Personal growth and expanded horizons are reason enough to send a child to college, but there are more practical considerations, too. College graduates have more jobs to choose from, and they generally make more money than people who have a high school education. That makes a college education very important for your child's future.
If you're good at planning ahead, you may have thought about it before your child was even born, perhaps while you were shopping for a bassinet and teddy bears. At any rate, you probably started thinking about it when your child was very young. After all, it's one of the major responsibilities you face as a parent: your child's college education.
As a parent with an eye to the future you should start early to save for your child's college education. College costs have risen consistently for the past 10 years, and there's little reason to think this trend will reverse itself. Many cost estimates predict annual increases of 5% or more. What's more, many people take more than four years to finish college and some go on to postgraduate studies, so you may need to save even more.