That’s really admirable that you were able to do that and it’s a testament to your personal ability to juggle those things.
Unfortunately that’s not the norm in the USA. When entry level jobs are asking for college degrees and years of experience, there’s something wrong with the whole set up. Why are state colleges charging tens of thousands of dollars for tuition while turning around and paying their football coaches millions (but not the student-athletes who wreck their bodies playing the sport)? The whole thing is rotten.
And yes, I’m aware of the Boomer argument of “well nobody will hire you with a degree in history” nonsense. Okay, Karen. Let’s scrap all of humanities. Let’s just become a nation of bankers and STEM majors. No more art, no more poetry, no more literature, no more culture just dual monitors, stonks and coding.
And what’s often overlooked is the way that for many, many years higher education (i.e.: college) was presented as both the bare minimum for education and a way to lift yourself out of poverty. My grandad (who was first generation here) bragged about how he was able to go from being a dirt poor kid on the east side of Baltimore to living in the suburbs because he went to law school at night. (He paid for the by driving a cab, which wouldn’t even cover the cost of textbooks today btw) Improving your lot through higher ed became this sort of baked in myth in American culture.
There are scholarships but they don’t even begin to cover some of the costs. I remember when I was applying for colleges it was seen as some big scandal that George Washington University was charging like $40k/year or something like that. I’m sure it’s way more now. The idea that scholarships exist to prop up the vast majority of students is just wrong.
And on a more personal level I hear a lot of arguments against forgiving loans for people who went to medical school or law school. Boomers saying that it’s not fair, that it’s a handout. And yes, tuition needs to go way down but loan forgiveness also means you could attract more talented people to areas that they’re passionate about. One of the traps of student debt is that it pushes people away from some really important but less lucrative work, especially public service. There are loan forgiveness programs for public service work but they were kneecapped by the Trump administration and are only just starting to cycle people through. Their rules are very hard to navigate and the income-based repayment system is pretty ridiculous. So if you have a very talented law student who knows they’ll be saddled with $200k of debt from college and law school combined, they may not have the ability to put their mind to work for a public defender’s office or working in an immigration assistance program or for a school board because they’ll be chasing a paycheck in order to pay back the loans.
We already pay for it. State schools get state money. I don’t give a fuck about Big 10 college football but my tax dollars still go to paying the UMD football coach. Why? Because UMD wants to market themselves as a big time football school, maneuvered their way out of the Atlantic Coast Conference and into the Big 10 so they can play televised games against Michigan and Ohio State and drive more investment in the school to build more athletic facilities, dorms with food courts and do all sort of shit with the money besides lowering tuition. It’s ridiculous. Go look up who the highest paid state employee in most states is, a lot of times it’s a college football coach.
they’re both nowhere near the Midwest, especially USC.