(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)
+ + +
At the same time that I linked here to the "can you still work your way through college?" calculator, I shared the link on FB.
One of my FB friends took away from that, mainly, a message that "bootstraps are not enough," that "success is connected to privilege," and that "it's tempting to think that one's own luck or privilege is connected somehow to your work ethic." A discussion followed.
I don't disagree with that message entirely, except to note that a really lousy work ethic or willful foolishness can cause you to throw away the benefits you got from your privilege and luck. The two are connected somehow. But the point stands that it's a tenuous link.
But what I find interesting from the calculator is not so much the state of things today as the change over time. It's so steep in the last 20 years or so that I fear a lot of people don't realize how much the game has changed; their head is stuck in the economic situation back when they went to school, or if they are older, maybe back when their kids went to school. They still think that (barring serious obstacles) if you can't pay for a four-year public school, it must be because you are not willing to work your way through.
In other words, bootstraps used to be enough for, if not everyone, then for a lot of ordinary people. And now they're not. And a lot of former bootstrappers haven't got the memo.
+ + +
Disclosure here is that I did not have to do the bootstrap thing. I had a full academic scholarship, and my graduate degree was fully funded by research assistantships and a fellowship.
When I started at Ohio State in 1992, if my memory is correct, it cost approximately $10,000 per year for tuition and room and board.
With inflation, that amount in 2012 would be approximately $16,000 per year.
Today that cost is $20,429, an approximate increase of 25% over inflation. It's like having to pay for five years instead of four. This is a pretty big jump, especially considering that wages are low and jobs are scarce right now.
I have an even steeper jump in expectations because I live in Minnesota now, where the comparable cost at the University of Minnesota is $21,500. (Residents of some states have it better: the University of Iowa cost is $17,220 and the sticker price at Iowa State is $15,447.)
(Hey, friends in Iowa, how would you like a live-in houseboy in five years or so? Let's talk.)
I bring this up not to complain about the absolute cost of post-secondary education, particularly four-year public colleges, but to point out that it may explain why so many otherwise smart people appear not to have grasped the situation: Parents are encouraging and enabling young people to take out mountains of debt, often for degrees that will not generate enough income to pay the debt off for years and years.
This is happening in part, I believe, because they remember that when they were looking at college, it was a foregone conclusion that college, any sort of college, was a good investment. If you paid more up front, it seemed reasonable to assume that you might reap more rewards, either in higher income or in prestige and connections. If you didn't care so much for prestige and connections, you could still get a solid-enough four-year degree — sometimes a truly excellent one — at numerous less-expensive schools, where it was still theoretically possible to cobble together enough money from jobs, small scholarships, and manageable loans to pay for the whole thing.
Obviously many young people, even then, faced hardships that made "working their way through" a four-year degree impossible. There has always been a privilege gap. But I submit that there's a really big population of young people today whose parents lived with the expectation that it was possible, but who don't live in that possibility now. And their parents maybe haven't gotten the memo.
bearing blog 