People do what you pay them to do.

Sure, bbell. I want EVERYONE to finish their educations. I finished mine with extensive loans, and any one of these students could, too.

All I want is for people to be accountable for their choices. If they choose to have kids, great, but don’t expect (or have your university use you as bait for donations) that others should cover for you. Most of us do make choices that affect our income, and child-bearing is one.

Scholarships are cool, and they are given for whatever criteria the giver wants, from being left handed to an academic superstar to economic need. Some people DO have economic need, for sure, but if it’s an economic situation they chose (unlike being born in an undeveloped nation or being an orphan or having parents who lost their jobs), I don’t have much sympathy.

I don’t buy the “when it’s meant to be” family plan unless you also want to apply that logic to single teen moms and crack babies.

Amen. I actually could see myself donating BYU in the future because I believe I received a good education at a seriously discounted rate there and I believe in giving back. Having said that…I can’t stand the sense of entitlement in today’s young couples, “I’m supposed to start my family immediately, and it’s everyone else’s responsibility to foot the bill.” It’s especially grating at the graduate school level when everyone goes on welfare while simutaneously having babies 1, 2, and 3. Whatever happened to good old fashioned student loans?

Nah, but maybe bbell hasn’t seen that.

ESO,

While it was a bit harsh, I tend to agree with you. I am currently at BYU and have been married for a few years. Me and my wife decided to hold off on babies for a while. Coming to this conclusion stemmed from the counsel to stay out of debt and get as much education as possible. Getting knocked up while in school tends to get in the way of financial independence and decreases the likelihood of graduating. Of course on the other hand there is the culturally implied doctrine of popping out babies as soon as humanly possible. However, this has never resonated well with me. It is not like we need to start young so we can continuously multiply and replenish like bunnies for the 15 to 25 years that we are fertile. If a couple decides they will want 3-4 kids, then waiting till you 26, 28, or even 32 won’t destroy your chances of having the desired size of family.

We decided that having educated and professionally experience parents would be better for our children and we had a hard time identifying any benefits that our children would have from being born to younger parents. Of course, that is just us. Ultimately people need to do what it right and sometimes that may be starting a family young. However, when making that decision, it important to take responsibility for your actions and to not allow others to pay for you decision.

Lastly, as a people, we need to change our culture from the current “it’s up to the couple and God but if they are not starting a family immediately, then they obviously didn’t humble themselves enough” to “it really is up to the couple and lets respect their decision.” Too often I think that people get confused between the spirit and cultural pressure. This is a deeply personal and an incredibly important decision and we can’t afford having our culture getting in the way of the spirit and rationality.

C’mon, you’re missing the big picture here folks. There needs to be a law requiring colleges to call only adorable children ‘adorable’. If nobody in the PR department could find a cuter baby than the one in the picture, they need to rethink their career.

JohnE–thanks for overlooking the coarseness of my post; glad we agree. Of course, statistically speaking, since I do not know you personally, you are correct that kids do better with slightly older and more educated parents.

Also–I agree with you and others that, through personal revelation, some may chose to have kids at a somewhat inconvenient age/life circumstance. My opinion does not trump their personal revelation (nor even THEIR) opinions.

April, depending on where you are in your academic career, BYU distance learning may be helpful in knocking off the general ed credit, and when I was a mom at home they were generous with scholarships for fulltime homemakers. Although that only covered tuition, one of the courses I took did not use a textbook, which helped a lot on cost.

Also, if you can do night classes at a community college when husband is with the kids, that can be cost-effective.

I loved having something to study while they were at the playground. I did my master’s degree with 3 kids.

“Knocked up.” “Popping out.” “Like bunnies.” ESO may have been harsh, but she wasn’t repeatedly vulgar.

I think your reaction is overly harsh, ESO. Also kinda prejudiced. You’re assuming that these already started families are privileged youngsters jumping (in your estimation) the gun. You’re ignoring the possibility that someone may be going back to school to retrain after a job loss or because they need to increase their earning power to avoid dire consequences. You’re ignoring single parents.

