<p>Independent of the students who desire to attend a elite school beyond their means, the unfortunate reality is for many, any college is rapidly becoming a receding possibility. </p>
<p>Nikkl you mentioned the need to postpone college and a financial situation which made college attendance difficult. To shift that context slightly forward-given the 6% yearly increase for tuitions and the decreased grant funds and increased emphasis on SL’s (including the SL companies notorious enhanced fees)-how probable will it be that the next generation of the poor will be able to do what you managed to achieve? </p>
<p>A few might, but its improbable that most will be able to beat this rigged situation. Especially given our very poor economy and the very troubling toll that is exacting on the working and lower middle classes. So it’s not a matter of the poor wanting status beyond their means, but a matter of their means no longer even providing enough to maintain even their past condition. </p>
<p>And the general tendency to condemn the poor for wanting to extend beyond their station, is disturbing. Yes, pragmatism is always a limit, but to criticize the ambitious and intelligent for desiring to improve their lot or for their desire to use their talents for bettering society is disturbing on several planes. One is the expectations it sets that ‘yes you belong in your class and should not desire to leave’. The other is the simple and unfortunate fact that we are conditioned to even think in such a manner. And finally many the schools which are now beyond their ambitions are largely sustained with public money. </p>
<p>And its very damning to our society that we have not derived a proper educational funding system which can assist our intelligent and ambitious towards their ends including the betterment of the common-without condemning them to increasingly impossible and inequitable debts . </p>
<p>Essentially by turning our educational funding system over to profiteers our society is denying possibilities to the very people we need to improve our common lot. Because our educational system has been so co-opted its no longer a matter of the content of a man’s character but the depth of his purse which defines educational opportunity. And increasingly that paradigm applies to even the schools intended to serve common populations, because costs are too high. Be that from tuitions or from the debts incurred thereof. </p>
<p>And if that is to be so, when it need not be, than our society has failed in keeping trust with all our platitudes about equality and opportunity. And more specifically for those of us in academia, how much longer do we have the right to claim our system genuinely exists for the common good? Corporate loan sharks do not teach, do not research, and certainly do not provide all the accessory services necessary for academia. But by allowing them to take over the student funding via their loans (which are often have as their source public money), they have gained control over academia and resultantly over the future of students well beyond that of academia itself. </p>
<pre><code>And its not just a necessary compromise or deluded students wanting to attend Harvard or etc. This unfortunate problem of escalating tuitions and ascending loan debts has already reached into the state Universities and CC’s. And the populations they serve, especially the CC’s are incredibly vulnerable to these pressures. So what Emily Griffith and John Ruskin started for the lower orders, will die a century later from the coins in falling into the coffers of companies who do little but skim from a system which they do no direct service.
And Nikkil the economic conditions and income you are personally experiencing are very much within the paradigm that Dr. Warren has so eloquently warned us about. And Mommusics question “I guess I am asking if the degree is “worth it” for everyone.” is very much defining the core of the problem.
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<p>Increasing tuition costs and the closely associated problems arising from the student loan industry will drive conditions to the point where a college degree is ‘worth it’ for no one except some elites. Who ironically do not need a college education to preserve or elevate their status.</p>