Nothing elitist about college

Apparently lawmakers are so out of touch with the travails of working class kids trying to get a college education that they actually refer to folks who racked up $10,000 to $20,000 in college debt as “elitist.” Do they have a clue that even the tuition in state-subsidized universities is out of reach for many? We are not talking about kids whose parents foot the bill for NYU or Stanford. The tuition, room and board at UConn, a state school, is currently over $30,000 a year for in-state students. For many parents, that amounts to a full year’s pay for each year their kid attends college.

When I attended a state university in the 1960s my dad had to pay only about 10 percent of his standard middle class wage for each year I was in school. The problem? Wages are still the same as they were 50 years ago but college tuition has increased over 1,000 percent.

Where is the money charged by colleges going? Stadiums, squash courts, housing that is more luxurious than most kids will have when they start working, athletic fields, new construction. Moreover, colleges are now hiring cheap adjuncts with advanced degrees to teach many classes instead of hiring full-time professors, so huge tuition increases are not being used for high-paid faculty. In other words, colleges are cleaning up. Don’t blame “elitist” kids from working class families who simply want to better their chances in life for the college loan dilemma. Look at why colleges are charging unreachable fees for education when many of them are already subsidized by state taxes.

Ann Evans de Bernard

Bridgeport