Emma Lauren Poole is a sophomore at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Fla. Without her scholarship package, her college experience at Florida Southern would not be her reality.
“I know that there is a very good chance that I could not be here. And, to me, that just means that it is a distinct opportunity,” Poole said.
She is one of five recipients of the George W. Jenkins Scholarship in the 2024 graduating class.
Funded by Publix Super Markets Charities, the George W. Jenkins Scholarship covers the total cost of tuition and fees, room, meals, books and supplies for two semesters annually — up to four consecutive years — for scholarship recipients, with an additional $4,100 annual stipend for personal expenses and a laptop computer.
“The tuition is so much as a private college that there’s no way I’ll ever be able to go [to Florida Southern], but just to say I got accepted would be awesome,” said Poole, a Communications: Multimedia Journalism major.
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graduating into debt
In-state tuition at Florida Southern for the 2021-2022 academic year is estimated at $39,700. The average cost of private tuition from a four-year undergraduate institution in the United States is $33,150, according to the Education Data Initiative. “By 2021, the annual price of tuition at a private nonprofit four-year college rose 2.03 times its rate in 1990.”
Prospective college students and their families view higher education as part of the great investment, or an avenue to achieve the “American Dream.” But experts say college graduates are getting a smaller return on investment from their education as roughly 70 percent of college graduates take out loans to pay for their degree.
As costs soar, a college degree statistically remains a good lifetime investment — since study after study has shown that bachelor’s degree recipients earn more over a lifetime — but it comes with an unprecedented financial burden.
Americans owe $1.7 trillion on federal student loans — more than they owe on auto loans, credit cards or any consumer debt other than housing mortgages.
Federally backed student loans are intended to promote access to higher education, an affordable steppingstone for lower and middle classes.
“Over the past ten years, college costs increased more than 16 percent and student debt totals have increased by 99 percent,” according to Daryl Smith, author of “The Wealth Gap and Student Loans,” published in the November 2021 issue of American Bankruptcy Institute Journal.
Even discounted, the price is beyond the means of many. Yet too often, students and their parents listen without question. Further, some financial aid award letters sent to newly admitted students are written in a manner that some would call misleading, blurring the lines between grants and loans.
More than 2 million students will go to college this year, and 1.4 million will take out student loans, as shown by recent statistics provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (2021) and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2021).
But even if student loans are what many economists consider “good debt,” an increasing number of borrowers are struggling to pay them off, and in the process sacrificing other aspects of the Dream.
The final report of the American Bankruptcy Institute Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy noted the societal issues that “stem from student debt,” such as “lower homeownership, fewer automobile purchases, waiting to marry and job choice.”
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New Economics of college
The new economics of college has made the reality of the Dream far more difficult.
Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of Higher Education Policy & Sociology at Temple University, is known for leading the four largest national studies on food and housing insecurity in higher education, and for her support for making public higher education free.
“The new economics of college, my research over the last 20 years show, include not only things like rising tuition — which is something we all lament every day — but also the rising price of rent, food, housing, medical care [and] gas.”
For this class of spring college graduates, and the classes before them, the primary focus post-grad is beginning to pay off their student loan debt, rather than continuing to pursue the American Dream.
The 2021 documentary “Borrowed Future,” developed by Ramsey Solutions, explored the reality of the student debt crisis through the perspectives of Americans in multiple life stages pursuing the dream.
Anthony ONeal, author of “Debt Free Degree,” led a focus group comprised of six then-high school juniors and seniors, challenging their knowledge of financing a higher education degree.
“Studies are showing that y’all right here, young people, when you graduate college, the number one goal in life is not to get your dream job. The number one goal in life is when you graduate college, is not to go out there and buy you a nice car. It’s not to out there to buy a house and start a family. You know what the number one goal is for college people who are just now graduating? Pay off student loans. Is that the American Dream?”
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Education Gap For high school students
Emma Poole, the Florida Southern student on a full ride undergraduate scholarship, said she wished someone had started the conversation earlier surrounding pathways to success—outside of college.
“One thing that I wish our public school systems did differently, really, is that I wish that they would tell students more about all the opportunities they have,” Poole said. “I feel like, if we’re really going to call it the American Dream, we need to let students dream.”
