In what way would they be brought together? Physically speaking, universities already share buildings and facilities. In terms of coursework…not likely, unless Engineering is to become a 5 or 6-year program. Engineering requires so many core classes of math, physics, and of course Engineering, that there’s no room for any other classes. I don’t know that combining Departments works either, as University departments barely get along with themselves. Your thoughts?
Oh come on! Poor does not equal stupid. I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but we are constantly bombarded on TV and radio ads about grants, loans, and just plain who to go to to get answers about college.
Hmmmmmmmmmm…are there statistics out there somewhere on what percentage of college educated people end up in this position? Further, is the issue that they went to college and that is what caused their circumstances (that of mountains of student loan debt and living at home with their parents), or could other problems factor in? For instance, the “eternal student” the socially awkward (and therefore difficult for them to ace interviews), living in an area that is severely economically depressed.
First of all, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, a person CAN work AND go to college. In fact, at many colleges there are work programs where students can work at very flexible (scheduling-wise) jobs right at their university. There’s this amazing thing called “night classes”. And again, these are advertised a bunch on TV and radio.
Second, I AM one of these “poor persons” of which you speak. I grew up poor as a church mouse and my family struggled financially up until my teeny-bopper years. Though they didn’t go to college, they figured out how to make a good living by gradually increasing their areas of expertise and becoming pretty darned successful by the time I was in HS.
I didn’t have the experience of living around educated people at all. And as I said, we were extremely poor while I was growing up, yet my parents HOUNDED my sister and I about college. From my experience with knowing and associating with many other poor people, this is a common theme among those who are poor. Many poor people are quite aware that education is crucial to a good career and/or money making path.
No mention was ever made of college funds, though I know my parents would have helped if I’d gone to college right out of HS. (silly me, I got married instead, but that’s another thread!).
I don’t mean to pick on you, but you seem to have the idea that “poor = dumb” or perhaps lazy. For the record, perhaps the poor don’t have a financial buffer, but we certainly DO have a “work ethic” and strength of character buffer (to mention just a few). I made the foolish mistake of marrying too young instead of going to college, but by golly I learned how to work, make sound financial decisions and too many other “how to get through life/School of Hard Knocks” life lessons. Much later than most fresh out of HS kids start college, I took advantage of a grant (had to wait six months until I was “poor” enought to qualify since I wasn’t a minority), Went to college and worked three jobs while carrying a full load of credits for three semesters, and got a technical cert.
The cert, obtained more than 15 years ago, allowed me to start into my career in the environmental industry (NO, not the bunny hugger green peace whiners, the actual Workers who do the clean ups and investigations). I have excelled and rocketed to every higher paying positions with more authority and cooler titles each year. And I’m working on a degree. Yes, it’s taking longer than if I’d had a trust fund. But so what? How old was I gonna be if I’d simply stayed working as a waitress or parts runner? How old am I gonna be if I work and go to college at the same time? Hmmm, SAME AGE!!! 
So what’s the diff?
Now, I’m not special, and I"m not the brightest bulb on the marquee. If I can do it, any fool, poor or not, can figure it out.
Um, HUH? Do you think that the grants and loans send students to some low quality college, or some fly by night online degree or something? They are good to be used at accredited universities. Mine sent me to the same one I teach at now, the main University in my state.
Lots of us are intimidated by lots of things, but then we put our minds to it and go forward. I think the OP was trying to say that he’s sick of that as an excuse to not TRY, or worse (and more likely) that it’s someone else’s fault that they “can’t” go. FWIW, I agree with his rant completely. There’s no excuse in this country to not (sorry to steal a slogan from the army) “be all you can be”. Anyone of sound mind and body can do anything they set their mind to.
People with legitimate challenges or issues? That’s a 'nother thread.
(not picking on you…just adding to what you’ve said).
Did I mention that at the time I was getting my cert (at a regular university with regular university classes and schedules), I had a 12 year old daughter (now 27 and a household to run, and my last semester I was pregnant with my son? (now almost 16)
It can be done If a person wants to do it. It might not get done at the same speed as if a person were taking a 4 year degree, and it might be harder, but “I can’t afford to go” is a crock.