It goes both ways, folks. If it’s no one’s business when you start your family but yours, then that applies just as well to people doing it “too early” as to those “waiting too late.”

It’s one thing to respect peoples’ choices; it is another thing to ask me to pay for them. I would rather spend my money on other deserving students.

And how are we defining “deserving students?” Kate? Again I point out that you don’t know everyone’s circumstances. My mom’s marriage broke leaving her to make a life for herself and my older brother. Yet since she’d “already started her family,” she apparently wouldn’t have deserved your money.

“I have been asked what I mean by “word of honor.” I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls—walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground—there is a possibility that in some way or another I might be able to escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of that circle? No, never! I’d die first.” — Karl G. Maeser

“I have been asked what I mean by “word of honor.” I will tell you. Place me behind prison walls—walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground—there is a possibility that in some way or another I might be able to escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of that circle? No, never! I’d die first, unless ESPN was offering me a deal on the side, as a backstop in case my discussions with other universities backfired.” – BYU 2010

bbell,

In addition our HF has a hand in it as well.

Um, I sure hope not.

ESO,
I love that you said, “I don’t buy the “when it’s meant to be” family plan unless you also want to apply that logic to single teen moms and crack babies.”

and 28, I sure do agree with you. I don’t think HF is necessarily sitting up there sending out babies. That’s way to Saturday’s Warrior for me to accept. He simply gives [everybody but me] the tools to make babies and watches to see if we will use those tools responsibly.
Simply having sex and saying, I’m pregnant, I guess HF wanted me to have this baby.” is not necessarily responsible or true. This is where the Teen moms and Crack babies come in to play.

29,
I hear you. As a low average white male, I’m the last one considered for any scholarships.

while some may consider kids a luxury… which in some cases they are. I don’t think anyone would argue that it would be wise to simply choose not to be responsible for them because you want a degree. I made my bed, now I’ll sleep in it. I just think that some people fail to realize that unlike schooling, you can’t just take a hiatus from being a parent. Some days I would love to… REALLY, I would, but it just isn’t a humane nor responsible thing to do… while taking a semester off is, at times, responsible.

PS I have been looking into all possibilities, including loans.

I dunno. When conservatives complain about government programs essentially rewarding unwed/teenaged parents, the typical response I hear is “those kids are going to exist anyways; do you want them to starve?”

Taken into this context, doesn’t the same argument apply? Since these young couples are, in all likelihood, going to reproduce anyways–what’s the problem with making sure that those children will have educated parents–and with money that has been freely donated (as opposed to involuntarily confiscated), to boot?

ESO, I’m not sure what difference you see between a loan and a scholarship. I know what the difference between them is, I’m just not sure why you seem to think it’s more acceptable for a family to go into debt than to avail themselves of voluntarily given resources.

ESO,

Tim has already mentioned this but your statement:
Honestly, I probably will NEVER donate to BYU.

Only true if you don’t pay tithing. We are all subsidizing BYU educations with our tithing money already. I think the Church should make BYU stand on its own two feet and simply give out $20k a year scholarships to all worthy members who are students to spend where they’d like.

arJ, if there is any justice, you will be prophet some day. On that day, please remember us.

MCQ,

I have no such aspirations. However when my wife is prophet she will institute the 90 minute block, announcing it during the Sunday conference session in which she is sustained. Unfortunately the Millennium will occur the next Wednesday, probably to prevent the blasphemy/delight that is the 90 minute block.

