As my son, along with roughly 68 percent of the graduating class of 2021 in the US, is preparing for college, I gotta say that I am (hella) shocked by the cost of post secondary education.
You probably knew this already, but please give me a moment to catch up.
Did you know Pepperdine charges $80,000 a year and that Emory University in Atlanta wants 50? San Francisco State wants $20,000 for out of state tuition. Harvard charges 75,000. And, if you are one of the in-state students lucky enough to get into Cal or UCLA, you can do it for a cool 13,000. But, from our brief experience, it seems they often choose to admit out of state students that can pay for the $43,000 ride. What has college become?
Is it now an exclusive club that charges hundreds of thousands per student for a four year admission? Four years, out of pocket at Pepperdine is $320,000? If you have two kids, then call it $650K with travel and expenses?
Based on these figures, I guess if you can get out of college paying less than $100,000, you can consider yourself lucky?
This exclusive system has driven student loan debt to be the second-largest type of consumer debt in the U.S., with 45 million borrowers collectively owing nearly $1.7 trillion in student loans, almost triple what it was a decade ago. And it keeps growing, and these colleges keep growing and taking out more loans to build more and more to compete in a system that demands more and more.
But if the GI Bill— which provided veterans of the Second World War funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing— was designed to give more people access to the technocracy and the skills and resources they needed to compete in the changing economic landscape, have we undone its original purpose by recreating the inequitable educational landscape of the mid 1940’s?
In March 2007, the value of American subprime mortgages was estimated at $1.3 trillion. Fourteen years later, student loan debt has eclipsed that number by $400 billion. Just as people bet big on houses in the early 2000s, they are betting big on college education as a means to compete, but each day that passes, the credential earns you less and less.
So not only, is this a national fiscal crisis in the making, it’s a cultural crisis as well. The theme feels very similar to many of the problems we experience: those with access and privilege can navigate, and those with limited access are boxed out and forced to extend themselves to the fullest in order to compete in a society that doesn’t feel like it wants them to compete.
There are two disturbing parts of this story for me: the first is that I am old. I say this with a laugh, but truly, I cannot believe that I am old enough to have a child that is graduating high school (and one that is entering high school). So that— on one hand— amazes me.
The second part is an unsettling revelation. I realized that during the pandemic, as far as I know, every college and university charged the same admission fee for their fully online education. I realized that students all over the country were able to participate in their learning environments, remotely. I also realized that those prestigious university Zoom links and Google classrooms were not shared with the masses. I realized that colleges and universities have been saying for all these years that space was finite, and that only so many students could actually fit into a classroom or school, and that’s why everyone that applies can’t get in. But when the pandemic broke the need for learning to take place in physical classrooms, colleges and universities looked more and more like a business with a bottom line, trying to maintain their exclusive edge by limiting access and cornering the market.
I suppose that sharing the link would be bad for business? But I know hoarding the link to higher education has been particularly hard on poor people and people of color. If we keep playing this same game, the cost of college will be $1 million for two children by the time I’m a grandfather. I’ve lived long enough to know that’s just a moment away.
We need a new message: traditional college and university is not the only way to prepare our children for tomorrow’s economy.
In one alternate example, upon graduating from a cyber security certification program at Peralta Colleges here in the Bay Area, some students have made well over $150,000 in annual salary. With the current funding model, the cost of education at one of the Peralta schools is virtually free. Dozens of students are taking part in this opportunity, but it could be thousands. Instead we continue to place so much weight on the prestige of the expensive universities, and leave little room for alternative ways of expanding the minds of our graduating students. We owe it to them to continue to think outside of the debt box and develop equitable ways for all students to advance and compete.
My family is not exempt; we are on track to send both of our children to college because we’ve been blessed enough to have that as an option. In this case, we have access and privilege and some choices, but we cannot ignore the stress this pathway is putting on those that do not have the same opportunities.
We often talk about “green jobs” or building for the future, but we are using the same relative approach to education that we used 80 years ago. The pandemic has opened a door for us to evaluate what our system of higher education has become; it has also allowed us to see clearly where it is headed.
So, I’m excited that President Biden is talking about investing in infrastructure, but for me, he is not talking loud enough about rebuilding and investing in specifically in our education infrastructure. Because if we don’t fix this, debt will break the backs of our children.
Yes. Student loan debt is out of control. We, at the Oakland NAACP, have also noticed that our community colleges are not leveraged well enough. We want to advocate for better use of them, but when only 13% of students there earn math and reading credits.... and the grad rates are so low, it's tough. We have identified a way to support our most vulnerable learners through a MicroCollege model, courtesy of William Jessup University. It targets kids who are usually overlooked. 1.5-2.5 gpa. In two years, they earn an AA. Their credits transfer to wherever they decide to do. But most importantly the persistence rate is much higher. Why? Because they get the kind of help that's usually reserved for star athletes. Our kids can do it, and they shouldn't have to mortgage their futures to do it. Thank you for bringing attention to this.
Kareem W.
Oakland NAACP
Student testimonials: https://youtu.be/WRl6iDjOSEg