The Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest

The Higher Cost of Higher Education

In a global economy that demands at least some post-secondary education for all its workers, the same economy may be pricing these workers out of a chance for an education.

This is not exactly news, especially to parents and students who have seen the yearly increases in tuition and other costs gallop ahead of the inflation rate for many years. But a combination of factors -- continuing rising costs, unsustainable student debt, and a terrible job market -- may be pushing this problem to the crisis point. It's a national situation, of course, but of particular concern to the Midwest, which desperately needs to educate its workers for the global knowledge economy.

What Is the Midwest? Where Is it?

Writing about the Midwest presents a problem unknown to those who write about, say, the South or New England. The problem is that no one can define, with any precision, just what the Midwest is.

I made a stab at it in my book on the Midwest, Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism. I based my definition on what I could see and sense when I was doing my research. So I've been charmed, not to say gratified, to read a book that says that the Midwest exists as it is today because of the four great glaciers that rolled across the region, starting about a million years ago, and that this glacial expanse pretty much matches my impressionistic definition.

Geology, it seems, is destiny.

In my book, I defined the Midwest mostly as the eight states of the Upper Midwest -- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. But I made a point of cutting across state lines when it seemed appropriate, if only to stress how little these artificial political boundaries have to do with the reality of Midwestern life.

Icarus on the Farm

All farmers keep a constant eye on the horizon, watching for the cloud that might bring rain to nourish the crops or hail to destroy them. As the new year dawned, the most ominous financial cloud in a generation appeared on the horizon of the rural Midwest. Even farmers too young to remember the last big storm would be wise to get their financial crib doors shut before the next one hits.

It seems cruel to sound this warning just now. At the moment, farming is the one prosperous part of the American economy. Farmers are getting prices which, if not records, are very high. Corn is rising again, to about $6.50 a bushel. Soybeans are also up, to about $12 a bushel. The price of farm land has never been higher. The average price of an Iowa acre shot up no less than 32 percent last year, to $6,700: Illinois and Indiana aren't far behind. Sales of $10,000 per acre or more are common.

The real estate market may be dead everywhere else, but not down on the farm. In a recession-weary nation, it's great to be a Midwestern farmer. 

So what's the problem? What's the cloud that threatens to rain on the rural picnic?