Having spent a number of years working with students aged 15-25, many of them poor, I can assure you this is not even close to being the case. Would that it were. They almost never balk at the idea of taking out loans, because
- When I graduate I’ll be a millionaire within like, five years
- What the hell you mean, “graduation will come soon?” It ain’t for four years!
- Shit, I don’t care about no freaking credit rating. I’ll always pay cash for what I buy. Besides, I heard college loans don’t even count, or they give you like ten years to pay, or something like that.
What is true is that poor students (and parents to boot), not knowing many college-educated people, often do not know about student loans and need-based scholarships. I have more than one act incredulous when told these things exist. Crap like the OP is complaining about are no doubt part of why this is the case.
Well, congratulations on your marriage, first of all, and I’m glad you’re in a position to go to the college that you want, but, and forgive my snarkiness here, but am I to understand that you had a scholarship, but didn’t want to go to that school? Then how can you say that you were unable to afford college when what you mean is that you were unable to afford to go to the college of your choice? You HAD the opportunity and ability to attend higher education, but you CHOSE not to, right?
Again, this is kind of your fault, isn’t it? But how could you manage to screw up your credit at 17???
I work with high school seniors; there are very, very few who are unable to go to college. Being in the top percentage in Arizona guarantees full tuition at the Universities here. There are tons of scholarships – not a day goes by in which I don’t write a recommendation or proofread an essay for a scholarship this time of year. The vast majority of schools offer dual enrollment programs and certainly AP classes – it’s not unusual for the top students at my school (a very lower middle-class area and few “genius” level kids) to graduate high school with 24-30 college credits already. A kid who really, really knows what he or she is doing could possibly get as many as 50 or so (at the extreme). That’s certainly less money spent taking those classes at college.
You know the kids at my school who can’t afford college? They’re the ones that barely passed. The ones who weren’t involved in any activities. The ones who didn’t look for a single scholarship, or take advantage of a single program. The ones who didn’t save any money for college on their own, and the ones whose parents never taught them to do so. The ones who don’t even start thinking about it until their senior year, and even then were more interested in prom or graduation than what happens after that. So is it possible to not afford college? Sure. But it’s not the system’s fault, really. And yes, this is the Dope, so there’s always the one person who chimes in with their exception that proves the rule. Thank you, yes, we see you.
While I was attending Community College full-time, I also had a job as a security guard. The guard company loved to hire students because the company liked us doing our homework on the job. The owner of the company figured that if we were doing our homework, we were awake and aware. We students loved working there because we got paid to do our homework.
That would be me. In fact, I NEVER thought about it except when my parents nagged me, until I was in my late 20s. Yet here I am, flightly prom-queen type, married and had a baby, and a divorce too early, yet I still managed to get a 2 year cert (1.5 semesters), a reasonable career, and am still pursuing an actual degree.
I’d bet a paycheck that every single so called “exception” to the rule really just wants things handed to them on a silver platter, the way they see things happen on “Friends” where gorgeous people live frivolous lives with no visible means of support.
-
UCLA is a top and expensive college. You had cheaper choices.
-
They have counselors at college for this, they can tell you what effects things like your Mom claiming you would have.
So, you made an expensive choice and you failed to use free resources, and at the end *“I was lucky enough to get accepted a second time, and lucky enough to be awarded several scholarships that amount to a full ride - I made good in the end…”,. *How is this “that is how you can not afford college”? Two choices you made and in the end you got UCLA after all. Good on you, however.
Sure dudes- sometimes you can’t afford to go to Harvard. So? And as CanvasShoes pointed out- it is even possible to go while supporting a family (But congratulations to CanvasShoes anyway, as I know that was tough, dude!) 
(Gives Monty high five for also being paid to study.)
