Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

To continue...

Back when you and I went to college, most of the people we knew did the same. But that was by no means everyone. A college education wasn't pitched as a necessity for one and all. When I was in my teens, I lived in a bedroom suburb south of the steel mills of Gary, Indiana. The children of management--all the boys, and most of the girls--expected to go to college. Some of the children of workers--who at that time had a strong union and made very good pay--planned on a higher education, but others wanted to follow their fathers into the mills. (That turned out to be a poor idea by the early '80s.)

If you wanted to go to a state college at that time, it was very inexpensive. Indiana University, which had (and still has) some good departments, cost $500 a year for tuition, room, and board. Anyone could work his or her way through, though it was easier for boys. And prices for state schools continued to be reasonable until the '80s, when Reagan ruined everything in so many ways. Even so, quite a few elite colleges and universities will offer sufficient financial aid to any student it accepts to make it possible for him or her to attend. That was true of Wellesley when I attended in the late '60s, and it's true today. I didn't need it, but those who did, got it.

Today, we tend to think of community colleges as a substitute for, or an addition to, traditional four year colleges. But that is not how they were originally conceived. At the end of the 19th and during the first half of the 20th centuries, they were thought of as "junior colleges" (and were called that). While nowadays they're meant to make a four-year degree more affordable, they were long meant to RESTRICT access to higher education. See this interesting piece from, of all things, the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank:

https://www.richmondfed.org/region_communities/regional_data_analysis/surveys/community_college/community_college_insights/2023/cc_20231214

Good community colleges are meant to be flexible, and to serve the needs of people who can't afford to go away to college, or people who're going for a degree later in life, in their 30s or even 40s. I have no idea how much they cost, but they aren't terribly expensive. It can just take a long time, if the students have to juggle work and classes.

In Europe, higher education is free, if you go to a state schools. Private universities, of which there are many, can be quite expensive.

Here, many institutions of higher learning have become top heavy. In the view of many, including the people who teach at them, there are too many administrators, and they're paid too much money. That could be fixed.

And I'll add: The people who fuss about "useless courses" need to shut it. A real education is about learning. It is not job training.