Humor

This story was published in 2006 for FastWeb, an online education resource and scholarship search engine.

Last week, a friend and fellow writer had problems finding a captivating intro to his article.

“Write about toothpaste,” I said helpfully.
He looked at me.
I shrugged, “Hey, everybody’s got teeth.”

The fact is, not everyone has teeth. But I think everyone — at some point or another — has money. I have about as much of the sweet stuff as, oh, Mother Theresa, but even a student journalist can chance upon the occasional change. Which brings me to this week’s two-part question: How much should college cost and who should pay for it?

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, tuition is rising at more than twice the rate of inflation. A year’s tuition at a private college now costs an average of $21,000. That means if you don’t qualify for financial aid and haven’t won a scholarship, you could graduate $84,000 in debt. Just think! That $84,000 is enough to buy 280 iPods, one for each resident of the Aleutian Islands, give or take a few. (I don’t want to offend any Aleuts in my reading audience — the actual area population is about 8,000.)

The justification for an expensive degree is that it will ultimately pay off. Shelling out $45,000 a year for a Harvard diploma is supposed to get you a sought-after job in your field and connections out the wazoo. Well I say, wazoo schmazoo.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but one of the principles of free-market economy is that competition controls and lowers prices. Having choices isn’t our problem; I would say the number of colleges in America is rivaled only by the number of whitening toothpastes. (Most people have teeth. It’s relevant.) Competition isn’t controlling costs, and colleges are charging whatever they want us to pay. OPEC is more price-responsive to its market than private four-year colleges are to their degree guzzlers.

So why can’t we keep costs down?

Many students are more concerned with how we’ll pay instead of how much we’ll pay. We worry about who licks their thumb and peels off another bill. There are usually two options: you or your folks. Perhaps your ‘rents should pay your rent. They’ve funded you most of your life already. Besides, don’t they want you to get the full, fancy-free experience?

Or maybe college, when most kids turn 18 and 21, is exactly the time to take over the financial responsibilities.

I think the government should cap how much private institutions charge. We have national policies to limit drug and medical expenses; why not education?

I’d also like the higher-ups to lend a hand with everyone’s education. Think about it. The feds pay for me to attend college. My degree helps me qualify for a higher salary and the higher salary means I pay more in taxes. In theory, if the government helped more Americans get college degrees, it’d get more money back. This is essentially what the GI Bill did for WWII veterans, and it helped establish an educated middle class that has paid back America a hundred times over.

I don’t know much about economics, but I’m familiar with the cost of college. And if we don’t start talking about it now, my children’s education will cost their weight in gold.

Gold teeth, that is.

I like Christmas. I like the gift-giving because I’m generally a very good guesser when it comes to figuring out what someone wants. I like the food because it involves showing off one of my few skills (The baking, not the consuming. Ahem.). And I like writing holiday cards.

Throughout my life (short, if you’re a octogenarian, long if you’re a caterpillar), I’ve built a reputation for writing really great cards. I’ve made people cry, made them laugh, made the least likely to write back respond within days. I have two penpals in the military, both in Iraq, but more impressively, I have an astounding 100+ greeting cards ready to be sent to eager friends. (I counted them just for this column, and I didn’t include the sheets of special handmade paper or sticker collection.)

The December month for me is filled with red candles, baked goods of all kinds and events, like last week’s gingerbread-house decorating party.
Gingerbread house!

The month is also packed with cards. Lots and lots of greeting cards.

I have about 75 people I MUST send a note to and about 50 others that I ought to write. This year, I’m having trouble getting started on my list. Perhaps it’s because, to date, I have received ONE card. And it’s from a former editor so it practically doesn’t count.

It’s also because the past few months have been some of the hardest in my life. Joyous and full of progression and movement, but hard. Very hard. So what do I write in my cards? I can muster the usual non-sequitur jokes, the goofy signature, but I worry I won’t have much news.

It’s my first year in the working world and I find it difficult to keep track of successes as concretely as I used to. In internships, you finish the employment. You get a recommendation. In school, you complete a course, you build toward your major. In my graduate school, you get a piece published. There are built-in ways of measuring progress and success. Two -ess’s I’m finding very important to my life.

In the year (almost) that I’ve lived in New York, I can tick only two things off my list. I got a challenging job and a beautiful apartment. They weren’t easy feats, and I am certainly not taking them for granted, but the -ess’s are scarcer than they used to be.

I’ve made up for it in other ways. I’ve become — those of you who know me will howl with laughter — a bikram yogi. This means I practice high-intensity, fast-paced yoga in a 120-degree room for 90 minutes, five days a week. This is not the focus-on-the-end-of-your-nose, tinkly music kind of yoga. Last week, I made it through my first session where I completed every posture. To put this into perspective, for the first week or two that you practice bikram, the goal is simply to stay in the room for the full 90 minutes.

I signed up for a pottery class, and I’m working on ways to practice (and hopefully revive) my Spanish skills. All of these are in an effort to create goals that can be easily understood in terms of accomplishment.

But holidays are about ham, not hamstrings. Chimneys, not kilns. Nobody wants a card about that.

FastWeb Column: How Much Should College Cost?

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