Erm, what’s cheaper for a California resident? Seriously? CSUN is only a few grand a year cheaper, and I would have been slapped with nonresident tuition no matter which state school I applied to. I acknowledge clear ignorance on not getting counseling, however.
Two quick points:
The lifetime earning differential between a college grad and a HS grad is about a million bucks. That’s right, a million. I’ll have to find the cite, but I’m pretty sure that’s from Murnane’s The New Basic Skills.
Second, as someone pointed out upthread, there is a lot of confusion about how college loans work. There are plenty of predatory lenders out there, as witnessed by the recent scandal in NY state where preferred lenders gave kickbacks to financial aid directors. If you qualify for Perkins, Stafford, or Ford loans (I think those are the major gov’t ones off the top of my head) you can chalk it up as “good debt.” Uncle Sam has fair repayment plans, interest rates are low, etc. But if you are borrowing from a commercial lender it might be a very different situation.
Working class and poor folks are most sensitive to price volatility in college tuition. When tuition increases, folks stop attending, or worse yet, kids don’t even bother applying because they know they can’t afford it. Middle-class families know that loans are available and are more familiar with the concept of long-term loans - they have car notes and mortgages. Poor and working class people may not have these things. They may also be worried about filing a FAFSA - it is pretty invasive in its questioning and some people fear that they’ll get tripped up on tax issues and the like. It is also a difficult and unnecessarily long form. One of my profs has a formula that factors parental income and taxes, and probably three other factors and it comes very close to the EFC. (My money is on the FAFSA being phased out soon - nobody likes it.)
The 1980s and 1990s saw college access shrink for poor and working class folks, and the emphasis on loans and merit aid made the college conversation more of a middle class thing. Tuition has outpaced inflation for quite a while, and state subsidies for higher ed are continuing to shrink. It isn’t a good scene out there at all.
Not having access to knowledgeable people who can help you understand that the paperwork and hoops one jumps through to attend college is ultimately worth it hurts as well. I half agree with the OP, but if you think college advising in most high schools stinks (it does) the financial advising for college is even worse. It doesn’t exist.
Which when you consider the previous cite saying that the average high school graduate makes 28k you can easily see a problem. I read an article in the paper (sorry no cite) about a study that showed that a college student 20 or 30 years ago could work a 40 hour week over the summer and earn enough to pay for tuition at a state college for the entire year. Nowadays a person can work minimum wage 40 hours a week for an entire year and not pay for tuition at a state college.
It’s pretty clear that the rising cost has had an effect on enrollment:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/10/college_freshmen_wealthier_study_says/
This also assumes that you graduate. Which realistically you have to take into account. It’s likely that the earning increase with a college education will always outstrip tuition, but it’s a pretty big risk. It would be pretty damn shitty to flunk out after your sophomore year with 10k in debt.
Phaarmacist [at least at UCONN/Storrs] requires that you take a second language, and other liberal arts in addition to the regular heavy science/math core.
A pharmacist [not pharm tech] can pretty much get a job anywhere they want, and make some serious comfortable money. They can even work in research if they luck out and get hired by someone like Pfizer [who regularly farms its lab people from the UCONN program.]
Aroo?
They don’t file taxes? Eventually the nice folks over at the IRS will find out, and they will come to assist your folks in filing those taxes. The process will be similar to being gangraped by the Dallas Cowboys, wearing sandpaper condoms.
I have to disagree. There are many industries where writing skills are extremely important and a degree in English is a huge upper hand for these. The same applies to people who want to continue onto law school.
Of course, I may be disagreeing because I was an English major. I’m now in retail merchandising and analysis.
I think vocation ed courses should be provided as electives. Or, special five-year-programs could be established where students take four years of regular college curricula, and then in the fifth year take classes that are specifically geared to the work-a-day world in their field.
For instance, in the typical biology major, students take a year of general biology, intro courses in ecology, microbiology, cell biology, genetics, statistics, etc., and then move on to speciality elective courses like marine biology, plant physiology, virology, and microbial ecology. Electives might also include technical writing, public speaking, senior seminar, and research credits. Great offerings, to be sure, but not geared to specific occupations. I’d like to see added to the menu courses where students can learn marketable skills. Perhaps instead of a full semester, they can organized in six-week long workshops.
