The Wow! Factor

The pragmatist in me is beginning to rear its serpent like head, bolting out from behind my shoulders, and viewing with reptilian eyes the dollar signs attached to education.

Here we are, a single-wage-earner-middle-class-family of five, about ready to launch our second child. A child that to us holds so much promise and potential that we are willing to consider schools to which we’d be shelling out upwards of forty thousand dollars every year. One hundred and sixty thousand dollars over the four years.

The schools with the stingiest endowments make pointed statements of the value of such an investment suggesting to me that if you’re not willing to make the sacrifice, you may not value education enough. Schools known to be generous with their endowments recommend applying for aid, and virtually guarantee that we’ll be surprised at how affordable a private college can be.

Both Sig and I attended the big, public, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus where lecture classes crammed together well over a hundred students, and many times were taught by a foreign Teacher’s Assistant whose accent made comprehension difficult. As we progressed within our majors, we were in smaller classes, sometimes even getting to know a few professors. With no prior comparisons being made, we both experienced a solid college education, enough to get us in the workforce, and enough to make us conversant in a diverse realm of subjects.

Neither of us lived on campus, nor did we participate in the Greek systems, or engage in study abroad or research programs. We co-existed with like-minded students, paid in-state tuition, and went home to off-campus apartments at the end of the day.

I want something else for my children. I want their college experience to make them engage, to open up, to risk, to enjoy, to imagine big things, and be allowed mistakes.

It seems a perfect time in life to dive right in.

So when we took Hans on a visit to a small, selective, private college that would cost a great deal of money, we gulped, we swooned, we got sucked in. “Wow, how cool is this?” we’d say. Or “Counselors really meet with the students before they register?” “Classes of 18?” “Ninety percent study abroad?” “Wow!”

Who wouldn’t want that for their kid?

And the kid, he too was smiling, saying, “Yeah, I could see myself here!” A Division Three golf program, (a key component of the search), an incredible academic program with an emphasis on study abroad, as well as a great community. Sure, he could see himself there.

So the list of schools receiving applications from this address are small, private, and cost a fortune. Except for one.

There is a college nearby that is part of a neighboring state’s public university system. It is three time the size of the privates, but still relatively small at 10,000 students. It isn’t particularly selective, although it does have an Honors program, a Division Three golf program, and a strong study abroad program. The total cost is exactly a quarter of what the others charge.

We visited, meeting with an admissions counselor, touring the campus, popping in on a lecture hall (very small), and experiencing a campus day-in-the-life-of on a cold and gray fall day.

I didn’t have any big ol’ Wows in me, nor did Sig. Hans was fine with it. His words. “It’s fine.” He can imagine himself there too.

How important is the Wow! factor?

There are high school seniors who know exactly what they want to do when they grow-up. A mother I’ve known since our boys were in kindergarten tells me of her son’s applications to Yale, Princeton, Harvard, to name-drop just a few. He plans to become a neurosurgeon, and I’m sure he’ll succeed. And a neurosurgeon’s paycheck will enable a relatively stress free loan repayment.

But if your child is planning a liberal arts education with no known career plan, let alone major, how do you justify banking your retirement on obscene student/parent loans?

Alternatively and more realistically, what a way to enter adulthood, stuck in extreme debt.

It results in the classic business model cost/value relationship; you get what you pay for.
It also contributes to the hysteria about making the “right” choice!

Is the education at selective privates so superior? Do those schools really attract better professors? They must attract strong students, and won’t a kid be better off surrounding himself with such students? And those students, along with those professors, will likely have an impact on the choices made during the college years, which will in turn affect life choices.

On the other hand, I read a commentary a while back by a dad who had gone to an affordable urban college of little prestige/selectivity. He claimed he never would have met such a diverse group of students if he had attended one of what he referred to as the “name” colleges. He learned so much from the friends he made, he said. They were hard workers, most had to hold jobs to pay tuition, they represented various ethnicities and backgrounds, and they opened his eyes to a world much bigger than his somewhat privileged suburban upbringing allowed.

And the classroom education he got netted him a big-time professional career to boot.

Now who wouldn’t want that for their kid? Wow!