Increasing cost of college tuition: How much more can students pay?

By Gretchen Reeh-Robinson

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I thank the Iowa Board of Regents - voting to raise tuition for college students re-connects me with a favorite Grimm fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin, a story re-emerging as a contemporary warning.

Although not every person with a college degree also has college debt, news of tuition increases forces current students and parents to look at savings accounts and count the dollars.

I propose the regents' request warns us to look out for the dangers of greed and its ripple effects in our children's lives. Students employed in federal work study, coffee house jobs, restaurants, Target, Radio Shack or Best Buy attend full-time courses at their respective universities, and visit quiet libraries in the remaining hours of their days, as they invest their minds in education. Moneys earned swiftly pay for costs incurred.

Suddenly, Rumpelstiltskin appears with the news of tuition increases! Who is this manipulative, demanding creature, who will take our children if we cannot identify him?

Let's examine the Grimm fairy tale in detail. A poor miller sought to impress the king, announcing that his beautiful daughter had the ability to spin straw into gold. The king, curious, locked the young woman in a room of straw and gave her an ultimatum, “Spin the straw into gold or die.” She cried, asking herself how she could do such a thing, when Rumpelstiltskin appeared; he spun the straw into gold, in exchange for her necklace. The next night, the king demanded more of the same, and the young woman gave Rumpelstiltskin her ring.

But the third night she had nothing to give, so Rumpelstiltskin made her promise she would give him her firstborn child. The king married the woman and when their first baby arrived, Rumpelstiltskin returned for his “payment.” The queen begged, but he insisted he would take the child unless she knew his name.

Our young adults attending college have been handed over to Rumpelstiltskin - the Board of Regents - because we did not know our captors' name. Grimm's fairy tale, saved the young woman, because her trusted servant, late one night, searched the dark forest for Rumpelstiltskin's location, and found him chanting aloud a riddle in which he spoke his name.

In our story, we lose our children to the regents' demand. Panicked, we ask, “What is his name?” What we mean is what more can we or our children do?

College advisers advise our children what courses are required to achieve degrees or certification. Our sons and daughters agree that the sacrifices are worth it, as they dream of vocations in which they spread their wings, fly and contribute meaningfully to our society.

Our American culture encourages children to volunteer their time and minds in churches, hospitals, day care centers and other places in the hours after they prepare for courses, research papers, exams. They are spinning, but no gold appears.

We raised our children to dance and sing, to run cross-country, to try out for fall musicals and the spring plays. Into college, they transition from the joys of high school participation, to the crass demands for more. How much more can they give?

Increased tuition dollars are a fairy tale wish, a fairy tale warning, a bureaucratic demand spun into a free-fall, designed to warn us. If we do not stand with our young students as they forge ahead into an indebted world, all will be vacuumed into it, losing passions more real than make-believe.

As education systems implode, too reliant on a dispersed maze of budgets, the regents' answer is greed.

Gretchen Reeh-Robinson of Manchester is an Arts and Sciences instructor at Northeast Iowa Community College in Peosta. Comments:

reehrobinsong@nicc.edu