August 30, 2011 Is it worth it?
(Other than serving as a bit of a painfully exhausting workout for my mind…this has absolutely nothing to do with CrossFit. Not even a little bit)
I can thank bill collector Miss Walker for this post, as it is inspired almost entirely from the surprisingly deep conversation we had yesterday.
To my dismay, a student loan collector has been trying to contact me for the last few years, mailing information to a Nebraska address I’ve not resided in for almost four years now. Imagine my reaction when she informed me she was not with either of the two lenders I’ve already been paying each month. It wasn’t all shock, however. No… There was quite a bit of humor involved in the call, particularly when she said quite enthusiastically, “Now if you write me a check for $12,000 today, this will all be taken care of!”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA(catch my breath)HAHAHAHhahahahAHAHahAhahHahAHhAHhhahhahaHHHAhah(silently laughing even harder than quiet keys can imitate)…………………….AHAHAHAHA. Yes…that was hilarious. Hilarious that there’d actually be a snowball’s chance in hell that I would have that kind of disposable income just laying around. RIIIIIIIGHT. Not this chic.
After my 3 minutes of hysterical laughter at the sheer absurdity of her offer, she too finally cracked up herself, telling me…”I know I’m a bill collector, but I’m a single mom too and know exactly what it’s like to be on your end of phone calls like these.” We began talking about the joke they call “entrance and exit counseling” for loan recipients (almost everyone who attends college).
She told me that one woman she called had been making monthly payments to what she thought was a loan collector, but turned out to be the school itself; meanwhile, she defaulted on her loans. Another person revealed that when they signed the loan agreement, they thought they were accepting a grant, not a loan. That’s about the time I said, “Well…if nothing else, college promises job security because of the guaranteed debt we all accumulate with each high-buck degree.”
Think about this for a second. How else do you ‘incentivise’ (yeah, that’s not a word, but just go with it) people to work better than by overwhelming them with debt? Sick, huh?
I know that so long as I know I’ve got a bill to pay, I’ll be working. I’m thankful, too, that I was instilled with a strong worth ethic through an upbringing that had me washing my own laundry in the apartment complex’s quarter-washer when I was ten, and making extra money cleaning hotel rooms and babysitting before middle school; don’t worry, it was all within the confines of the law, so don’t go getting all child-labor crazy on me.
I attribute the way I learned to work to watching my dad put himself through college at 28, and then law school in his thirties with two kids. He always had his books with him when we visited him for our dad weekends. Skating rink, the pool, the park…everywhere, all the time, my dad was studying. He worked too. I can’t think of a job my dad didn’t do.
After the Navy he moved from Nebraska to Montana and became a logger. After that he worked as a CNA, copier repair man, car salesmen, gas station clerk, furniture salesmen, and magazine distributor just to name a few. It was on the seat of a tractor in one of my grandpa’s canola fields just outside of Choteau that my dad had his “epiphany”, as he tells it. When he told my grandpa Leif, “I’m going to be a lawyer,” he looked at him and said, “That’s nice, but first you got to finish that field, then that field….” I’ve heard the story a million times, but it still never gets old. Shortly after their conversation, my dad went on to pursue his dream.
My mother is no deadbeat either…far from it. I love her dearly and she is and always will be a salt-of-the-Earth, down home, Christian school-raised, country girl. That’s what drew my parents together just months after they met in a Helena church. It was the classic city boy meets country girl romance. But like half of all marriages nowadays, it came to an end and they went their separate ways to follow different dreams.
When I left Choteau for “bigger and better” opportunities in Nebraska with my dad, I truly believed that I was making the best decision for my future. Attending a city school with more kids, more options, more competition, I would wind up in a better college. Well, of course, everyone knows that a good college leads to a good job, and that a good job leads to a good life, right? Well….maybe it used to mean that.
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but there’s sure an awful lot about college that they don’t tell you. I read a quote today that might help me finally start to bring this whole thing around to making a point; it read, “Cost is what you pay. Value is what you get.” And so I wonder, considering the cost one pays for college, is it worth it?
Miss Walker told me that one of the teachers she’d spoken with lately didn’t think so, saying “Well, if you rack up $100,000 in debt to make $30,000 a year, what’s the point of it all?” Coming from an educator, that’s kind of sad.
I have always had the understanding that college is rarely about the specific degree that you obtain, save a few very specific majors. Instead, a college degree says, “For approximately four years I showed up on time, completed work according to deadlines, did what I was told, and worked with others.” That alone makes a degree holder that much more employable than the non-degree holder. If you can make it through college, chances are you’re probably going to make it somewhere in the workforce for the simple fact that college provides structure in the absence of a parental unit, and allows a period of time for young adults to practice surviving ‘real life’ away from the nest.
But consider the motivation for a college graduate to have a job to that of someone who’s chosen not to attend or couldn’t enroll in college. If you don’t get a job out of college, you probably feel like a fool, right? So there’s that whole false pride and ego that accompanies obtaining a degree. Not to say that graduating college isn’t an accomplishment, but college IS NOT “real life.”
