An Ivy League school isn’t in Senior Zanya Andrade Fitz’s plan. In fact, she doesn’t see herself at any 4-year university next year. With college tuition at an all-time high, she’s taking a different path.

She plans to go to community college. And she’s happy about her practical financial decision.

She is paying for higher education without parental help, and community college offers her financial respite that is hard to find anywhere else.

“Maybe if I would have a life in which I had more money, maybe I would do something else,” she says. But that’s not the case. At Portland Community College and later at Portland State University, she can dodge thousands of dollars worth of debt.

What might appear surprising is that Fitz’ choice is not particularly common for college students; debt, it seems, is the new normal.

Nationally, 69 percent of students graduate with debt. In Oregon, the average is  $26,106, which is 29th biggest in the country. Nationally, that number is $28,950. In total, that amounts to over $1.2 trillion in debt.

Meg Kilmer, the Lincoln career coordinator, has seen rising costs hammer high school students. “It’s really the gap that forces kids to make choices that maybe they didn’t want to make,” she says. “The cost of college has gone up so quickly. Our system isn’t really working.”

Aggregate college debt has quadrupled in 10 years, with no sign of slowing. No doubt this is linked to the growing cost of college. While the Consumer Price Index, a measure of cost of living, increased 43.1 percent between 2003 and 2013, college tuition skyrocketed by 79.5 percent in the same decade. It’s little wonder that students pick up debt along the way.

Last year, Oregon lawmakers passed a bill called Oregon Promise to help assuage the problem with a $10 million grant. The program should make community college next to free – students would have to pay a minimum of $50 per term – for eligible state high school students. The grant is the second of its kind in the U.S., with Tennessee having blazed the trail for free community college last fall.

Kilmer saw the potential. “I was so excited,” she says. “This is a game changer for a lot of kids who might have believed I can’t go.”

The Oregon Promise Oregon resources are not income-restricted. To qualify for the scholarship students need a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher, must graduate from an Oregon high school or GED program, and have lived in Oregon, at least 12 months prior to enrolling. Then, enroll within six months of graduating, and it’s two years of cheap college education.

While that might seem like a sweet deal, lawmakers project that Oregon students won’t take full advantage of it. The grant is enough to finance only 7,000 scholarships for Oregon’s more than 32,000 graduates – and yet, the Higher Education Commission’s Office of Student Access and Completion does not anticipate the Oregon Promise fund running dry.

This is likely because so few students view community college as a serious option.

According to Kilmer, there are two types of students who consider attending community college: those that know they want a career that requires two-year education track, and those who place a high value on not having a high amount of debt.

Having been a counselor at Lincoln for five years and at Parkrose High School for 18 years, and an admissions officer at Linfield College in McMinnville, it’s easy to say that Kilmer is well acquainted with the college process.

She says when students first begin looking at colleges, they’re plagued by what she calls the “Top 40” problem,  the tendency to consider colleges only on rank.

To illustrate, Kilmer adopts a slightly obnoxious voice, and declares,  “There are only 40 good colleges in the whole country!”

Then, she leans in conspiratorially: “There are 4,000 colleges in the country.”

Back to the voice. “I only want to go to one I’ve heard of. I don’t know anything about the school, but I recognize the name so it must be good; I saw it on a list.”

In other words, students are looking for “perceived excellence,” another Kilmer-term.

This trap “is just normal,” according to Kilmer. At the beginning of the process, students don’t even know what they don’t know.

Some students might abandon these preconceived notions of what defines a good school. Others might not.

According to Kilmer, there’s no right or wrong answer.

“People have different values, and I’m totally fine with that, of course,” she says.

Whether a student chooses to attend community college and save money or choose a four-year university and incur more debt, Kilmer wants “people to be conscious that they’re making choices based on their values. If somebody values not having a lot of debt or being close to their parents, nobody should look down upon that.”

Of course, that’s not always what happens.

Senior Zanya Andrade Fitz considers Portland Community College her most likely choice, and while some of her peers are accepting of her choices, Fitz admits that others have not been as supportive.

“A lot of of people have been like, ‘Oh community college: Why? You can do so much better than that,’” she says. “That’s the stereotype of community college.”
According to Fitz, the adults in her life that have have been the most critical of her choice. She’s been warned that “the teachers aren’t smart, the kids don’t aspire for more, that it’s like giving up.”

Fitz doesn’t seem to be looking for anyone’s approval, however.

“Being a 20-something-year-old and having an unimaginable amount of debt is not something I want,” she says.

