I have friends from highschool who were far better than me academically, I have friends who couldn’t leave Florida for college because the Florida Bright Futures will pay your way through school, if you qualify, but only in Florida. And the truth is, for example, if you’re a CS major the only school in Florida for you and it’s UCF, University of Central Florida, and the CS Major there really isn’t all that great.
One friend especially is at an under developed excuse for a CS department, though he’s 100x smarter than me, but he’s not getting the opportunities I am or anything of the sort. Why? Well even with his 3.997 gpa he couldn’t get enough scholarships for school. He’s a caucasian student who’s family makes just over the bracket for “lower middle class.”
Another friend is half hispanic and despite her fantastic GPA she hardly managed any scholarships either, mostly because of her income as well.
The definition of “middle” class either needs to change or they need to realize middle class is usually not wealthy enough to eat AND put your child through college. Or heaven forbid multiple children through college at once.
Your rant and the title don’t match. You are ranting about the cost of tuition, which I agree is almost cost prohibitive for many Americans.
However, the title implies it will be about discrimination against white middle class males. As a white middle class male who attended college helped by scholarship, grant and loan money, I will attest that rant is a non-starter.
Yeah, the rant took a different turn than when I originally began it. I was talkign with a friend discussing the fact he was going through loan paperwork for summer semester and how he hated the knowledge of his growing debt.
I had the same problem. And I couldn’t even get enough student loans to help me out. In the end, I worked for several years and then went back to school. Once you turn a certain age, I think it is 24, they will no longer base their decisions on your parent’s income, even if you live with them. At least, that was true for me. Good luck.
I’m sure it is difficult to get financial aid if you are middle class, but what is the solution? Do we raise taxes across the board to pay for educational costs? Raise college standards so that only those who are extremely high achievers academically are admitted and redirecting more financial aid towards each individual?
Again, I’ve heard of the problems of trying to afford higher education for middle class students, but as long as they can afford higher education somewhere (not necessarily their first choice), is there a problem?
Well, obviously the solution to this is to put your money where your mouth is, and give to the scholarship fund of your choice. After all, we all agree education is important, right, and that the costs of post-secondary education is too high, right?
Anyone? Anyone? (cue crickets chirping…)
Eh. Welcome to my world as a university fund-raiser.
[QUOTE=Gamaliel]
A free ride to a state school isn’t good enough for you?
/QUOTE]
That’s still very dependant on what you want to go to school for. I got a near free ride at Rowan which is, technically speaking, a state school. I was a music ed. major and their music ed. program is held in rather high regard in the region, as is their developing engineering program and just about every offering as an education major.
But what if I wanted to be, say, a hospitality or a biology major? Those programs that are decidedly lacking (if not nonexistent) there.
I work at another University now that is considered one of the top engineering schools in the world, but I wouldn’t recommend you come here to earn a degree in the fine or performing arts.
Pursuing a degree in a program that is poorly funded/run/maintained/staffed/etc. can not only be to the students disadvantage, but can actually be damaging when they try to enter the work force.
Bottom line is that getting a state-funded education is great, if you can get a quality education in your chosen field. From what the OP is saying his friend(?) can’t because he his restricted to state-run schools, within Florida, and that he can’t get a quality education as a result, due to the price of tuition being unnecessarily high in many cases (but that’s a rant for another time concerning my particular place of employment).
Couldn’t you get a degree in a not-so-great program and simply start out from college perhaps working in a slightly lesser position than if you went to a better program and work your way up? Also, don’t many states have multiple universities, and what one university doesn’t offer, another does?
Go out there and earn your education. Don’t just wait for money to come rolling your way, you fucking lazy punk.
If that means you have to get a job or two, you do that.
If that means you have to go into debt now, to earn more money later, you do that.
If that means you have to write letters to every obscure scholarship in existence, I expect you to be doing so. You know where the post office is, right?
And you had better be camping out at the financial aid office of whatever school decides to accept you and take what you’re given and then beg for more. Work the system for all it’s worth.
If you want to, you can even join the military for an educational opportunity. But only if you want to.
But please, stop the fucking complaining, and do something productive about your problem.
Yeah, I contemplated it a couple of times. I wasn’t referring just to starting at a lower position/salary though. I’ve seen some programs that were so bad that your degree wouldn’t supply you with the appropriate skills. You’d end up spending $30k-$100k for the privilege of entering the work force and not knowing what you’re doing when you get there, which decreases your ability to advance, and to be hired (assuming there is an interviewing process that tests the individual’s knowledge)
Yeah, NJ has at least 6 that I can recall offhand (TCNJ, Monmouth, Ryder, TCNJ, Rutgers, Rowan, Stockton) but NONE of them offer Music Therapy as a possible major despite Rowan and TCNJ having excellent music programs. For some fields, it’s hit or miss no matter how many schools you can check.
