Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

TOM CRANN: It's All Things Considered from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Tom Crann. And we're going to check in with Bob Collins now. He has finished the latest leg of his college tour. Bob writes the NewsCut blog at minnesotapublicradio.org. He's been visiting one Minnesota college a week. He'll continue to do so for the next couple of months to ask students how the economic downturn is affecting them. Bob, it's good to have you back.

BOB COLLINS: Good to be with you, Tom.

TOM CRANN: So this week, you spent time in Minneapolis, Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Tell us about MCTC.

BOB COLLINS: MCTC is, I'm told, the most diverse college, community college in the state. It's obviously located in Minneapolis, many inner-city folks, but also a large number of immigrants also attend classes there.

TOM CRANN: Any themes emerge when you start to talk to the students there, any common things, concerns?

BOB COLLINS: I have been asking what I'm now beginning to realize is the wrong question. I have been asking people, whether they are optimistic or pessimistic around the economy. But if you think about it, the simple act of being in school, especially a community college, is an act of optimism.

TOM CRANN: Pretty optimistic.

BOB COLLINS: You go there with the assumption that you are going to be better by the time you're finished.

TOM CRANN: Or more hireable.

BOB COLLINS: Yeah. I think so. And so I'm now just starting to concentrate instead on the reasons that folks have taken the course that they have taken in their new careers.

TOM CRANN: So tell us about some of these people you've talked to. Specifically, I know you have some of their voices for us.

BOB COLLINS: Sure. I met Pearl Madryga, for example. Now she makes a lot of money right now, she says, in retail at a high-end boutique in Edina, I think it was. She's giving that up to pursue something different. She would rather teach in urban schools. And she knows that she won't make anywhere near as much money.

And here's the thing about this, there are so many turns early in life when you're forced to make decisions. And then, you go off to work, and then you find out, maybe we should have done it differently. And when Pearl graduated high school, she went off to New York. And now, she wishes her parents had steered her straight on some elements of economic reality when she was younger.

PEARL MADRYGA: The only thing that's important is me, me, me. And you think everything. And I just wish I had parents instead of-- I love that helped me pursue my dream, but it's such a wake-up call. well, I mean, they supported me in going to New York. You know what I mean? In doing that. But now that I look back, I wish they would have been like, why we can't afford it. This is ridiculous. There are other options for you.

BOB COLLINS: And Bridget Logan who is a native of Winona is also facing this combination of the effects of the present economy and the past. And when she was younger, she picked a school to study broadcasting. And she got a job--

TOM CRANN: Good choice.

BOB COLLINS: She got a job in a small radio station in Watertown, South Dakota. She loved it, she says, until she was laid off. And that school she went to cost a lot of money. And now that she's decided now to go back to school for more training, she finds that all the credits that she had at that old school are not transferable. So she's very much starting over.

BRIDGET LOGAN: It's disheartening in a-- Not so much hard, but I'd really hoped that I wouldn't have to take a basic econ class or a basic math class. I had enjoyed my core classes at the school that I had gone to so much. And I took away from that school, liking it so much and having that positive situation that that's what I wanted. I wanted to get back to a place where I could just go and do it. And I can't.

BOB COLLINS: And that's just the way it is. And that's what I'm hearing, that more resignation is, OK. Maybe I should have done things a little bit differently when I was younger, but we are where we are. But I'm also hearing more of a persistent sense of pessimism on the economy of a whole, which is a little bit different. Than what I've had in the last couple of weeks.

TOM CRANN: So even though, as you say, going to a community college is fairly optimistic act, that doesn't mean that everybody thinks they're going to come out and slide right into the lucrative career of their dreams.

BOB COLLINS: And some aren't even operating under the illusion that they could. Take Sammy Sarzoza of Saint Paul. He is in the cinema program at MCTC. He wants to make films for a living. He says he's willing to do his part, he says, to tell what he calls American stories, to put a better face on America. And so I'm thinking, hey, there's a guy who's all about optimism. But he says he's pessimistic. Now listen to how the dates change when I ask him how long he thinks times are going to be tough.

SAMMY SARZOZA: Pessimistic that it's not going to change tomorrow, or even in the next 10 years. I mean, we really want to-- I think it's going to take just a lot of time. It might take 20 or 30 years. It may even take another generation. I mean, the Great Depression was, then they had the baby boomers. So they profited off the struggles of their own. So if we have to struggle to make it better for them, I mean, that's the way it's have to be.

BOB COLLINS: So we go from, it's not going to be tomorrow. Maybe five, ten years. No maybe, 20 or 30 years.

TOM CRANN: A generation. Right. Yeah.

BOB COLLINS: A generation.

TOM CRANN: Follow Bob Collins on his college tour on the NewsCut blog from minnesotapublicradio.org. And on the blog now, you can read and hear some of the stories he gathered at MCTC, and the other Minnesota campuses he's been touring as part of the NewsCut College Tour. Thank you, Bob.

BOB COLLINS: Thanks for having me, Tom.