There are colleges all over New England, so it’s not unusual for me to be driving down the road looking at a bumper sticker that says, “My daughter and my money go to Acme University.” I always wonder how the daughter feels about that. For 12 years, through elementary and high school, she studied hard, participated in all the appropriate extra-curricular activities and was accepted into a prestigious institution of higher learning, where she’s working harder then ever to make good grades. When she comes home for mid-term break, she looks at dad’s Oldsmobile, where a lame joke pasted to the rear bumper informs her that her principal rival for her parents’ affection is — cash.
Yes, college is expensive today, but hey, mom and dad, what else would you spend the money on? What else can money buy that has as much value as an education? A boat? “Yes, we decided that instead of sending Amy to college, we’d buy a cabin cruiser. We named it the ‘Magna Cum Laude.'” That’ll get a big laugh down at the yacht club.
This is your daughter. She’s alive and healthy and has dreams to fulfill. She is the envoy you are sending into the future to represent you. She wants to go to college, she has the brains and the moxie to compete with some of the smartest kids in the country and you’ve got either the savings or the credit to make all this possible. How could you not do it? How could you even think about not doing it?
But maybe I’m being too hard on you. After all, I’m not unsympathetic. I’m sure that from the moment you learned you were going to have a baby, you started squirrelling money away in a college account. For eighteen years, you devoted yourself to making that account grow, so now it seems counter-intuitive to be taking money out. And oh my God, are you taking money out. Deposits were made in twenties and fifties and withdrawals are in tens of thousands.
And I know your daughter isn’t making this any easier. She comes home on break and you don’t understand her clothes. She had her navel pierced and you don’t even want to think of where else. As far as college goes, she seems more interested in her CDs than her BA.
But I live in a college town and I talk to college kids. The pressure can be tremendous. Even with mom and dad helping all they can, it’s not unusual for students to be leaving college this spring forty or fifty thousand dollars in debt.
When I was a student, the most powerful drugs on campus were illegal; today they’re prescribed. Some students – not all, but some – enter as freshmen taking Ritalin and leave as seniors taking Prozac. That’s a statement on life and stress in our post-industrial society.
Perhaps the most tragic victim of all this is the student’s dreams. Imagine your daughter going to college, leaving home, entering the wide world. At school, she is everything you hoped she would be – a serious scholar, filled with enthusiasm and wonder. But when graduation comes, she finds it is all a cruel illusion. From the ivory tower of the university, your daughter sees a fair and beautiful land, but when she descends from the tower, she finds she can only enter that land wearing the chains of an indentured servant.
With the crushing debt imposed by a college education, where will we get our artists and writers, our social workers and teachers and activists? Universities provide their graduates with the means to get a good paying job, but not the freedom to take some of society’s most important jobs.
And the really bad news is – those students are the lucky ones.
My Daughter and My Money
There are colleges all over New England, so it’s not unusual for me to be driving down the road looking at a bumper sticker that says, “My daughter and my money go to Acme University.” I always wonder how the daughter feels about that. For 12 years, through elementary and high school, she studied hard, participated in all the appropriate extra-curricular activities and was accepted into a prestigious institution of higher learning, where she’s working harder then ever to make good grades. When she comes home for mid-term break, she looks at dad’s Oldsmobile, where a lame joke pasted to the rear bumper informs her that her principal rival for her parents’ affection is — cash.
Yes, college is expensive today, but hey, mom and dad, what else would you spend the money on? What else can money buy that has as much value as an education? A boat? “Yes, we decided that instead of sending Amy to college, we’d buy a cabin cruiser. We named it the ‘Magna Cum Laude.'” That’ll get a big laugh down at the yacht club.
This is your daughter. She’s alive and healthy and has dreams to fulfill. She is the envoy you are sending into the future to represent you. She wants to go to college, she has the brains and the moxie to compete with some of the smartest kids in the country and you’ve got either the savings or the credit to make all this possible. How could you not do it? How could you even think about not doing it?
But maybe I’m being too hard on you. After all, I’m not unsympathetic. I’m sure that from the moment you learned you were going to have a baby, you started squirrelling money away in a college account. For eighteen years, you devoted yourself to making that account grow, so now it seems counter-intuitive to be taking money out. And oh my God, are you taking money out. Deposits were made in twenties and fifties and withdrawals are in tens of thousands.
And I know your daughter isn’t making this any easier. She comes home on break and you don’t understand her clothes. She had her navel pierced and you don’t even want to think of where else. As far as college goes, she seems more interested in her CDs than her BA.
But I live in a college town and I talk to college kids. The pressure can be tremendous. Even with mom and dad helping all they can, it’s not unusual for students to be leaving college this spring forty or fifty thousand dollars in debt.
When I was a student, the most powerful drugs on campus were illegal; today they’re prescribed. Some students – not all, but some – enter as freshmen taking Ritalin and leave as seniors taking Prozac. That’s a statement on life and stress in our post-industrial society.
Perhaps the most tragic victim of all this is the student’s dreams. Imagine your daughter going to college, leaving home, entering the wide world. At school, she is everything you hoped she would be – a serious scholar, filled with enthusiasm and wonder. But when graduation comes, she finds it is all a cruel illusion. From the ivory tower of the university, your daughter sees a fair and beautiful land, but when she descends from the tower, she finds she can only enter that land wearing the chains of an indentured servant.
With the crushing debt imposed by a college education, where will we get our artists and writers, our social workers and teachers and activists? Universities provide their graduates with the means to get a good paying job, but not the freedom to take some of society’s most important jobs.
And the really bad news is – those students are the lucky ones.