I’ve been around long enough to remember when “working your way through college” meant something. A college education is now a right in our culture of entitlement.
No College, No Middle-Class Ticket” is a nicely slanted article about how difficult it is to pay for a college education these days. The article opens with a sympathetic anecdote about a young woman who dreamed of being a doctor but who’s struggling because of high tuition:
Now a sophomore, Holmes works eight hours a week on campus and another 21 hours a week off campus at a local bank. She’s had to scale back her class load to keep up. She also could take out more loans in order to cut back on work, but that would saddle her with as much as $20,000 in debt by graduation, with years of medical school education yet to finance.
While reading about someone working and trying to go to school evokes empathy, the primary purpose of the article is to evoke class envy and false guilt.
The reporter accurately states that 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held that blacks “must receive an equal chance at a quality education.” But “equal chance” isn’t synonymous with equal outcome. Opportunity is the key.
The government is no longer permitted to keep people out of universities because they have dark skin (although they are permitted to keep people out because they have lighter skin, but that’s another post).
The article is a hodgepodge of faulty assumptions and tenuous connections. First of all, the president of the Board of Regents at the University of Wisconsin implies that his school can’t seem to recruit enough lower- and middle-income students (read: black) because Pell Grants have been reduced. No mention is made of grades or motivation.
Further down in the article, the writer concedes that there are other factors involved: “Experts stress that it is difficult to isolate one reason as the sole cause of a student failing to enroll in or complete college.” You need an “expert” to figure that out?
Secondly, the writer invokes the “disparate impact” argument, where something is discriminatory “on its face” if a racial disparity is shown.
Since black students are likely to be poor, the reporter contends, the impact of President Reagan’s cuts to federal grants and loans is that less minorities go to college. Again, there are other factors.
I could go on and on with this, but I’ll bottom-line it. There’s nothing wrong with coming from a high-income family or from a school with excellent academics.
Most importantly, there’s nothing unfair, discriminatory or shameful about coming from a lower-income family and having to work your way through school.
The shame is using that as an excuse for failure. Challenges and adversity build character. A quaint concept, I know.