Some coures applicable to my field would be:
- Wetland delineation
- Animal handling and care.
- Aquaculture
- Horticulture
- Endangered species surveys/inventories
- Geographic Information System
- Survival training and diving certification
- Boat maintenance
- Database management
- Grant proposal writing
You find these skills listed on many job descriptions. Maybe students are lucky and can obtain a few of them through experience in internships, but rarely are these things taught in a formal classroom setting (except for GIS and horticulture). A wildlife biology/natural resources major who can put all of these things down on a resume can grab any job they want, no matter where he or she went to school.
I’m not saying this model would apply to all fields. I can only speak for my own.
Why do you think I’m saying poor people are stupid? Sensitive much?
I wasn’t bombarded with anything about college finances, CanvasShoes, and I came from a middle-class family. Especially on TV and radio. You, like the OP, assume that everyone’s exposure to information is the same. It isn’t.
Look, I’m not saying there’s an epidemic of underemployed college graduates, or that there’s an one-size-fits-all explanation for why people don’t do well in college. But VCO3 seems to think that simply going to college can take you from one income bracket to another, and that a poor person who worries that this won’t happen is stupid. It’s not a stupid worry.
(Unfortunately lots of people see college as an all-or-none thing. They think that if they don’t finish the degree, then all the work that they did goes to waste, not understanding that some college is better than no college. If a student is afraid that they may have to drop out prematurely because of finances, he or she may think it is pointless to even start. This fear can keep people from even trying.)
Pragmatism keeps some people from venturing into the stock market and going to college. Whether or not that pragmatism is justified is another question all together. What the hell is so controversial about this?
You are talking to the wrong person, because I KNOW THESE THINGS. Please stop the condescending tone.
It’s about seeing the pay-off in the end. If you can’t see the pay-off of going to school for yourself, then you won’t go. Lots of people, not even just poor people, can see the pay-off for other people but not for themselves. They think, “Well, I’m not smart enough to do engineering stuff and I can’t write well enough to be a reporter and I don’t want to be a lawyer or a doctor, but I can do [insert skill that does not require college degree]”. When these people (real life people, not a fictional character on a TV show) say “I can’t afford to go to college”, I don’t think they’re just talking about money. Without saying it, I think they’re talking about all that emotional stuff that goes along with it too.
I knew a guy who worked for 12 years at Picadilly because he thought college would be too hard for him. Finally, one day he decided he would enroll and check it out, and he was amazed at how easy it was. I think poor people are more likely to think college isn’t for them because it is stereotypically seen as a middle-class, rich people, smart people thing. You’re right that TV showcases college all the time nowadays, but vocational schools do a better job at targetting poor students. There’s a commercial running now for one of those for-profit voc ed schools that basically say “Hey, if you’re too dumb for a regular school, give us a call! We HAVE FINANCIAL AIDE!” Harvard and Princeton do not advertise like this.
I hope you didn’t think I was saying otherwise or that I was insulting you personally. Because I was not.
It’s not whether you major in English or Applied Applicability. What matters is that you have some sort of plan for what comes after that: I have a degree in English but always knew I wanted to teach, which is certainly a job you can live on. Other people have degrees in English but knew they were headed yto law school or whatever. I also tend to believe that if you have a true and genuine passion for something, you will find a way to make a paying concern out of it after graduation. On the other hand, if you are majoring in psychology or Latin or underwater basketweaving less because you love them and more because you have no fucking clue what you want to do with your life and those things are marginally more interesting to you than anything else and not too challenging, you are making a poor choice. Those are the people that years later say their degree was worthless and a waste of time and money. Those are the people that should have majored in a more directly applicable field.
There are many ways for a smart, resourceful kid to go to college. It certainly isn’t out of reach for anyone, though some may have to take slower or more painful paths than others.
