Public Good

I’m writing this on my first day of the semester.

I’m back in school, working towards a Master of Divinity. It’s basically a degree that people get if they want to lead churches and Christian organizations.

I spent a better part of the day exchanging emails and phone calls with my school’s financial aid and admissions departments.

You see, somewhere along the way, something got lost “in translation” and my classes were dropped due to “inability to pay.” Essentially, my loans hadn’t been applied to my account, so to the school it seemed like I wasn’t going to pay, so they dropped my classes.

But I could pay. At least on paper. I had been awarded enough money in government loans to pay for this semester of education. The breakdown happened with the school, and communications between departments. Someone didn’t tell someone else that the money was there, ready to be applied.

But just like that, the school dropped me. Without a thought, without a second glance.

I had to fight and advocate for myself. I had to go against a financial aid advisor that lied when she said that I didn’t sign the proper paperwork. I had to know who to call, what to say to them and how to talk to them so that they would listen when I said that the error was theirs.

The most unfortunate part of it is that it has happened almost to me every single semester of higher education.

From my very first semester as an undergrad, when I wasn’t allowed to enroll in classes until two days before the start of the semester because that time I didn’t know the people to talk to, and my parents didn’t know how to help me, and it was the housing director that guided me and my dad through the process as we toured the campus on our own.

I’m one of the lucky ones.

51% of college drop outs drop out due to financial issues, meaning they can’t afford the cost of college, even with loans. Usually because of the loans they’re forced to take out.

The same study showed that 79% of college attendees were going to delay their graduation because they didn’t have the money to pay for it in full. 55% of all students said they struggled to find money to pay for college, in general.

In a world that demands a college education, you would think it would be easier to get one. Granted, I’m very lucky and extremely blessed, but my story is in the minority.

I’m writing this frustrated at the system we’ve built. I writing this scared that my children will have the same issues. I’m writing this hopeful that they won’t because my wife and I have begun making some very specific investments into their future and their college education.

I’m writing this angry that anyone has to fight this. It’s not the school’s fault, and it’s definitely not the people’s fault. They’re just doing their job as best they can.

It’s a systemic issue.

But we can do better. We can make college ore accessible to everyone. K–12 education is already accessible to all—for all its faults and room for improvement, anyone can get a public lower education in the United States.

40 years ago, a high school diploma was enough. 30 years ago our parents began warning that we would need to know how to work technology to stand out in the market. 20 years ago we saw that a college education would put you at the bottom of a company on the brink of breaking apart. 10 years ago—when I graduated high school—we had been through two “once in a lifetime recessions.”

Now, we’ve had another “once in a lifetime” recession, spurred on by a “once in a hundred years” public health crisis.

And still, the barriers to entry of a public undergraduate and graduate education are sky-high.

It should not be this hard to get an education. It should not be this hard to work to get a better perspective on the world. We should be making it easier for our children, and our children’s children, to make a contribution on the world.

I’m writing this on the first day of the semester. I’m tired and I’m frustrated.

But I’m hopeful that we’ll actually learn from our mistakes. I’m hopeful that we will work to reform our education system. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to make what is a public necessity into a public good.

So the question is what are you doing to make education accessible? What are you doing to help the next generation have an impact on the world?

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