PERRY: Sending our kids to college for first degree burns

Melody and I are getting ready to send our daughter to college. Thank, you. It does hurt, financially and in oh so many ways.

I’ve learned during the past several months that we do indeed “send” our kids to school. They do not “go to college” any more. They can’t.

They’re just kids and have no way to navigate the conundrum of careers, colleges, federal bureaucracy, state bureaucracy, school bureaucracy, tests, standards, prerequisites, tables, mascots, the endless stalking calls and prolific schwag we’ve unleashed.

Oy.

This has seriously changed. A century ago, when I went to college, we sent out a few hand-written applications and essays, and either we got in or we didn’t. We begged for money, got some, packed our pillows and our Pop Tarts and learned to drink beer out of dog bowl. It was awesome.

These days, choosing a college starts in kindergarten. If you’ve got a teacher there who doesn’t have 5-year-olds making haste with quadratic equations instead of just making it to the bathroom, then you’ve got a kid headed to college in Nebraska or Oklahoma. I’m only kidding. Please don’t call or send letters. The point is, that as parents, we’re led to believe that if our kids aren’t taking mind-boggling Advanced Placement biochem classes, six languages and giving several pints of a blood, it’s a lost cause.

Well listen up folks. Put little Jepper and Solumi back in front of the TV and tell ‘em to enjoy their childhood while they have one, because getting into college isn’t all that hard.

Paying for college, that’s another story. But getting in? Meh. Now, I’m proud of my kid. She works hard. She’s smart. She gets good grades. She wants to do the right thing. She likes Hannah Montana — still. I honestly think that if we let her, she would endlessly watch the only five episodes of Hannah Montana ever made until her gray matter turned brown.

So, this kid can’t seem to get turned down from a school. My kid — who was recently horrified when she found out I was considering the 19-meal plan for her at college until she discovered that it offered 19 meals per week, not for the entire year — can pretty much pick from some of the best colleges in the West and beyond. Affording them? No freaking way.

After the scholarships, the discounts, the threats, the promises and the Green Stamps I’ve been saving, it will cost me more to send my kid to school for one stinking year than I have EVER spent on a BRAND NEW car. And for four years? More than I paid for my house. We’re not talking the toniest private colleges in the region. We’re talking the University of Northern Colorado, the working guy’s university. Now, thanks to the never-ending cuts in higher education and the never-ending hikes in tuition, housing and gastronomy, it’s the working-until-you-die-guy’s university.

After carefully weighing careers, PhDs, class sizes and endowments, my daughter took one look at the swank dorms and plunked down my money.

You want to know why college is so expensive these days? It’s because the laundry rooms have appliances I would kill for that, get this, text you when your laundry is done. Yep.

And remember the soup-and-sandwich bar in the commissary back in the ‘70s? It’s been replaced by a tapas table chock-full of interesting amuse bouche the “executive” chef dreamed up after his recent extended gastronomical tour in Italy. Yep.

And when the pate brisee and braciole just get to be too much, the kids head over the to fitness center. This is not the gym I learned to avoid when I was in school. Here, there are gargantuan rock-climbing walls that look like southern Colorado canyons. Here, there are exquisite machines with TVs as big as the ones in my house — attached to the freaking treadmills.

This is not college. This is a freaking spa. This is freaking Heaven, folks. This, this my friends, is between $16,000 and $30,000 a year for every four-year-public-school in the state. And private schools? Times two. Yep. No wonder kids take so long to graduate. Who would want to leave all that for a job, a dingy apartment and a membership at the local gym with the commoners?

So, Melody and I are taking on six or seven additional jobs for a few years so we can spend more on our daughter’s bachelor degree than she will make using it during the rest of our soon-to-be-shortened lifetime. It was either that or a kidney each. We’re saving those for grad school.

Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com