college is a ponzi scheme

This NYTs article is getting a lot of buzz on Twitter and Facebook: For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall.

Sad but true. College is no longer a mechanism for people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is a Ponzi scheme meant to prey on poor and working class families. I didn't pay more than $300 for a semester of undergrad between 1989-1993. I would not be where I am today if I had to pay $3000+ per semester for undergrad. If Chico State cost in 1990 what it does today, my family could not have afforded it. No way. I would never have gone to college, never gone to grad school, never gone to the East Coast, and would not have the career I have now. No way.

And I did not go to an elite school. I didn't need to. All I needed was a good public college. State subsidized college worked for me 20 years ago in exactly the way it was supposed to. I went from a poor uneducated family and made an upper middle class career for myself. Expensive college is failing to do any good today except trap poor kids in a downward spiral of debt and diminishing returns.

My income probably puts me into the top 7% of Americans. I hereby agree to pay higher taxes to help kids go to school. It works.