Parent Gap

No no, it's not the latest trendy store in the Gap line. It refers to an article recently posted by Inside Higher Ed (http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/dialog/news/2009/08/10/parents) about how low income parents are more likely to say there is no way their kids can attend college because there is no financial help and loans are too expensive.

In my experience this is an unfortunate truth. The education for the PARENTS is not there when the kids are teens explaining financial aid and what is available especially for low income families. This leads to the belief of these families of seeing college as an impossibility. And, since we know that parents are the #1 influencer of if a child attends colleges if the parents say it's impossible to attend college then the child will likely grow up thinking higher education is unattainable.

I remember a time when I was having my hair cut and was in one of those terribly awkward stylist-small-talk kind of conversations with the woman cutting my hair. When she learned I worked at a college she went off about how her kids would never attend college. Thinking she had older kids who maybe chose something different to do I asked them what her kids did... turns out they were mid teen (something like 13 and 15 I think) and she said she would not allow them to attend college because it was too expensive and there is no way they could ever repay those loans.

After I picked my jaw up off of the floor I asked her if she didn't think they would be able to get some higher paying jobs due to having a college education. She looked puzzled and asked what on earth they would be able to make- I believe she couldn't fathom an income higher than what she made cutting hair. Again, she was not unintelligent I just believe that some of these ideas had never been presented to her. I explained that you have a long time to pay back the loans if they have to take them out and there are low interest rates. Again... she looked puzzled. I gave her an idea of what my student loan bill is and ballpark payments. She completely stopped, looked at me and said "Really?" followed by another pause and "You can make those payments?" Not that I think they're terribly high, but I explained that my college degree had allowed me to get the job I had which in turn gave me an ample salary to pay back my student loans.

I felt better that by the end of the hair cut she had said she would have to talk over with her husband about reconsidering allowing their kids to attend college. (HUGE sigh of relief of my part...) I said to just get some more information- the info is free and it never hurts to know- before making any decisions.

But what struck me was that she just didn't know that these options were out there, or what the possibilities were for her kids, or even about the Pell grants and financial aid packages that colleges offer. It made me really, really sad to hear that these poor kids were in a home where they were told they could not attend college because they would never be able to ever afford it- simply due to lack of information.

So, we, as higher education folks, need to get out there and educate these families. It showed that awareness of opportunity increases dramatically proportionately to income. And that in turn is effected by education... it seems like a bad spiral to me.

Counselors... do you have any experience with parents like this? What do you do? What could higher education institutions provide you to help educate these parents?