Half Of College Graduates Expect To Be Supported By Their Families

American college graduates — and their parents — appear to be increasingly reluctant to cut the financial apron strings.

About half of students expect to be supported financially by their parents for up to two years after graduation, according to a new survey of 500 students and 500 parents released Tuesday by Upromise, the savings division of Sallie Mae, the student lender. And almost half of students surveyed said they would be willing to pay their parents rent if they moved back home post-graduation, the survey found. Only 5% of parents say they would not let their child move back in with them after graduation.

Parents seem to be more lenient about letting their graduate children come back home. Some 36% of parents say they expected to support their children financially for more than two years, up from just 18% last year, and only 2.8% of parents expect their kids to have a full-time job after college and only one-quarter see them having any kind of job in their chosen field when they graduate. And if they moved in with their parents after graduation, 20% of students expect it would be at no cost to themselves.

Both students and their parents are more accepting of the new normal, says Erin Condon, president of Upromise by Sallie Mae. “We were pleasantly surprised that parents and students were very aligned in their expectations,” she says. “One could argue that this generation is entitled or spoiled, but you could always argue that they are financially responsible and not biting off more than they can chew by making effort to get off on the right foot to make sure that long-term success is there.”

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