are paid by cheque or Monique's computer to the Palace in the correct timeframe per semester. Oh, and did I mention the graduation term must also be paid for, with Palace servant work the penalty if it isn't?

Peasants can't go to university unless royalty chooses to sponsor them. Such sponsorship results in free tuition but a requirement to work at the Palace if the degree is not completed, and to make a certain number of friends with upper-class types to maintain the scholarship. Nobody leaves university with any kind of debt, but most do contribute their own funds to the university. Nobody is allowed to ask their families to pay for them - all tuition fees are expected to come from the student's own accounts.

Degrees completed off-campus (either before or after uni) are always free, and in the case of degrees earned in adulthood, there is a small research stipend attached.
Meet Me In My Next Life
#47 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 11:11 PM
I have Pescado mod for private school where the parents have to pay for their child to go. Is there a mod for the students who go to university so the parents can pay tuition as well ? Education is not cheap

"Nothing in life is a Surprise it just happen to come your way at the time".
Mad Poster
#48 Old 17th Mar 2015 at 11:23 PM
I don't believe it's possible to make a mod that charges them automatically, and if it were, it'd be very complicated and risk tons of conflicts. I imagine pretty much everyone uses one of the mods that allows you to transfer money from one household to another, or the donate function on Monique's computer if they want it to just vanish.

I normally use Monique's computer, but there are many others. Cyjons checkbook for example.

Creations can be found on my on tumblr.
Scholar
#49 Old 18th Mar 2015 at 6:20 AM
That is true, gummilutt. In my case I allow either Cyjon's chequebook or Monique's computer.
Page 2 of 2
Back to top