A few words on financial independence

This kind of brokeness is fairly common on college campuses. Many of us are supported in some way by our parents and/or have financial aid coming in so that our ends meet.

But I always felt, and still feel, a slight sense of shame about the parental support. After all, I'm 21 years old. It's not old, but it's old enough. It's old enough to feel a bit sheepish about still being on my parents insurance. It's old enough to feel like a weenie when bumming rides off my parents and friends.

James Miller

It seems like the gestation period for an American adult has been extended over the last few decades. It used to be that men by the age of 21 or 22 were adults essentially. They had wives and families and jobs that could provide them with a car or two, a house; maybe a little carpentry shop in the basement, perhaps a bass boat.

Then the bottom fell out of that. First, everyone went to college. Postwar prosperity and the G.I. Bill, among other things, propelled huge segments of the population through the ranks of higher education. So the standard bar got raised. Suddenly being middle class involved going to college.

Not too long after that, certain captains of industry and corporate types decided that paying people decent, living wages because it's the right thing to do was quaint and they weren't going to do it any more. Jobs with decent wages for high school graduates or people in the middle of college disappeared. College graduates who were already employed saw their salaries shrink next to inflation while the tasseled loafer set got another layer of gold on their golf clubs.

What does this have to do with us? I'm glad you asked.

Think about your job history and job prospects. (Engineers, scientists and business types can't play this game. Sorry.) Think about why you're broke, strapped or otherwise concerned with money. It used to be that just by working over the summers and a little bit during the year (maybe a loan or two here and there) a person could pay their own way through college.

This is no longer true. College tuition is far too high for a person to pay themselves and still take classes. For those who actually do it, they know that if it is possible, it's nothing you do for fun.

Why is it too high? I'm not really sure. I have a few theories. Try this one - we're here to get an education. But how much of our tuition goes to things that are not only non-academic but silly?

Do you think Maureen Hartford has to clip coupons? How much does the University spend on a Code of Student Conduct that is totally redundant and unnecessary? All of us contributing our thousands of dollars every term are probably buying more middle management and people who say "paradigm" a lot rather than professors, GSIs and tools of our education.

So I've digressed. Here's the deal though. It used to be that people matured faster in the days of our parents and grandparents. I don't see that happening now, in our time.

I'm still on my parents insurance because I can't afford my own. I bum rides off people because even though I have enough savings to buy a car (an anomaly) the insurance, gas, maintenance and parking costs would probably wipe me out. Why would it wipe me out? Me, the scion of upper middle class parents? Because I take classes full time and work only a few hours a week. I take classes because a semi-prosperous life seems to require it. So the classes I take to ultimately make a living keep me strapped while I take them, so I can graduate.

Then I graduate and either intern and shlep for little or no money, as I am not an engineer, business man or computer scientist. Or I can incur more debt and enroll in graduate school, where I run the risk of being just as unemployed, but with a larger tab.

It's a strange world. Can one of you guys give me a lift to Meijer?

- James Miller can be reached over e-mail at jamespm@umich.edu

Miller

on Tap

02-24-99