The Woes of Financing an American College Education

Musings inspired by the NY Times article College May Become Unaffordable for Most in US 

If Americans cannot afford to send their children to their own alma maters, who has failed?

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Like most things, there is blame enough to go around. An anemic economy, interest rates that are tantamount to banks promising to burn every tenth dollar given to them, skyward bound personal, corporate, city, state, country, and world debt, flagrant college mismanagement, and ambivalence if not outright indignation for the educated seem to have come back to bite the young. 

One of the less examined shockers of this article and most that have been published following the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education released its data is its focus on family income when considering the payment of college tuition. This is the standard method of sending the young to the career grooming of a local school. But is this method sound? Why should a new adult be dependent on parental patronage in order to have a viable future? A lender exerts pressure on the recipient. Why is the first turn of adulthood, the first act of an 18 year old with dreams of a degree and independence most likely required to return tail-between-legs and ask the folks to take out another mortgage? 

The above cited article and the NCPPHE report all note the increase in loans (and their painfulness) made directly available to students themselves. But again, money comes with consequences. The young, by definition, lack the sobering scars of experience and as such are credit risks. A young borrower is less likely to acquire favorable credit ratings and will suffer steeper interest rates, thus it is more expensive for them to borrow, perhaps even impossible to acquire the ever increasing tuition sums. Also, private loans mean a student has monthly payments on the debt. The loan requires a part time job. Work brings dignity. But a good student already has that and there can be too much of a good thing. There are not enough department and student positions for undergraduates and consequently our economy is provided a crop of youth dependent on the service industry for their bread and butter, or, more realistically, ramen.     

There is another flavor of loan: those granted specifically for students which defer repayment until graduation. The consequences of this funding are largely delayed. But again, the sum granted is unlikely to cover living expenses and students are required to work. The problem comes with graduation when the loan rises from its dormancy and begins to terrorize a person's night and day. Debt renders people docile; the threat of personal financial collapse encourages a worker's obedience, a voter's dependence, and a citizen's fear. Which is relevant to the first funding option too. Parents saddled with debt are similarly world weary having taken their livelihood, home, or retirement into a local bank and borrowed against it.

Scholarships make up a final category. They are a windfall that cannot be underestimated and their providers should be showered in gratitude. Nevertheless, most scholarships are like a bikini; an insufficient cover for the blossoming figure of college tuition. Particularly few scholarships include living expenses and so too necessitate recipients work and try to juggle scholarly inquisitiveness and worker complacency without suffering a psychotic break. Also, scholarships often come bearing tangles, demanding students to maintain GPA, credit, or graduation dates. A degree of least resistance becomes attractive to students under these restraints as fear of flunking out of college looms. Consequently a society gains an abundance of psychology majors who can, upon graduation, diagnose their own nervous disorders.   

In order to reform this situation, some combination of the above options must be tempered, or the government must rework the entrance gates and cost of the floor show. Implying the government should have a roll invites people to misuse the word 'socialism' loudly, repeatedly, and to your face. These observations do not recommend a free opportunity to read "The Great Gatsby" in hollowed halls to each and every heart's content. Nothing is free. What is not paid for directly by one person is sweated out of others like drippings from a pot roast. Besides, without an assurance that college would not become a perverse daycare for young adults the concept should remain on the shelf.      

The weight of each of these options has likely contributed to the NCPPHE statistic from a recent survey that "74% think that many qualified and motivated students don't have the opportunity for a college education." Which seems to roundly undermine any recommendation that only students whose parents can pay belong in a lecture about modern genetics or post-modern architecture. A student's merit is not determined by a parent's wealth. But, as the article's title implies, this is not the direction actual student enrollment is headed. As the wealth gap increases, is there a danger that a quality education will be bid up, out of reach from many deserving young minds? Some people enjoy the privilege of a family legacy and the bonus of going through the application express line by flashing their last name. The right of parents to pass on advantages to their children is not under scrutiny. But if the only way you can make your kid look smart is to stop everyone else's from competing, we've all got a problem.