I’m a white boy from a lower-middle class family. I got a full ride- room and board, books, tuition, the whole shebang- here at Florida State, and I wasn’t even that great of a student in high school. Actually, I was terrible.
Not only that, but I’m from out of state. If there was money for me, they can’t be all that discriminating, I should think.
Not that I have a problem with paying for my own damned education(I pay for my books and fees out of pocket every quarter), but the OP isn’t wrong. For a white guy who isn’t living on the street, there are no scholarships. None. Hell, my wife doesn’t have many options, either, and we’re fucking poor.
I’d say the scholarship scale was decidedly tipped towards minorities, no matter their economic status. If there was ANYTHING I could change about the secondary school system it would be increased availability of funding for EVERYONE, instead of concentrating as much on minorities.
That might be an unpopular viewpoint, but it’s hard to get by when your schooling comes out of your pocket and somebody else gets their education handed to them.
Yeah, those minorities are just living off the hard work of all those poor white guys! They are HANDED everything, the lazy bums!
I’m sick of the whining! Do you know how I paid for school? I stayed in Georgia and took advantage of the HOPE scholarship…which is open to ALL Georgia residents. For pocket change, I entered an essay contest run by the city of Atlanta and wrote a four-page tome on “How to Stop Youth Violence.” Viola! $4000 bucks just for me! Funny, but none of the middle-class white guys at my school cared enough to enter that contest. All the participants were black, and most of us were female.
I got a stipend from my college not for being black, but for being a woman at a predominately male instititution. Not a red cent from Georgia Tech for being black, even though they made up only 7% of the student body at the time.
I DID score a scholarship from National Merit for being a high-achieving black student. As HOPE paid for tuition and fees, this money went to living expenses. Even then, I lived off the kindness of my father and grabbed part-time work. I’m grateful for the evil “race money”, but it certainly wasn’t gravy and certainly wasn’t something all black kids got. My twin sister, who did better on the SAT than I did, did NOT get National Achievement money.
The OP is dumb. Are we supposed to feel sorry because someone can’t afford to leave Florida to go to college? Cue the sad violin music. Most kids stay in-state for college. It’s cheaper for EVERYONE, including all those rich minorities. And guess what? College is not an entitlement! I can’t afford a Lexus, but I’m not complaining because no one is buying me one. I’m making do with my Chevy Corsica, thankyouverymuch. I’m making my Chevy Corsica work for me. That’s what people with limited funds do. Can’t afford Harvard? Take out a loan or go to goddamn Florida State for free. It’s an easy decision to make.
I don’t know any middle-class black people who went to school on a full scholarship just for being black. Everyone who says minorities have all the scholarship money are just blowing smoke. They deserve all the rolly eyes in the world.
Ya, cause that’s exactly what I said. :rolleyes: You went to college? With reading comprehension skills like that??? Holy shit!
Please don’t mistake me for one of the “oppressed whiteys” you hear more often bitching about jobs and contracts and Affirmative Action because that would be a stretch and absolute ignorance of what I said.
If you don’t believe that thee are more opportunities for minorities for scholarships, go pick up one of those big books that has nothing but scholarship information. If you just wish to believe what you posted above, then go right ahead.
Emphasis mine. Your post reeks of a “Those lucky minorities are getting stuff handed to them, the greedy bastards” kind of a sentiment that is frequently expressed on this board. I’m clearly sick of it but I do regret having jumped down your throat seeing as how you did not explicitly say this.
You say it’s hard to get by when you’re paying for your schooling and someone else isn’t. Why? That’s like saying it’s hard to get by when you’re taking the bus and someone else is driving. Um…that “someone else” doesn’t affect you. How does some random scholarship kid affect your life?
Also, the “someone else” will always be there. Even if all scholarships were open to everyone, there would still be inequalities and perceived unfairness in how the money was divided. Unfortunately, the “hard to get by” thing is called life.
I was going to jump down your throat in turn for this comment as well, but I’ll ignore the attack. Nobody said anyone was greedy and nobody said “those minorities, they sure be lucky.” Hell, I never even said that scholarships are “handed” to minorities, because we all know that in order to get any sort of money from any agency, you have to put work into it.
What I said if you would bother to fucking read was that there is a disproportionate amount of scholarships offered to minorities. Not that you were lucky because you’re black, and not that anyone, anyone is greedy for taking what is out there for the offering. To come to any other conclusions of what I said initially is disingenuous at best.
Be sick of it all you want. But don’t play dumb or be willfully ignorant of the fact that there are less opportunities for people who aren’t of some ethnic background(black, asian, mexican, slovakian, spanish, french, Etc. Etc.).
