Opinion: On Flunking "College Affordability"; On "Take the Money and Run"

Click on the post for a recent study featured today in The Janesville Gazette of the situation of college affordability in Wisconsin.

Interesting statistics. No surprises really. College educations are going out of reach for most Wisconsin residents. Something nobody wants to confront. Nobody wants to see that with a low percentage of current Wisconsin residents having a college education, for the future, it will get even lower. But--will that be terrible?

The short history of going to college in the 1960's-----I did attend the University of Minnesota, where tuition was $100 per quarter, with an additional $25 for books. Most students worked their way through college with a job on campus or off. It was Vietnam war era. Not a yuppie affair generally.

Today, private colleges of the highest difficulty have tuition of over $40,000 per year. The little known secret is that the net cost of these colleges after scholarships can be lower than the costs of attending public colleges, given the rents and lack of scholarship opportunities for low income students. Have you checked out some rents in Madison lately?

In the investment business, it used to be acceptable for pundits to print brochures that stated that "one dollar of this investment had it been invested in 1929, would have been worth xxxx today. Once the reader got excited, there would always be the proviso, "Past history does not guarantee future results." I guess not.

Similarly, it has always been touted that historically, if one went to college in 1929, that college education would have yielded much, much, much more money in a lifetime than a non-college grad. This type of analogy has not been made illegal. It is still being seen in brochures. Today, this type of language should be outlawed. A fine tech education is often a better investment----Wisconsin residents are attesting to this by their enrollment in these tech schools.

My point is simple. Families and students can decide today whether college makes sense as an investment. Should parents facing retirement take their life savings so the youngster can graduate from college for a $10 an hour job?

Recently, the UW system has looked to refine their "Focus". In a short review of UW Rock, it was mentioned that many students cannot afford to go away to college and the idea of going to UW Rock for more than 2 years is attractive----yes. Very attractive.

The days when a college bound student headed off to college, only to not answer the cellphone and then only answer when he/she needed money are gone. You heard it here on The Observer, and also in the Janesville Gazette article. Getting an "F" in affordability says it all. It's not like Bob Dylan "The Times they are " a changin." Things have changed. Make a note of it.