On the other hand, there exists a layer of kids that are not as smart and not as resourceful. If they have a family that encourages them–either directly with money or indirectly with advice and pressure–they do fine, they go to college. If they don’t have that, they don’t. What comes up at this point is if we think of this as an individual issue–so sad for them–or a societal one–we have people that are potentially more productive that never reach that potential. If we think it would be better for more of these people to reach that ful potential, we need to do a better job – either reforming what is an amazingly complex, arbitrary, and organic system of higher education, or by giving them more support and pressure to navigate that system.
Another thing no one has mentioned that I see a great deal is that first-generation and immigrant students are at a particular disadvantage. The system is weird and hard to understand, and that’s a thousand times more true if no one in your family is at all familiar with it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to a bright student about the finer points of chosing a college only to have to back up and explain things like what a major is. When these kids have oly a vague understanding themselves, it’s doubly difficult for them to explain these things to his parents–I have a student who is dual-enrolled on a full scholarship in two of the most difficult programs to get into at UT and he is under constant pressure from family that don’t understand why junior college wasn’t good enough for him and he had to move away. I’ve had many immigrant parents who just assumed college was impossible for their kids and have passed that assumption down. I have a former student at Yale right now who never would have applied to anything out of the city if her teachers hadn’t looked at her accomplishments and told her to give it a shot. Again, bright hard-working, resourceful kids overcome this-- we had a refugee girl get into 8 Ivys, MIT, Stanford, and a bunch of others this year, and the most any are asking her to pay is MIT’s 5K/year–but there are others who are not that bright and not that resourceful who are missing out. You can argue about whether that’s an individual or a societal issue, but it does happen.
Monstro–A hear what you are saying about the applicable skills part of any job. however, I am going to disagree that a university is the best place to teach those skills. Many things are better taught on the job. That’s why there is student teaching, medical internships, law clerking, etc. It seems to me that what schools need is a greater emphasis on internships–kids without a lot of college understanding may well see internships as just summer jobs that pay a little more, and not realize the wide variety of internships avalible, nor the advantage they give you post-graduation, and that in many cases it’s worth it to make (moderately) lower grades because you are putting time into an internship.
Hehe…no, I wasn’t annoyed or taking it personally, I just thought it was kind of a silly connection to make. Here is what you said that I was replying to.
From what you say above, it appears that you think that people who grew up in these circumstances aren’t capable of seeing past what they grew up with, or in finding out how to change things, merely by having been poor, or not having been around educated people.
Again, I fall under both of those categories, and was a flighty “all I care about is proms and homecoming” type girl to boot, and I still figured out how to find information on how to get to college.
There are some very rare places in this country where TV and radio exposure isn’t available. Again, this doesn’t mean that these people “can’t afford to go” it merely means that they have more work to put in to get to the point where they can.
None of this is evidence that these people “can’t afford to go to college”. It is merely evidence that some people don’t think clearly or objectively, or allow their fears to overcome common sense. The OP’s point was about what a stupid plot point it is, because in this country it simply isn’t true. (sorry OP, we’ve gotten away from that [sheepish grin]).
That was in answer to what you say here:
Again, to me this is you assuming that, not YOU, but those people don’t know that. Of course YOU know that, you’re obviously well-educated and well-spoken, but your statement seems to assume that just because these people grew up poor, they somehow won’t understand this, or figure it out. They can, and do. My point was that being poor, and especially being pragmatic, again isn’t evidence that these folks can’t “afford to go” merely because their financial upbringing somehow produces people that can’t figure this out.
Well, that’s a seperate issue, though perhaps related, issue from what the OP was talking about. That would fall under the “I don’t understand what it takes to succeed in college, or what I 'wanna be when I grow up” enough to think it’s for me category, rather than “I can’t afford it”.
Again, I think this argument is very one-dimensional and isn’t really that related to the OP. People, even poor and uneducated ones, know that there are more choices than Harvard and Princeton.
