Dear Editor,
Mr. Jack Smith wrote an article in the last issue of the Star which stated that college shouldn’t be free. He was responding to President Obama’s idea that two years of community college should be free for interested students. Mr. Smith seems to feel that post high schoolers should have to get loans to go on to higher education. I disagree.
On the day I turned 18, my father asked me if I was planning on going on to college. I had applied for scholarships and had been awarded a couple of them before I graduated from high school. I told my father that, yes, I was planning on continuing my education. He then informed me that he would not help me financially to do so because he still had to care for my brothers and sisters, five in total, who were all younger than me. He told me that I would have to pay my own way and also pay him room and board if I continued to live in his home.
I was lucky. In 1958, the year I graduated from high school, jobs were plentiful and community college attendance was free of tuition for all residents of the state of California where we had lived since 1948. I had no money of my own except a small school savings account so enrollment at a four year school, even one which had awarded me a scholarship was out of the question. I quickly found a job which paid me more than the minimum wage of 50 cents an hour. It in fact paid me $1.50 an hour. I worked full time during the day and attended community college classes five nights a week, three hours a night. I was able to meet all my financial expenses and go to school only because I didn’t have to pay any tuition to the community college I attended for my first two years of college work. My only college expense was the cost of my textbooks and my transportation costs; the college was seven miles from my home.
I was able to acquire a degree in mathematics because I spent my first two years attending a community college instead of having to contend with the costs of the first two years at a four year university. I found the costs of the final two years to be quite enough to bear. Loans for continued education were non-existent in 1958. My employment improved as my education improved. By the time I had finished my first two years of college level studies, my income had improved to $3 an hour, about a third more than the average income in the United States. I actually finished my undergraduate degree studies after I’d married and had a child. I was able to afford to do that because I had a very good job and could cover all the costs involved in continuing my studies and keeping a family. And, it was all due to my not having to pay tuition during my first two years of college study at my local community college.
James Punches
Green River
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