<p>You know what “too poor for college” means? It means selling your blood to buy your textbooks. It means working full-time at a graveyard shift job to pay the tuition and to pay the rent. It means refusing to leave a bank officer’s office when he tells you that you, at 22 years old, are really too old to get a school loan. That is what my dad faced in the early 1970s as he worked to return to college to make a better life for our family. He had a wife, and three little kids, and we moved into college housing, along with a lot of other young families with the same dream to get that college degree and move up the ladder from the lowest rungs to a place solidly in the the middle of the middle class. School loans were difficult to get, and my dad did not want to get school loans at all, but he was already working two jobs, and, at that time, he was willing to take a third at McDonalds. It is hard to believe, but in the early 1970s, if you were 22 years old, McDonalds actually considered you too old to work for them. So, he finally went to Bank of America, and was told that he was too old to get a school loan, and he refused to leave until the bank officer finally decided to give him a loan. Those are the kinds of things that people who truly are “too poor” do to pursue their dreams. And my dad’s dreams were quite humble - to get that degree and get that professional job and someday buy a house and someday see his kids go to college, too. Some of my greatest memories were while living in student housing with all of the other young families as all of the dads (and a couple of moms, too) pursued their college degrees.</p>
<p>We have come so far these days, and not in a good way, when people who have had generous incomes and lived in such a long period of prosperity since the 1980s, have blown those good incomes on constant streams of new cars and new houses and name-brand clothes and fancy shoes and exclusive preschools and college prep kindergartens and frequent restaurant meals and all sorts of other competitive conspicuous consumption, and have bought into the idea that their kids can only be successful if they get into a top 10 ranked school (or maybe top 100, a little slumming allowed.) This Morais guy is shocked to find that he cannot afford to pay tuition at Johns Hopkins. Well, boo hoo. His kid is not entitled to go to Johns Hopkins on the taxpayers’ dimes. And, as great a reputation as Johns Hopkins has, is it really worth the cost?</p>
<p>Financial aid was meant for those who were truly too poor to attend any college, not for those who desire to go to schools that have always been out of reach financially, and are ever more so because of poor money management on the part of the parents. It is time for people to face reality - you may not be able to afford that “dream” school. Big deal. Find schools that fit your budget. There are plenty around. Not being able to attend a dream college does not mean that one is “too poor for college.” These stories are starting to get bug me, especially as the more articles I see appearing in the media, I can see what the trend is - to make people like me subsidize the poor financial decisions of others, yet again, as I have had to do with the housing bubble, etc. I am tired of it. My kids knew upfront our limits, and they worked hard, and they have been blessed with opportunities that won’t require them to graduate in debt, and won’t require me to retire with school loan debt. Are they going to Harvard or Johns Hopkins? No, but so what.</p>