Editor’s Notebook: A college degree is expensive in New Hampshire. Let’s hope it’s all worth it.

Parents want to give their kids every chance to live a good and happy life. Is it possible that college could make that more difficult? (Getty Images)

Like a lot of New Hampshire parents, we’ll be dropping off a kid at college in the coming days. The not-a-kid-anymore is a little stressed, but very excited. The still-your-parents are a little excited, but very stressed. There’s so much to remember. There are so many things to worry about. There are so many lectures to give and give again. And again.

Don’t get into a car with somebody who has been drinking.

Don’t walk on campus alone at night.

We are paying for a meal plan. Please use your meal plan.

Just because you don’t have to go to class does not mean you don’t have to go to class.

There are a thousand of these – and a thousand more will likely occur to us on the quiet drive home – but sometimes what we really want to say is: Please stop growing up.

Worrying is what parents do, and never stop doing. But as much as we stress about all of those day-to-day decisions and possible pitfalls, we’re also dealing with a lot of anxiety about what awaits our kid, not just in this first semester but throughout the post-college years.

Like a lot of New Hampshire families, we’re worried about the debt.

We’re not the first generation of parents to face the hard facts of a college investment. To varying degrees, those of us who landed on campus in the ’80s and ’90s were aware of our own economic sacrifice and that of our parents. Often, there was a lot of saving and scraping involved. Typically, there was new debt for the student, parent, or both.

The late great ’80s movie scribe John Hughes even made college affordability a subplot of 1987’s (but timeless) “Some Kind of Wonderful.” For a Gen Xer, one of life’s most jarring moments comes when you rewatch it and realize you are no longer young Keith (or equally young Watts or Amanda Jones) trying to figure it all out but rather Keith’s dad, Cliff, who is singularly fixated on getting Keith to care about his future as much as he does.

“If you don’t get with the program,” Cliff says to Keith early in the film, “you’ll be selling tires, too.”

But I wonder if the college guidance we give our kids is more challenging now than it was then. Here are a few findings from a recent Pew survey published in May:

• “Only 1-in-4 U.S. adults say it’s extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree in order to get a well-paying job in today’s economy.”
• “Roughly half (49 percent) say it’s less important to have a four-year college degree today in order to get a well-paying job than it was 20 years ago.”
• “Only 22 percent say the cost of getting a four-year college degree today is worth it even if someone has to take out loans.”

Cliff was darn sure that the only way to break the cycle of “selling tires” was for Keith to get a college education. Many of today’s parents are less sure, it seems, even as labor statistics continue to make a compelling case, wage-wise, for staying in school.

The main issue is that if what we really want for our kids is opportunity – both financial and in terms of personal fulfillment – it seems fair to wonder whether a college degree is still one of the best avenues. In New Hampshire especially, it’s not difficult to imagine how things could go sideways for a new college grad.

For example, the lack of affordable housing is well established here . Imagine what lugging around a hefty monthly college loan payment does to your already limited housing options. Imagine how that kind of debt affects a new family’s ability to start building a life. And, imagine how hefty college loans might make a young person feel forever trapped by a decision they made at 18 and, like Keith, were still trying to figure it all out.

The average annual cost of in-state tuition and fees in New Hampshire is $16,749, according to the Education Data Initiative , which puts the state behind only Vermont when it comes to the highest average annual cost for in-state students.

For young people itching to experience new parts of the country or the world, it used to be that the relatively low cost of in-state tuition was incentive enough to put those dreams on hold for four years. That incentive has largely evaporated in New Hampshire, in large part due to anemic state investments in post-secondary education.

As Gene Martin of the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute wrote for the Bulletin last fall , that lack of state vision creates a heavy burden on those just starting out: “The impact of low state funding for post-secondary education can be passed on to students in higher tuition costs and greater debt loads as low levels of state support mean institutions are more tuition dependent.”

If we truly want our kids to stick around and join the New Hampshire workforce after earning their degree, we sure do a poor job of showing it.

There is no easy fix for any of this, I know. Like a teenager trying to choose what will be best for their future self, it’s complicated. It all comes down to what we value as a society – and what we don’t.

But this is why we as voters need, at every turn, to make sure those we elect as public servants keep their eyes on the ball. There are a million policy distractions in our noisy world, and it’s easy for our public square conversations to get hijacked. To elect leaders who fail to demonstrate real policy vision is to invite political expediency, and that doesn’t typically end well for the people.

Call me a “Cliff” if you will, but what I want to hear most from a candidate right now is how they plan to help make things easier – if only a little bit – for all of our Keiths.