The Cost of Education: It’s about a lot more than money

By Brittany Strickland

Circumstances surrounding education can play a major role in one’s socioeconomic development and standing.

In Rome, in one of the poorest geographic areas, the average household lives off of an income of approximately $11,000 per year. Let that soak in. While my family fortunately did not have to live off $11,000 a year, my parents struggled to support our family of five on about $40,000. I would ask myself in naïveté why my parents did not just make more money, or get better jobs.

What I did not know then, is that when mortgage requires almost 20 percent of your income and you have a family to support, you need a good job to provide, or pay, for insurance. If you only have a high school education or equivalent, there are not many jobs that do not require higher education that are not low-skill, low-paying or labor intensive that would offer any kind of benefits.

What I also did not know was that education can make all the difference in many situations.

In Montgomery, Alabama, all of the public schools are bad except for “magnet” schools, which are harder to get into now more than ever because so many kids apply. A magnet school is a public school that concentrates on a specific track–academic, technical, or the arts—that you must apply for and be accepted into. Thankfully, I had the chance to attend a magnet school for almost all of my education before college.

The magnet high school I graduated from in Montgomery, Alabama.

My older sister, on the other hand, never got the chance. With my family living in a low-income area of Montgomery, my sister was zoned for a school known for its problems more than its promises, and is now shut down. She dropped out of high school at 16 and is an unemployed 23-year-old. I firmly believe the quality of education she received is linked to her current quality of life.

Those who grew up in Montgomery’s private academies are, for the most part, simply born into it; theoretically, their place in education is reserved for them before they are born. Others, not as fortunate, have to rely on luck. Fortunately for me, my grandparents started an Alabama Pre-paid College Tuition, or PACT, program for my older sister, so that she would have money to help pay for her college. She never went, so the PACT transferred to me. If you do not get lucky like I did, then you just stay in Montgomery and go to work. Even though I do get the chance to go to a private college, I still work. Every break that I am home I work. After the scholarships, the PACT program and working my ass off, I am still going to graduate almost $30,000 in debt. So, I am back in the cycle. Where does it end?

“Get a good job,” they say. “Don’t work for tips.”

Well, when getting a “good” job involves a lot of a networking and you have never had the resources to show yourself to the world, to the work industry, or to the right people to get you there, it can be difficult to do. Since I had the opportunity to go to a private college and to learn and experience things I would not be able to otherwise, I have the potential to break the cycle. It is a different story for those without the opportunities I had.

So, the question is: How do we fix this? Well, we must understand that the problem is not just lack of money, it is not just race, it is not just missed opportunity or opportunity cost, but it is circumstantial, and we must work to change those circumstances, especially when it comes to education.