Spiraling Higher Ed

This was back in the days before I had a laptop or PC. On a piece of paper in the back of my Comm 360 notebook, I listed out all my short-term bills. I had included my spring semester tuition and what I still owed in room and board.

On a second sheet, I wrote down the amount of money I had taken out in federal and private student loans. The sheet of paper had a coffee stain and was smudged but I dutifully used it to keep track each semester on where I stood.

The number on the page made my eyes hurt. I worked two jobs to pay for college and it still wasn’t enough. During the day, I worked in the Graduate Admissions office sending out mass mailings, filing papers, things like that. And at night, I worked several hours in an office supply store. My jobs mostly covered incidental expenses. I called it my beer money, but I rarely used it for beer. I needed it to keep my head above water.

My father suffered a major heart attack when I was still in elementary school. My mom broke her back working at a sewing factory. My parents helped me when they could, but they needed to worry about themselves.

Keep paddling

When I started school, I knew I was going it alone. When I thought about skipping class or simply slacking off, I would pull out that notebook. I would look at the loan numbers staring back at me. They scared the bejesus out of me. I worried about how I was ever going to pay my loans off, but they also kept me serious about school.

When I got really scared, I ran the numbers to figure out how long it would take me to catch up. How much would I make once I got a job out of school?

Like a duck in the water with its legs paddling like crazy, I was going to need to paddle like crazy to make my dreams come true. I was taking the harder route. I knew that I could have let college pass me by, but I also knew that if I stayed in my small community, it would have been the death knell for me. There’s no way to predict what would’ve happened to me, but most of the options weren’t good.

Them’s fighting words

The quickest way to get into a fight with someone in recent years has been to bring up student loan forgiveness. President Biden tried to put a dent into the problem and many folks took umbrage with the move.

Unlike many people, I didn’t have a lot of problems with Biden’s plan. I don’t fault students for wanting a better life. My problem was that I never felt his plan hit the real problem. I’ve always felt that the bigger fault lies with the institutions, the ones charging exorbitant prices, and how they have lost track of their mission. They charge an arm and a leg. Historically, college tuition and fees have risen at a faster rate than inflation. From 2000-2022, average tuition and fees rose by 60%, from $9,204 to $14,688 a year.

There’s no question that the cost of higher education has gotten out of control. In the words of Commander Tom “Stinger” Jardian, the cigar chomping commanding officer in Top Gun who reams out Tom Cruise’s Maverick, “Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.”

Yes, colleges have be writing checks they can’t keep and they keep passing those outrageous costs onto students. The average cost of college tuition and fees for the 2024-2025 academic year is roughly $11,610 for in-state students at public four-year institutions and $30,780 for out-of-state students, according to the College Board. Private colleges average around $43,350 annually. 

The breaking point is coming soon. The number of American higher education institutions decreased by 2% from 2022–2023 to 2023–2024. Many experts think the number of failing schools will increase significantly over the next ten years.

A house of cards

Some day it will start to impact the larger schools. I have mixed feeling on this. I hate to see schools close, but I know from personal experience that parents and children can’t take much more.  

I’m just thankful that I graduated when I did. Unfortunately in the day and age that we live in now, my little cheat sheet wouldn’t work today. I would be priced out of college. And frankly, I’m not sure what I would’ve done.

I would’ve been up a creek without a paddle.