I heard something on NPR yesterday that practically had me screaming at my radio. An otherwise bright and articulate college student urged President-Elect Obama to make "getting everyone who wants one a college education" the number one priority of his administration.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I swear by the value of education. But this is ridiculous! The USA and the world have other issues that must be tended to first, as a purely practical matter--little things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic meltdown at home and abroad, and global climate change, just to name a few.
What really fried me about what this college student said is that his family was having trouble (due to the economic meltdown) putting him and his two siblings through college--all in Ivy League schools, no less. He thereby proved my point about Obama's need to address the economic meltdown first, by the way.
Beyond the internal contradiction of the student's statements, however, I was [for lack of a better term--Ed.] totally POed by his attitude. Why the hell should his parents have to pay for his and his siblings' college educations anyway? Why do he and his siblings have to attend Ivy League schools? The quality of one's education depends almost entirely on what one is willing to put into it, so why can't he and his siblings attend a less expensive state university instead? And hasn't he ever heard of [gasp!--Ed.] getting a JOB?
Maybe I am reactionary about this. I don't particularly care. I was the first child of any of the branches of my family in my generation to go to (and finish) college, and I practically paid my own way. I earned an scholarship that covered four years of tuition and fees so long as I kept my grades up, which I did [I was on the Dean's List every semester, and I graduated "with honors"--my school didn't use the Latin "cum laude"--too elitist, I suppose--Ed.]. I earned several small, one-semester stipends (a total of 8 times) that covered the cost of most of my books (I had a double major in history and in English lit, so my book-related expenses were substantially higher than average). I worked both during school and in the summers to cover my personal expenses. My agreement with my parents was that as long as I did those things, they would cover my room and board in the dorms and keep me on their car insurance (which was cheaper than my having my own policy at that age). So I covered the vast majority of my expenses myself. The total amount my parents spent for four years of room and board (and car insurance) came to about 3 semesters' worth of my tuition bills.
I thus finished four years of undergraduate education with absolutely NO student loan debt. When I went on to law school, I won another tuition and fees scholarship that lasted as long as my grades were good, and I also continued to work to cover many of my other expenses. I finally did have to take out my own student loans to cover apartment rent, groceries, gas, and the like. Still, I got my J.D. "with distinction" [a little more classy than the undergrad designation, but still not truly elitist Latin--Ed.}. Indeed, I was in the top 10 [not top 10%, top 10--Ed.] in my class. I therefore got seven years of post-high-school education at a total loan cost to me of only about $15,000.
True, that was 26 years ago. Everything is much more expensive now than it was then. The principles don't change, however. Anything someone earns is worth a helluva lot more than everything that is handed to him/her. So I have NO sympathy for these whiners who are distressed that their Ivy League rides are no longer free to them.
I remember the very first time I heard from a co-worker that she and her husband worked to put their 8 children (yes, they were Catholic) through college. I was shocked. She was still working at the age of 70-something to pay off all the loans they took out over the decades it took to get all their kids through college. I could not for the life of me see then why the kids couldn't pay off their own damn loans, and today I still can't.
I guess the child psychologist John Rosemond was right. Our total approach to parenthood has gone upside down. Not that the kids should be catering to the parents, but the parents for sure should NOT be catering to the kids, especially once they are of college age. How are they ever going to grow up for real if they aren't forced to cope with making some tough choices for themselves?
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