The high cost of education
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
When I attended college at the end of World War II in the late 1940s, I had to supplement the stipend I received as a GI bill student in order to pay rent, buy food and other necessities. I took part time jobs that would not interfere with my studies.
Rarely did I find jobs in my chosen profession of journalism, except one summer when I worked as a copy boy on The Los Angeles Mirror, an afternoon tabloid. Seeing first hand the editorial side of a large metropolitan afternoon daily newspaper was an ideal job for me.
But the job was short lived when the mother newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, folded its experimental afternoon tabloid and my job went with it. Mostly my part-time jobs were hard labor, like trimming trees for Davy Tree Company, sacking fertilizer for Red Star Fertilizer Co., or light duty as a night phone operator in a paint factory.
Such jobs were not uncommon in that era, nor are they today. Perhaps especially today because of the high cost of education. I was single and could live on peanut butter and crackers when times were lean.
When I became a college instructor, I would marvel at the number of young mothers returning to the classroom and balancing the demanding care for a family, their studies, and often a part time job just to stay even.
I recalled once when I was teaching journalism, a single mother of two children, applied for a job opening selling advertising for the campus newspaper. The job came with a talent grant that would pay her tuition.
After I had granted her the advertising sales job she came to me and said she’d have to give up the food stamps she was receiving as a single mother with two children if she accepted the talent grant because the tuition was counted by the State or Oregon and the federal government as income. She had to weigh one against the other and my talent grant lost. I couldn’t believe it.
It appeared to me then and now that we, as taxpayers, were shooting ourselves in the foot. Anyone who was willing to go back to college and seek an education that would allow them to get off food stamps and welfare, certainly deserved a meager talent grant to help them succeed.
I could just end the story there, but I would like to tell you that this young lady succeeded despite the stupidity of government and today is vice president of a successful public relations company. I assure you she is off welfare and food stamps.
But that student’s story is repeated time and time again across this nation. I am more touched by the struggling mother stories trying to reach their educational goals. I just met such a student the other day, Janine Goddard, who is working weekends as a waitress at the Apple Peddler restaurant in Sutherlin, Ore.
As my waitress one Sunday night she really worked at making her customers feel welcome. I overheard her talking about teaching and being a nosy reporter, I started asking questions.
She told me she is a mother who volunteered in her children’s school as a teacher’s aide. The teachers immediately realized she had special gifts in dealing with classroom behavioral problems and convinced her she should go back to school and get her degree.
She did and now teaches special education classes during the week at a Cottage Grove, Ore. elementary school. That in itself is an accomplishment, but that is not the whole story.
After she finishes a day in the classroom she drives to Eugene to attend University of Oregon classes toward her master’s degree in special education with an emphasis on behavioral problems.
She is a prime example of why we need to rethink the high cost of education and create a GI bill to help anyone who really wants to become a productive citizen. We should know by now that they’d be willing to work extra jobs to achieve that goal.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)