Then there’s the debt. While options of deferment and forbearance exist as ways to put off repaying loans temporarily (forever), that debt is forever out there…haunting you like a bad dream. That’s enough motivation for me to work hard. I’ll never be without a job, even if that means I’m scrubbing floors, spraying weeds or fixing fence. I’ve done it all before, and plenty of other jobs too.
What is college good for? The answer is likely to be different depending on who you ask. I enjoyed a lot of the classes I took, and I’d never choose another major if I had to do it all over again. I met some of the coolest people, as well as some of the wackiest too. My first roommate fits the description of that latter, so that was fun. Wackiest of all, I must say, would be the professors I often debated with in class.
For three of my four years in school I attended the private, liberal arts school Nebraska Wesleyan University; talk about LIBERAL…holy cow! Naturally, most of my friends were long-haired art majors that enjoyed impromptu acoustic jam sessions while barefoot on the campus lawn in between classes like Popular Music & the Politics of Race, and The Gender and Art of Film. Many of my professors were self-proclaimed bisexuals who sat cross-legged on top of their desks, and hosted finals night over wine and private dinners in their home. A couple were in bands and had vintage vinyl collections in their offices. Some rode motorcycles like Professor Rosenboom, a Sociology professor who looked exactly like Shakespeare and dressed like a Mr. Rogers, pre-cardigan in the Neighborhood.
I worked at a coffee shop near campus called Mo Java; a local hot spot for the law students at the nearby UNL campus, reformed alcoholics, and at least one mad scientist. There was live music every Friday night, and we served deliciously pretentious meals like the pesto-avo melt on ciabatta bread with sprouts. It was the dream job for a college student, though it wasn’t my only job.
Twice I took a semi-voluntary sabbatical from school to work full-time so that I could afford to keep going to school. Funny, huh? Go to school so that you can work, go to work so that you can go to school so that you can work….(and so on in my case). To my resume, though…I don’t have merely four years college. I can add numerous titles like family service liaison, after school program coordinator, car sales rep., photographer, sandwich artist (haha…yes, a sandwich IS a masterpiece), fundraising phone canvasser, news writer, housekeeper, arts promoter, lawn mower, receptionist, dog walker, and home warranty audit temp. Yes, I certainly am my father’s daughter in respect to the multitude of jobs I’ve had.
I imagine now some people are reading this and thinking, “What’s wrong with you!? Can’t keep a job?”
My reason for leaving was always justified to me in one way or another; better wages, benefits, hours… opportunities.
So there I was, no college degree and always able to find a job of some kind. I never stuck with anything for very long because I always had “bigger and better” plans in mind…those which I continue to work towards today, even with a degree finally. Ha, and to think…it only took two countries, two schools, two breaks, and two amazing sets of parents who remained patient and encouraging through it all. Thank God they have a sense of humor.
Today…the burden of debt is upon me, and I’m not the only one carrying the baggage that is student loans. Heck, our country’s in debt, of course it makes sense that nearly everyone in this country is in debt too…as sad as it is to say. And when you think about who likely has the MOST debt…considering student loans, we’re talking about those with the greatest potential to be successful. Isn’t that ironic? Like punishment for doing well, like over-taxing the overly successful. Some thing is clearly very wrong with this picture.
Many times during my collegiate “career” I would recognize just how much harder government seemed to make things on those who seemed most likely to succeed. Now, if you were especially intelligent you might be able to earn a full-ride academic scholarship, but those recipients are few and far between. While I graduated in the top of my class and received various academic scholarships, the awards didn’t come close to touching the $24,000 yearly tuition. I thought it was odd that the Department of Education issued an EFC (expected family contribution) for each student, dependent upon their parent’s income. Then, after taking this practically fictitious number and subtracting it from the full cost of tuition, each college student is given an SAR (student aid report) which provides the total amount to be covered by the student through whatever means necessary. The EFC, to me, is about the biggest joke out there in determining whether or not a student is eligible for a grant. Now, as much as I hate the way this is making me sound, there has to be a better way to pay for school.
Unless you are 24, have a child, or are married, you’re basically freakin’ screwed when it comes to getting help to pay for college, because the DOE will look at a student’s parents’ income and consider it up for grabs to the university. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t getting a dime from my parents; there was an income, and so there was an assumed family contribution.
So there I was, a 17 year old high school graduate with a few years of work experience behind me, having a harder time getting into college (financially speaking) than I would had I just gotten married, had a kid, or waited until I was 24 so that I could be considered “independent” from my parents and considered for federal grants based on my own income (or lack of). It’s always seemed a little backwards to me.
And nowadays the bar has been raised. The pool of hireable Bachelors-degree carrying applicants in the workforce is outrageous, making it more “valuable” to attain a graduate or post-graduate degree. But look at the economy?! Here we have all of these college-educated, debt ridden young people with less of an opportunity to get a job than we’ve ever had in the history of this country. Now what…?
Where do we go from here? Who’s getting paid the big bucks in education, and what’s the return on investment? Are we no smarter than the workforces we’re exporting our American industries to? Almost nothing says “Made in the USA” anymore…so that means all of those people without a high-fallutin’ college education will likely have a difficult time finding employment as well. Who and what will people turn to?
Has education bankrupted us?
Tags: Debt, education, Student Loans
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