College: Getting Your Money’s Worth

By Arthur Vidro
By Arthur Vidro

The cost of attending college is high and, to some extent, beyond our control.

The best a careful consumer can do is make sure he or she is getting their money’s worth.

When I was 20, my journalistic writing class met once a week, from roughly 7 to 10 p.m. There was one older student, a woman apparently in her 40s, who took the class. She was squeezing in the course after a full day’s work. Yet she was always the most prepared of all the students, ever alert, attentive, and diligent on class assignments. Even back then I had figured out she was paying for the course herself, not relying on parents, and wanted to get her money’s worth. This class was obviously important to her. So she applied herself.

Far too many of the students didn’t concern themselves with putting in the effort to get the best results. Heck, even the editor-in-chief of the twice-weekly school newspaper, who was in the class, was yawning his way through class half the time, perhaps from lack of sleep from running the newspaper, to which he would dash back after class to finalize the next day’s edition.

Ten years later, when I was 30, I agreed to help out at a charity run in which a professional acquaintance of mine was participating. We volunteers went to a meeting to learn what was expected of us.

I don’t recall what I did at that run (I certainly wasn’t one of the runners), but I vividly remember another volunteer speaking at length with me. He was nervous because his daughter had just graduated from high school and would head off to college in a couple months, the first in the family to do so. He was worried how she would perform. He chose to share his worries with me, he said, because I seemed the most professorial person in the room, or the one most likely to have gone to college.

First I tried to reassure this stranger. “Hey, if she did well in high school, she’ll probably do well in college.”

“But she didn’t do well,” he confessed. She had graduated, yes, but he whispered to me that his daughter couldn’t be called smart.

He seemed like a decent chap, so I tried to be positive. “Being smart,” I declared, “is not the most important factor in doing well in college. I went, and I observed many smart people do poorly.”

“Then what is most important?” he asked.

“Work habits. You have to be on top of your assignments, you have to devote the time you need to the tasks at hand, you can’t squander time, you have to manage your time, you have to show up, you have to pay attention, you have to begin assignments promptly and work on them diligently, no matter how long it takes.” Success, I concluded, was the reward for continued, prolonged effort and plodding diligence. Keeping at it, and having good study habits, were far more important than being naturally smart.

“But she doesn’t have good study habits either,” he confessed.

I exhaled slowly. “Well, then,” I consoled him, “let us hope for the best, but it might not be easy for her.”

I never met him again and sometimes wonder how his daughter fared.

Luigi, a friend of mine since 1974, has two kids. The older one, Zelda, did brilliantly in high school and was accepted at many top-of-the-line universities. But Luigi would be footing the bill and wanted to make sure he got his money’s worth. So he decided Zelda would have to go to a state college (in their home state of New York) for the first year. If she did well there, then she could transfer to any school she wanted.

Zelda followed his guidance and prospered. After a year in a little-known state college, she transferred to Cornell (of the Ivy League) and graduated with high honors. She’s doing quite well, and Luigi is happy. He doesn’t mind all the money he paid to Cornell, because he got his money’s worth.

When Luigi’s younger kid, Marvin, finished high school, Luigi’s wife put her foot down and said Marvin had to go where he wanted to go, even though it was a good out-of-state school. Her baby would be happier there, and his happiness mattered most. Luigi knew he couldn’t win this battle so, against his better judgment, he ponied up the money to send his son to the University of Delaware.

Marvin quickly developed the sleeping patterns of a vampire — slumbering all morning (and into the afternoon) and staying up practically all night. Which might be fine if you’re attending night school, but Marvin wasn’t. Naturally, his grades suffered. That’s what happens when your attendance is abysmal. That’s what happens when, for whatever reason, you’re not turning in your class assignments.

But he was having fun socially, so mama was happy too. But Luigi stewed. He sensed, despite a lack of detailed information, that disaster was brewing.

I remember him telling me once about Marvin injuring himself by running into a bench after making a catch on the sidelines of the football field during a pickup game. He hadn’t seen the bench, because it’s rather dark at midnight, when he was out there playing. Don’t know if it was a school night, but it doesn’t matter. Marvin, like most of us, found the time for what mattered most to him — socializing. And he never found the time for what didn’t matter to him — schoolwork.

He was not like the woman in my journalism class. Marvin wasn’t paying his own bills and had no concern with anyone getting their money’s worth, because it wasn’t his money.

The meltdown was rapid. His first semester grades were three C minuses and two F’s. (Though if socializing were a course, he would have earned an A.)

Luigi blew a gasket. After that one semester, Marvin hasn’t returned to Delaware or any other school. Marvin is now 21 and still displaying vampire sleep habits. Until those habits can be broken, school — or even a normal job — is out of the question.

Luigi’s only consolation is that he didn’t throw more money at the college after that first semester. It would have been money wasted.

For some people, such as Marvin, college is not the place to be.

For others, such as Zelda and the older journalism student from my younger days, college was the place they were determined to be.

If you have determination for the right reasons, then college is right for you.

Otherwise, it can be a financial waste.

If you’re going to get your money’s worth — or anything substantial — out of college, you have to make the effort.

If you have consumerism questions, send them to Arthur Vidro care of this newspaper, which publishes his column every weekend.