Cost of College Education

My husband and I cleaned some stuff out of our storage room today. It belongs to one of my children. This particular child came to visit with 15 large suitcases filled with “stuff” and only left with four of them. I’ve decided that it is time that I reunited the owner with the “stuff.”

Another one of my children is going to move “stuff” out of the rented storage shed and move it into my Condo “temporarily” so that storage rental won’t have to be paid. By Wednesday of this week, I will have moved one child’s stuff out and another child’s stuff in. Just what every mother wants to do.

The revolving door between parents and children is happening more often with this generation than with mine. When I moved out, I moved out. In my circle of close friends almost all of us have adult children living at home or we are taking a heavy responsibility for helping them support themselves. As a young woman, it was expected that I would grow up to be self-sufficient. Jobs were plentiful, if not high paying. The possibility of advancement was there, and so was hope that things would get better.

Those hopes are gone. I read an article today that the purpose of a college degree was to create so much debt that a person would have it paid off by the time they retired. It took ten years for me to pay off my college loans when I earned my bachelors degree. Banks didn’t give credit cards out so freely then, so except for my college loans, I left college with no debt.

Students leaving college today frequently have $10,000-$20,000 in credit card debt and $80,000-$100,000 in college loans. The job market isn’t what it used to be. The college graduates are taking jobs that pay $10.00 per hour or minimum wage and commissions. To survive, our children are moving back in with us. My son’s college loans are $400.00 per month.

The tuition and fees for a college education has become such a financial burden that many students are dropping out.

If we want to keep a strong middle class, we must have an educated population. To have an educated population, we must have a strong university system. To have a strong university system, we must have government funding to maintain affordability.

Shame on a government that creates a university system for the privileged rich, scholarship entitlement for the poor, and a university education that the middle class cannot afford.