I know all about Yale's financial aid. I happen to have graduated from Yale in the early 2000s -- I was a kid from a not particularly competitive public high school (some kids went to college, some didn't) who went to Yale in no small part because of their generous financial aid package. My three siblings all went to public colleges w/ scholarships, and I went to Yale with generous financial aid. I'm not unaware of the options out there. But the financial aid programs at schools like Yale or Princeton or Harvard or Stanford do not in any way represent an answer to the debt issue on the macro level. If anything we're creating a bizarrely bifurcated universe in which if you're lucky enough to win the lottery of entry to a fancy, private university, you'll pay far less than you'll pay to go to your local state school.
Again, I just don't think your 'rant' in any way describes the world I perceive, and I have yet to see any evidence presented -- beyond those terrible videos, which are nothing more than anecdote -- to support that view of teenagers and 20-somethings. I hear about these supposedly lazy kids, but I don't see nearly as many of them as I see of hardworking kids who aren't in the top 10% of their class and therefore are caught between a rock and a hard place. And I see some kids who ARE in the top 10% and are still stuck. I see far more of what KYguardmom describes with her sons and daughter.
I'm lucky. Sure, I worked hard, but I didn't necessarily work harder than friends of mind who got lower test scores and lower grades than me in high school. People who took on equivalent or more debt than me to go to our state school -- but it was decidedly less debt circa 2000 than it is circa 2015.
Life is one big crapshoot. Of course we can't control the outcomes. But we can do our best to control the inputs and the points of opportunity. We can try to view our fellow citizens generously, and we can look to research and data to inform our thinking. I've provided links to reams of data that fly in the face of the caricature you've painted of where the debt comes from or the reality of 'kids today', and the caricature painted in that terrible video. To me what you describe is a community of affluence run amok. Maybe you live in or close to a community like that -- I have no idea, and I don't disagree that affluent communities in this country have what can sometimes be a toxic culture of entitlement, though also of crushing pressure that I don't envy. Regardless, those communities represent a tiny sliver of the overall population.
I used to teach in public schools, my mother taught in public schools for 30+ years, both of my brothers currently teach in public schools -- these have been in extremely different communities, from LA to the east coast to the rural south. And if anything we've all seen a culture -- especially in the poor, working, and middle class communities -- in which kids are absolutely working side jobs, taking work study that's offered, worrying chronically about the finances of education, and feeling the stress of, as Kyguardmom very aptly described, a reality of truly diminished opportunity. If you want to say, "That's just the way the world is," then I would answer: "I'd like us to try to come up with a better world."
The portrait you paint of contemporary America just doesn't resonate beyond sitcoms.
Again, I just don't think your 'rant' in any way describes the world I perceive, and I have yet to see any evidence presented -- beyond those terrible videos, which are nothing more than anecdote -- to support that view of teenagers and 20-somethings. I hear about these supposedly lazy kids, but I don't see nearly as many of them as I see of hardworking kids who aren't in the top 10% of their class and therefore are caught between a rock and a hard place. And I see some kids who ARE in the top 10% and are still stuck. I see far more of what KYguardmom describes with her sons and daughter.
I'm lucky. Sure, I worked hard, but I didn't necessarily work harder than friends of mind who got lower test scores and lower grades than me in high school. People who took on equivalent or more debt than me to go to our state school -- but it was decidedly less debt circa 2000 than it is circa 2015.
Life is one big crapshoot. Of course we can't control the outcomes. But we can do our best to control the inputs and the points of opportunity. We can try to view our fellow citizens generously, and we can look to research and data to inform our thinking. I've provided links to reams of data that fly in the face of the caricature you've painted of where the debt comes from or the reality of 'kids today', and the caricature painted in that terrible video. To me what you describe is a community of affluence run amok. Maybe you live in or close to a community like that -- I have no idea, and I don't disagree that affluent communities in this country have what can sometimes be a toxic culture of entitlement, though also of crushing pressure that I don't envy. Regardless, those communities represent a tiny sliver of the overall population.
I used to teach in public schools, my mother taught in public schools for 30+ years, both of my brothers currently teach in public schools -- these have been in extremely different communities, from LA to the east coast to the rural south. And if anything we've all seen a culture -- especially in the poor, working, and middle class communities -- in which kids are absolutely working side jobs, taking work study that's offered, worrying chronically about the finances of education, and feeling the stress of, as Kyguardmom very aptly described, a reality of truly diminished opportunity. If you want to say, "That's just the way the world is," then I would answer: "I'd like us to try to come up with a better world."
The portrait you paint of contemporary America just doesn't resonate beyond sitcoms.