"if you think education is expensive, try ignorance"

bumper sticker platitudes aside, even with the recently-decided $1500 fee increase to UMass Lowell students courtesy of the UMass board of trustees, it will still cost state residents less than $12,000 a year in tuition and fees to receive one of the best public college educations available anywhere in the world. That's less than $1000 a month over the course of each year, or, if you were to have to borrow the full $40,000 to get your degree without bothering to pay for it as you go, it would still cost less than $1000 a month to make the payments on a 10 year note to pay it all off while you're enjoying the anticipated benefits of your fine education in all your future take-home pay.

note that i didn't anywhere here mention the need to bother ones parents to get involved in this educational enterprise or the payments thereof. yeah, some kids will enjoy some parental largesse, and that's great for them, (maybe, but maybe not considering that sometimes those who are subsidized too easily are too often too lazy to actually learn anything while at college), but from those of us who did it all ourselves, trust us, it's something that you can make up your mind to do, if you have a mind to do it. uncle sam (via the armed services and other programs) is there to offer assistance, and my home town even offered PILOT (payments in lieu of taxes) money to residents to the schools there, which was something of which i took advantage. others go for academic and athletic and needs-based scholarships. there's no end to the alternatives.

what isn't an alternative (for me anyway) is deciding that $1500 is the difference between attending and not attending school for financial reasons.

i'm somewhat of a hypocrite as i'm providing each of mine with educational seed money that more than covers the cost of a UMass education without or with the fee increase. (the luxury of which was put aside courtesy of my educationally-enhanced earning potential). i likely will be unable to do as much for graduate school or even the fuller expenses of a private or out-of-state undergraduate education, but, honestly, i don't worry one little bit about that. (see suggestions above that having to work for an education is highly correlated to actually learning something from it).

the key not being discussed so much is the economic opportunity for students to find work in order to pay for their education. when that starts to disappear, so does the option to attend school for many. and $1500 isn't the difference there--it's the first $9500 that the students are already shouldering. i'd suggest we spend more time worrying about that side of things, than how many beers the kids won't be able to drink while they're sacrificing to earn something worth earning.