That’s NOT to say that I don’t believe your opinion in that there are people who might be of the mindset that Princeton etc = (aaaa AAAAAH chorus of Angels) A College Degree and are incapable of seeing that any other steps to a secondary education than the 4 year degree at an Ivy League school (paid for by dear old dad) exist. But where I think you’re wrong is in thinking that those people are automatically the poor and uneducated. From what I’ve seen and experienced, it’s just the opposite, the poor and uneducated tend to strive to better themselves and more often DO see college as the Holy Grail of success, rather than an insurmountable obstacle.
Oh HECK no!!! I’ve seen you for a long time in here, I know you’re not that type!
I was merely using myself as an example, as one of the WORST sorts of princessly, stubborn, unknowledgeable HS grads to show that it (*I can’t afford college) is a silly concept at best. As are the other reasons you’ve brought up. That’s not to say that some folks don’t probably think that way, but I don’t think that is tied to being poor or having non college educated parents and relatives.
I’m probably the PRIME example of what you speak of above, that of someone fresh out of HS not understanding that college isn’t an “all or nothing” proposition, or even what it can and can’t do. But I, a medium level intelligent, and with a background of poor and uneducated relatives, managed to figure it out, all on my own and make it.
I had about every mark against me a person can have, yet I still managed to get the information on how to get to college and make it work. If I can, anyone can, and these excuses (of those types of people, not you) of “I can’t afford it” or “even if I went I’d end up working at McDonalds so why bother…etc” are bunk, that’s all I was trying to say.
And yeah, frankly this is a bit of a sore point with me. Again, not you, but the attitudes you outline. Bunch of whiny coddled sissies in this country, and too many folks allow them to be this way, instead of giving them a slap (figuratively) and telling them to “SNAP out of it, here’s a phone book, here are the blue pages, TRUST me there’s a government program to help ANYONE get started”.
grrrrrr…Okay, now I have to get to Spanish class.
Very true. And an internship is actually better than a formal course because it gives you hands-on experience and provides networking references.
I guess I’m thinking courses have an advantage over an internship in that they would be easier to get into. As an undergraduate, I had a summer internship in one of the labs at my university, but there were a limited number of slots available for this program, especially since the pool of candidates was drawn from all over the country. And as you said, students who can afford the no/low stipends of an intership are more likely to avail themselves of these opportunities. On the other hand, a course could be paid for through work study/scholarships/loans and could be scheduled around a busy work or class schedule.
An additional benefit would be that students could arrange for themselves a diverse set of skills, not just a narrow set that you might get from a single internship.
I think a model like mine would also help employers. I started a thread a few weeks ago in which posters complained about the low quality of recent college graduates. Apparently, at least some employers expect colleges to be involved in vocational education and are often disappointed.
An ideal university, IMHO, would require a classical college education but provide both internships and job-training curricula.
My parents were lower middle-class, and neither went to college. Even though they stressed the importance of education, we didn’t know many people who worked at jobs resulting from college. So when I got out of high school, I had no motivation to go to college. After working minimum-wage jobs a while (and developing an interest in electronics from my music hobby), I saw the value of college, and started studying electrical engineering. It took me over five years – I worked at several jobs, paying as I went. I was lucky that I lived in the town where the state university is located, and that the tuition was quite reasonable. But I set goals and worked towards them. Without goals, working your way through college can look like a difficult, expensive gamble. (I acknowledge that since this was over twenty years ago, the insane rate of tuition inflation has made it much harder: I would probably have had to take out some loans if I were doing it today).
So while I understand how people who haven’t seen the benefits of education can have a hard time committing to all that work, I think there are other reasons for saying you can’t afford college: for one, it sounds more noble than saying you’re lazy, unprepared or just plain dumb.
I once worked with an enlisted Navy guy who was arrogant as they come, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He claimed that his recruiter did something that prevented him from ever getting college tuition assistance in his entire 17 years of service. We all suspected it was his less ego-damaging way of explaining why he’d never gone.
As an Onion headline put it: “49-year old roofer declares college a ‘waste of time’”.