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.

Last edited by Quantum2003; 04/07/18 06:30 PM.