The Good, the Bad, and the Gullible

I was a nervous kid.  I was brainy, not athletic at all, lacking in self-confidence, and wary of new situations.  I believe this was in part due to genetic disposition – anxiety is somewhat of a family trait - and perhaps in larger part due to the circumstances of my youth, which were legitimately stressful in many respects.  None of this matters now, apart from enhancing the insights produced by my navel-gazing experiences in my old age.

 I bought the lie – 1:

I studied very hard in school, and was rewarded with excellent grades.  I was consistently the last to be picked for the gym class basketball team, but consistently the first to be picked for the classroom spelling bee team.  My parents, both wonderful and well-intentioned people, counseled me from a young age: do well in school, and you’ll be able to get a scholarship to a great college.  In reality, neither of my parents had attended college, and they had absolutely no idea of how the admissions process, much less the financial aid process actually worked. They truly believed that hard work would simply lead to financial reward. This was, after all, America, the land of opportunity; and in their own experience running a small business, the maxim had held true.

When college application time approached, I did my own research at the local library (there was no internet in those prehistoric times, and my high school’s guidance department was wholly incompetent – so I’d set out on my own.)  Based largely on its glossy, eye-catching marketing materials, I chose a college.  One college, in faraway Boston.  I applied there (and only there,) and was accepted.  The deal was done.  The “scholarship” I’d worked so hard for, the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, failed to materialize.  My mother, by then widowed, to her enormous credit found a way to finance my education.  At age 17, I drove, solo, 250 miles to Boston, to check out my chosen school.  I fell in love with the city, and in fact I’m still here – well, in the general area.  The rest, as they say, is history.

 I bought the lie – 2:

As college graduation approached, I began interviewing for jobs.  Four years culminating in a double major, magna cum laude, had failed to instill a burning passion for any particular field that didn’t require years of additional schooling, and I’d had it… I was done; I wanted out.  I wanted a job, in the “real world” (read: not academia,) ideally one that would allow me to stay in Boston along with many of my friends - a selection criterion just about as random and foolish as choosing a college based on the pictures in its brochure.  I found a job fairly quickly, an entry-level professional position with a large company.  I loved it.  I’d met my goal.

There was a formal training program.  I aced it.  Among the many company executives called upon to share their wisdom with us in these training sessions was one old guy whose name I no longer recall.  Someone had asked a question about salary and advancement opportunities.  His answer was to the effect that ‘we may not offer the biggest paycheck on the block, but here at our company, you’ll have job security.  We’ve never had a layoff here, even during the depression.  He pounded his fist on the table in emphasis with that last statement. I was reminded of Nikita Khrushchev banging his fist at the UN. We sat, wide-eyed, silently pledging our allegiance.  It was 1981.

A decade later, when the first laid-off secretary emerged, bawling, from what came to be known as the slaughterhouse (in reality, a cramped conference room unfortunately located in a rather public spot,) I realized then and there – I’d bought the lie (or rather, the one-time truth that had morphed with the corporate culture into fantasy, as the rules of the game had changed beneath our feet.)

 I bought the lie – 3:

I was recently reminded of disillusionments past (the preceding are but two of countless examples.)  Some say that history repeats. 

 

My daughter, a high school senior, is at the tail end of the college application process.  She has worked extremely hard in school, and has an impressive resume of achievements to show for her efforts.  She applied to 9 – nine! – schools.  I’m told that’s fairly normal these days.  She’s been accepted at six and wait-listed at three.  Not bad!  This should be a joyous time, filled with the excitement of choosing among many great opportunities; but it’s not.   Unfortunately we’re discovering, too late, how badly the college application and financing system is flawed.

Since she was an infant, we’ve been dutifully saving for our daughter’s education.  We’ve amassed a tidy sum.  We are frugal people by nature.  We don’t live large.  It turns out, that’s a big mistake in this twisted, redistributionist, regress-to-the-mean society.  If you’ve got it, baby, you’d best spend it now, or they’ll take it from you tomorrow to subsidize someone else. If colleges don’t do it, the government will.

It’s like this:  Most of the so-called ‘prestigious schools’ to which my daughter applied have adopted some version of the same lofty-sounding credo: “no student will be unable to attend xxxx U. because of unaffordability.”  Doesn’t that sound grand?  Altruistic, even?  Here’s the translation:  “We don’t award any merit-based scholarships; and ‘affordability’ will be determined by one of two incredibly intrusive algorithms using labyrinthine rules that would rival those of the IRS in complexity.”

Further translated: you may be at the top of your graduating class, with a trunkful of awards, varsity letters, a Nobel Prize and invitations to lunch with the president; but if your parents have made the mistake of saving and investing in anticipation of this day, you’re going to pay the full freight.  Your choice, in practical terms, will be between paying double or triple the price paid by your likely future roommate to attend a top-tier school, and probably incurring debt that your parents have tried so hard to shield you from; or taking advantage of the merit-based awards you’ve received – which have been generous – from schools that weren’t your top choices.

Meanwhile – and here’s the galling part - your equally (academically) qualified friends are getting "need based" money left and right, and will be able to attend their choice of  top-flight schools because their parents have gone the spend-it all, get-multiple-divorces, take-lavish-vacations, save-hardly-anything approach. They live in huge McMansions (not counted in determining "need" by virtue of being “primary residences” – a loophole you could drive a Rolls through) while we live in a modest house and have chosen instead to invest over the years, apart from the college fund, for our own eventual retirement (putting similar dollars in a different category.) And it's folks like us who are expected to subsidize the masses of less academically qualified but needier, or equally academically qualified but less thrifty families out there by paying the wildly inflated sticker price. We're talking $250K out of pocket over four years, minimum.  Per kid.

To be clear: I don’t oppose the concept of need-based financial aid. My problem is with schools that have adopted exclusively need-based programs.  My wife grew up poor, and would not have been able to attend our alma mater if not for the aid she received.  That said, my wife was also her high school class valedictorian.  Her academic qualifications were rock-solid. And that is my point – she worked hard to earn the privilege of attending college.  For colleges today to turn a blind eye to a broad swath of highly qualified students in favor of subsidizing only those who demonstrate having met the schools’ peculiar and distorted definition of “need” is just wrong.
         
I realize this post is unlikely to generate any sympathy.  White people problems.  Sure.   But if you try and view this through our lens, the system is badly broken, and patently unfair - and not just to the poor.

The hard lesson for my daughter:  don’t buy the lie. 

And yet, we as parents, as a society, still wish to somehow instill within our young people a belief in the inherent value of hard work.  If that belief is to continue to have any relevance, we have got to move away from this steady progression toward “leveling every playing field,” no matter how well-intentioned, and restore some semblance of a meritocracy.