27. They Have A College Degree (And Lots of Debt)
According to author and anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom, the struggle to pay off student loan debt has become so common among the middle class that it is now a definable trait for the rest of human history. In her book Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost, Zaloom goes over how difficult student loans make the lives of middle-class people. In 2018, college enrollment for children who grew up in lower-income families had gone up. However, many of them end up dropping out because they cannot afford to pay for tuition. Instead of being overly optimistic, the lower-class is more realistic about the consequences the burden of debt could have on their lives.
What middle-class families have not been paying enough attention to is the benefit of vocational school instead of a four-year degree. While a four-year degree is the best option for some people, it does not always lead to a lucrative job. However, a vocational school can lead to a job that pays well over $60,000 per year with a year of training. Being a plumber or a refrigerator repair person may be less glamorous than getting a liberal arts degree, but guess who will be the first person to afford a mortgage because he or she isn’t loaded down with student loans that have to be paid back?