Shut Out: How the Cost of Higher Education Is Dividing Our Country

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Shut Out
How the Cost of Higher Education Is Dividing Our Country

By Andy Kroll


A few months ago, Bobby Stapleton, a 21-year-old student at the University of Michigan, received a phone call from his younger brother. The good news came first: a senior in high school, he, too, had been accepted by the university, the fourth sibling in his family to have the opportunity to make the move to Ann Arbor from rural Hemlock, Michigan.

Then came the bad news: his brother had no intention of telling their parents, because as Bobby put it, "he knew the money just wasn't there anymore, and that it wasn't realistic." The financial crisis had plunged the Stapleton family into severe debt. At this point, paying Michigan's modest (by college standards) $11,000 tuition for another child appeared unlikely. As his younger brother told their younger sister, Bobby recalled, "Things were just going to have to be different for the two of them."

Since that moment, Bobby and his older sisters have tirelessly searched for a way to change that fate. He has sought advice from older relatives who attended the university, met with members of its financial aid office, and explained his brother's situation to officials at the Michigan Education Trust, a statewide tuition payment program; all this in addition to a full class schedule and a dormitory dining-hall job that often keeps him at work until one or two in the morning. Still, Bobby wasn't about to give up. "I can truly say that being part of this university is one of the best things that's ever happened to me." He was, he swore, going to do everything he could to make sure that his brother and sister had that same opportunity.

Engines of Inequality

Welcome to the other crisis spreading quietly across the country: the crisis of college affordability. Talk to enough students and families on a college campus like the University of Michigan, where I'm a student, and you'll hear plenty of stories like Bobby Stapleton's -- of families scraping by in increasingly tough times as tuition bills rise, of students working second and third jobs, of newly minted graduates staggering into an ever more jobless world under the weight of tens of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175054/andy_kroll_the_crisis_of_college_affordability (scroll down a bit after clicking the link)

[HillbillyBob]

1. Folks are acting like this is a new thing.

I got outted from the navy after I had training for a career in Air Traffic control.
Since the FAA dint like fags either I could not work in my chosen profession, and ATCs were much needed after runnyraygun the rpig fired all of them (this was in 83 when I got the shaft) I had to work shit jobs that paid so little and without GI bill or any other funding for education I had to continue to work shit jobs until illness and injury landed me on a pittance of a disability check.

[marmar]

2. True.....But when I was in college in the early- to mid-1990s it wasn't nearly this bad.......

..... It was pricey then, but I really feel for today's students.

[Recursion]

3. I was lucky and came from a very poor family

We filled out our FAFSA and our contribution shook out to about $1500 per year; I don't know if all colleges make up the difference but mine did. Yeah, I graduated with some debt but it wasn't crippling or anything.

I think the problem is all the people who have enough money that they don't get a free ride like I did, but still can't afford it.

[Igel]

4. Most do.

It depends on finding a good "fit" between the student and the university.

Just being accepted isn't enough; they actually have to want to have you attend. The solution can be to drop your standards a bit--instead of going to a top-notch school that you're middle-of-the-pack in, go for a school with lesser prestige where suddenly you're in the top 10%.

The other way to trim the bill is to do the community college thing: Most credits transfer and then you apply to be an incoming junior, not incoming frosh. The drawback is that you don't get as much time to play with finding a major, and you have to be careful: You don't want to rely to heavily on a CC to meet your major requirements because what the curricula at a CC might not be the same as a 4-year-school's curricula.

One problem is that a lot of schools moved to a high-tuition/high-financial aid model, assuming there'd be a certain cut-off for students needing aid. Instead they find that that cut-off is getting higher and higher and the aid's not increasing to keep pace. In other words, it was a bad idea built on assumptions that didn't hold long-term.