Fitz knows because she’s seen it happen.  

“My mom, she is part of the people who paid a lot of money [for college] and got into huge debt, and she doesn’t want that for me.”

While PCC might not be the first choice for either Fitz’ parents or her – her father still  dreams of the Ivy League – she understands that community college is in her best financial interest. She is paying for school herself, and says that her part-time job at a medical clinic “will maybe pay for books, or not even.”

The maximum amount of debt Fitz is willing to rake up as an undergrad is $5,000. Without hefty scholarships from other schools, Fitz has concluded that community college is the most likely option.

Though it doesn’t quite match her father’s “American dream” Ivy League visions, her parents are wholeheartedly supportive.

“My mom, she’s like, ‘Whatever your choice is, I will be there to back you up. It’s your path.’”

That aligns with Fitz’ thinking.

“There’s a lot of space for judgement,” she says about college choice.  “Everyone puts a different price on their education. It’s more about living your own life and your own options.”

For some, that means carefully considering college cost.

For others, there’s an entirely different set of criteria.

“Here, people put a lot of weight on the name of the college they go to,” Fitz says. “Decision day is a really big thing here.”

Essentially, she, too, sees the “Top 40” problem amongst her classmates. While she’s not critical of those who value name, she does see some issues with that way of thinking.

“We are the ones who are tagging the others schools as less valuable,” she says. “ At the end of the day it’s a question of how much money they’re pulling out of their pockets to pay for it.”

For Lincoln families, some of the most affluent in the district, that sum might be a lot. At 5.1 percent, Lincoln has the smallest ratio of economically-disadvantaged students out of all the Portland public high schools. It’s not inconceivable, therefore, that money not be as significant a barrier for some Lincoln families than at other schools.

“At Lincoln, there are some families who will be able to simply write a check and afford college,” says Kilmer. “Cost is not an issue.”

Take for example Rebecca Lewinsohn, a Lincoln Class of 2012 graduate. She is now in her final year of university at Haverford College.

During her college application process, she considered academics, campus culture, and whether Greek life was a prominent part of the experience, but tuition did not factor into her decision. Her list included Macalester, Bowdoin, Middlebury and Carleton Colleges, as well as Washington University in St. Louis, all with tuitions above $45,000.

Her parents have paid for her expenses for all four years, and as such, she will graduate with no loans.

That said, Lewinsohn is conscious that her experience is not universal.

“I was in a pretty privileged position,” she said. “I knew that my parents were going to be able to cover tuition to these schools.”

Of course, that’s not to say that the decision to attend a more expensive institution came with no drawbacks.

She had a choice to use the money her parents had saved either for graduate school or for undergraduate. She went with the latter, leaving her to bear the brunt of the M.D. and Masters in Public Health she intends to pursue.

“I made the decision to go to a more expensive [undergraduate] school because those ended up being the ones that ultimately really appealed to me,” she says.

Four years later, Lewinsohn stands by her choice.

“I don’t regret my decision and I’ve really enjoyed Haverford,” she says. “I do think that you end up getting a lot from the resources that are available to you at a small school.”

Of course, going to a small liberal arts institution is not a prerequisite for a positive experience.

“I don’t think you necessarily have to go to a school like Haverford to be successful,” Lewisohn says. “I made a good decision, but I also had the ability to make that decision because of the fact that my parents were able to pay for a school like this.”

As for how she intends to pay for medical school, Lewinsohn is considering taking out loans and then participating in forgiveness programs.

According to Kilmer, loans can be tricky.

“The standard wisdom is if you’re headed for a major that will lead to a high wage, high demand occupation, engineering, for example, that you can trust that you will get a job that will allow you to pay off your loan,” she says. Otherwise, it can be a slippery slope.

Taking out loans to finance an M.D., for example, might be a safe bet. A degree in biology might do the trick, too.

That’s Senior Jamiee Grovom’s plan. Tasked with paying for college herself, she’s choosing to attend a pricier school, Dominican University in California over cheaper in-state options. At least, that’s the plan now.

“With college comes loans and debt and if I need to take out loans in order to get the education that I want, then I will do it,” she says.

An important appeal of Dominican is its location. She thinks staying in-state would be selling herself short. She sees Dominican as the best way for her to grow and leave the past behind.

So, beyond cost, a school’s ability to provide independence and a clean slate also play important role in where students like Grovom ends up going.

In the end, though, whether you’re a community college student or in it for four years, it’s like Kilmer says, “People have different values.”