College Costs: Personal Reflections

This Labor Day, as a retired Lutheran Church education minister I am reminded of the many years in which this day marked the day before another school term began. As my mind focuses on college and college costs here is what creeps into my consciousness.

GRATITUDE. I was able to attend residential prep school, college and graduate school only because of the extraordinary kindness and assistance of many others, beginning with my two elder sisters. Both of them were (and are ) very bright. Both were valedictorians of their high school class. Both were offered college scholarships. Neither went to college. Instead they went to work as household maids. The money they earned helped their kid brother (that is I) go to school!

At one stage in my schooling I received a most unusual contribution toward its cost. In the rural Texas community in which I grew up there was the custom of passing round the bride’s shoe at the wedding reception. Guests placed coins or dollar bills into it. Often that was a nice gift for the bride. However, one of the brides announced, “Instead of me keeping this money, I am going to send it to Melvin Kieschnick to help pay for his education. He is planning to be a teaching minister in the church and I want to help him!”

When I was accepted for study in grad school I was broke. A cousin loaned me the $100.00 I needed to register. When I wrote my thesis it was my wife who many nights (often beginning at midnight because of her other responsibilities), sat down and typed out the manuscript with all its complicated footnotes! (Remember, this was before computers, before even “white-out” and no erasures were allowed.

Our five kids made it through college plus three masters and two doctorates because of their incredible commitment. Of course, they worked every summer and every vacation period while in school. They took out loans. Now they are all professionally and financially secure with all loans repaid and they are investing in their own children’s college education with the proviso that those kids also work both during the summer and while in school and once they start graduate school they are on their own financially.

My gratitude extends to all those who provide scholarships for others. I am thinking of a grandparent who is funding his child’s college costs. Another friend is doing the same for his godchild. Still others set up scholarship funds simply for those who need it.

EMPATHY. Concurrently I think of kids and their parents who are really struggling to pay for college costs. I think of those who work and study and forget sleep and everything except bare necessities to pay tuition. I recall a very poor black mother in Detroit who told me she scrubbed white people’s floors so that her son could attend a Lutheran school. Another mother did the same for her son in Mississippi. That son earned his doctorate and is now helping Christian urban schools. I recall a mother who raised a few chickens next to her hillside squatter hut in Hong Kong so that he children could come to our special school for poor kids. One of those children is now a successful lawyer in New York!

PUZZLEMENT. As I reflect on the above I am puzzled by stories I hear. I hear of the high school and even college aged kids who do not work either over the summer or during the school term. They feel their college education is the sole responsibility of their parents. I am puzzled by students unwilling to take the risk of getting a college loan because they do not choose to be burdened by having to repay it; so they demand all school fees from their parents, often while they (the students) claim their inalienable right to have their own car both in high school and college.

But now I fear like I am beginning to sound like a grumpy old man and I did not get schooling to learn that. So I end saluting all the diligent students of the world and all those who make their education possible.