Is Middle Class College Education No Longer For The Middle Class?

By Tom Aikins with Dr. Robert M. Clyne.

In American society, attending college was a hallmark of being or becoming middle class. However, for the last two decades the middle class has struggled to pay for college education and with the downturn in the economy expensive tuition and expensive admissions counseling is now out of the reach of most. Universities like Harvard have responded by abolishing tuition for those who can not pay. Their huge endowments made such acts of largesse possible. But those endowments have also been devastated by the economic downturn.

One option for low income children was to join the US military and get the GI Bill. Unfortunately, with two active high casuality wars, frontline combat experience seems like a high price to pay to become a university freshman.

So what are some of the options for more moderate-income families?

Dr. Robert Clyne believes he has one – attend a top California community college and transfer to a top California university. If you’re a California resident you can cut your college university cost to about $80,000 and still graduate from a top university.

Because California universities give preference to California community college graduates, this could be the cheapest and most secure way to get a US degree from a top university like UCLA or UC Berkeley. What is really great is that you absolutely never have to take an SAT test if you use this system. All kinds of smart and talented kids, especially foreigners, are being made second class citizens in the college admissions process by scoring poorly on an admittedly culturally biased test. With this system you are evaluated solely by your academic performance at community college. It is a second chance for those who performed poorly in high school and it is the only really chance for those who cannot afford expensive admissions counseling, college admission help, and a full priced American college tuition.

One third of the graduates of UCLA and UC Berkeley attend community colleges and then transfer. According to Dr. Clyne, Best Path offers one of the more credible responses to the impending crisis in American higher education.

Dr. Robert Clyne graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy with honors, Stanford University, and received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He ran a top admissions counseling service in Japan for over five years. His specialty has been helping Asian clients succeed in the top school admissions contest.