Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The price is too high!

Agreed.

Rather than viewing a thread as a debate, possibly viewing it as a discussion of an article, and especially with the HOPE Lab goal in mind, "...explore counseling and other approaches to help families contend with those costs, and experiment with approaches to lowering the costs while ensuring that students earn degrees of value."

This exaggerates what was actually said, essentially making a strawman argument to discredit the person you attribute this to.

This is all lovely—thank you for your reply and personal insights—but I’m struggling to reconcile your first and second statements. It seems inconsistent from a public policy lens to, on the one hand, advocate support for the underprivileged while, on the other hand, deny them the single most effective tool to surmount poverty. (I may be unaware of the specifics of tuition aid in the US. If it is universal, please disregard.)

This is a major impediment to our economic competitiveness. Within my own large extended family (spread out among different states and regions of the U.S.), we have observed spiraling costs on the one hand and decreased opportunities to obtain/maintain earnings while matriculating. This has gotten increasingly worse over the three decades since I earned my undergraduate degree.

I was one of those students who held decent jobs in high school and college and was able to complete my degree fairly comfortably with scholarships and grants as well as a reasonable amount of loans (about $10,000). I was in good company. That is no longer so commonplace unless you are both smart enough and poor enough to receive full-ride scholarships. If you are average intelligence but poor or middle-class, you will need lots of time to study and end up with tons of debt. If you are upper-middle-class but your parents are unwilling to make the financial sacrifice to "contribute" their full expected contribution, you may not be able to borrow enough on your own to attend college.

I live in a major metropolitan area and the hypothetical numbers provided by sanne feel alien to our local reality. I also actually have relatives in Wisconsin who had struggled with escalating college costs between 10 to 20 years ago, when the situation wasn't nearly as difficult. Of course, they lived in the suburbs of a major city and did not investigate moving to rural areas in Wisconsin to attend college.

Having dealt tangentially with affordable housing issues in a professional capacity, the crisis I perceive are beyond just college students. Young adults who move directly into the work force from high school are struggling as well. If they are unlucky enough to lack family who are willing to help support them, they often cannot afford housing or lose housing through eviction. Public transportation is a nice concept but not always available unless you live in an urban area.

I don't want to go completely off-topic, but I think this affordability/escalating costs crisis is impacting even secondary education (high school & perhaps middle school to a lesser extent). My younger kids are in 9th and I am astounded at the amount of money I have to spend for their public school education on all the extras that are often not really optional. Of course, there are provisions to help homeless kids and sometimes even free lunch kids, but not always.

My kids actually need their cellphones for school. They don't need (or have) $1000 iphones or $100 monthly plans. There are lots of affordable prepaid options. Not having a cellphone would have been inconvenient in middle school but detrimental in high school. Many teachers directly communicate via text with the students although some still use email. In the classroom, it is not unusual for the teacher to tell the students to pull information on their phones.

Back to the topic at hand . . . jobs are not as accessible/compatible with the simultaneous pursuit of higher education these days. According to some placement professionals I consulted a couple of years ago, college students are having a harder time finding jobs (outside their work study jobs) and it is even harder for high school students. Of course, if you have connections . . . Also to graduate in four years, students sometimes need to take summer classes or their fall/spring schedules otherwise interfere.

It is a crisis if a large segment of the population cannot surmount the obstacles currently in place, notwithstanding that a few well-placed individuals are able overcome the odds through hard work and creative sacrifice.

Public policy differs from faith-based assistance. One example may be the opportunity for all members of a specific faith to attend that faith's universities free of charge. Some may reject this opportunity, however it is an opportunity from which many have benefited.

Rather than exaggerating, I understated sanne's assumptions:

I agree, however please recall that sanne originally declined to provide numbers specifically for that reason: "Every region will have different costs of living, which is why I'm not claiming that all can do it and trying to not clog the thread with numbers which may be completely irrelevant to others. Which is why I've chosen to not provide the type of evidence you wish to see."

Agreed. Taking a close look at your local public school budget can be very eye-opening: seeing what your tax dollars are funding, supporting, investing in, and paying for.

Agreed. Especially for students seeking work which may provide some semblance of experience in their chosen field. The economy is contracting, as jobs move overseas and/or become automated. In this old post, the College Board Trends in Education report reveals [i]10-18 years to pay back student loans, whole career to last 40 years[/i] (2013).

Agreed. Depending upon how credits are priced per semester, there can be financial incentive to take more credits per semester, and due to when classes are offered it may behoove a student to take summer classes.

Some may see personal anecdotes as reflecting a way to describe reality, but they would be wrong.

For example, "My personal experience in Kansas has shown me that the world is flat, and people who disagree are clearly not looking carefully enough."

Some may disagree, as
1) sanne spoke of their own observation and experience, not of all persons,
2) an example was provided of an individual who was homeless by empowered choice for frugality... NOT through irresponsibility.

I'm glad you believe in the American Dream, because we're basically talking about how it is dying, and no amount of empty platitudes will reverse that.