College education is always seen as one of the keys to achieve the American Dream, but people cannot ignore that there are discrepancies between students at different colleges. While we see many students with better financial support can chase their dreams without pressure, H talked about her own opinion of American Dream and the struggles she witnesses many college students face.
“For me, the idea of American Dream is to have a choice to be who you wanna be. For some people, it is very easy if you are white, wealthy, stay in the lines. But for other people, I don’t think that they have that opportunity. ”
H is a 50-year-old middle-class white woman who works as an assistant professor at a university in the Midwest. She said that the university’s students population consists of many students from lower income families and there are a substantial number of first-generation college students.
If you end up relying on student loans, you are just further and further away from getting up to the next socio-economic class.
She said, “My daughter is in college as well but she’s in college back in the Midwest. We looked at a university in New York and I was shocked at the cost of their tuition.”
As a child raised in a lower middle-class family, H feels very lucky to have had the opportunity to receive scholarships to pay for some of her college education. While the financial conditions of students at her university cause them to struggle with balancing schoolwork, full-time jobs, and some raising families, there are scholarships for students in need. Although the application process is time consuming and challenging.
“And if you end up relying on student loans, you are just further and further away from getting up to the next socio-economic class.” H said the stories of people who get into the higher socio-economic level make people think they can be one of them, but only a handful of people can really achieve that.
“As far as gaining and living their American Dream, I think they have the hope. Otherwise, I don’t think that they would be in school.” H shared her opinion about her students’ American Dream. “I, being a social worker, have the hope that our country will wake up and allow people to let them live the way they wanna live. But we are not there yet, and we have long ways to go.”
H is…
- 50 Years-Old
- Female, Cisgender
- White
- Lutheran
- Middle Class
- Heterosexual