In case you’re wondering, here’s the schedule:

1st Sunday: 90 minute fast meeting. If nobody speaks for a 5 minute period the meeting is over. (This could set up some very interesting dynamics.)
2nd Sunday: 45 minute sacrament meeting, 5 minute break, 40 minutes of PH/RS.
3rd Sunday: 45 minute sacrament meeting, 5 minute break, 40 minutes of SS. (PH & RS leaders hold meetings with bishopric during SS.)
4rd Sunday: 45 minute sacrament meeting, 5 minute break, 40 minutes of PH/RS.
5th Sunday: No church. Go do a service project, camp with your family, whatever floats your boat. But no actual boating. Satan rides high on the waters and all that.

Chris–
While I agree that having a strong social support group is helpful, I don’t think sticking 30,000 LDS students in one spot while decimating the ranks of LDS students outside of that one spot helps the church any. I think college years offer LDS students the best opportunity to share the gospel with their friends. Placing all LDS students in one place, besides placing the LDS students in a bubble, decreases the church’s missionary efforts and places additional strain on LDS students in other places, when they’re the only ones left after everyone else takes off to BYU/BYUI.

I agree that students who attend schools in Europe or Asia might benefit from a church school. Students in California, Utah, Idaho, or multiple other places in the U.S. can find a large, strong supportive LDS single community without going to a church school.

You’re trying to stop the gather/scatter threadjack, arJ, but it would probably make interesting reading if you were to write something on your choice to live in Utah. I wonder if your preference for scattering for college is related to your choice to be gathered in Utah after.

John, that’s a good point. If only to affect how Mormons are viewed by the Elites. However BYU is primarily an undergrad institution. Many of my friends went to top graduate schools after graduation and I had a few who transferred to Ivy League schools for their upper division classes. So it’s not an either/or situation.

Clark,
That all depends on where you’re talking about. If you’re talking about a school in the Midwest, the South, or the East coast–the BYU drain turns thriving singles wards into struggling branches. Our struggling local singles branch, for example, pulls students from a university with over 40,000 students (plus non-student singles and students from other smaller schools in the area). If students in the area stopped going to church schools, and started going to the quality local universities, that branch would easily triple in size (if not more). And non-LDS students at the local university would be much more likely to actually know a member of the church.

JohnE #37: I completely agree.

Clark (49) – Karma’s a … difficult sentient being.

BYU football has seen its high-water mark, I believe.

53 – BYU is cracking down on perpetual students – one of my friends found out about Washington Seminar and wanted to do it, but she had already promised to graduate in December (this was back in April, before she had filled out graduation forms or anything). She had to jump through about 100 hoops to try and get extended for another semester, which would mean she was there for 5 years. Two years ago when I was there no one cared when I extended for a 9th and then 10th and then an additional spring term.

“But I don’t think that’s the case, because I’m assuming most undergrad university students outside of BYU don’t share the gospel that much anyway unless they just got home from a mission.”

????????

Why would you think that? Two of my three eldest graduated state U, one BYU. My son baptized a few members of his marching band, and several young men joined because they learned about the gospel through my daughter.

Our local ‘tute is a hotbed of missionary work. They usually have two sets of missionaries.

I think there are some unwarranted assumptions in the percentage of active LDS students who attend BYU. Can someone give actual figures?

My impression was that only about 1/3rd of LDS undergrad students in the US actually go to church schools. But some of you are implying that significantly more than 50% of LDS undergrad students attend BYU, BYU-I, or BYU-H.

Someone said that BYU has 30,000 undergrads. But my understanding is that the church has well over 100,000 church-active undergrad students in ages 18-24.

In order to encourage sharing the gospel outside of BYU, my suggestion would be to encourage as many LDS as possible to move out of Utah (and not encouraging students to just avoid BYU.) Go ahead and apply to one of the BYU schools, but please try to move out of Utah when you graduate.

I realize that people who already have good jobs or who are established in their careers will not want to move out of Utah, but college graduates who are looking for their first job, and people who are offered out-of-state transfers/promotions at their workplace, I think, should be encouraged to move out of Utah.

Have any of the modern presidents of the church (Pres McKay and onward) encouraged Utah-born college graduates to seek employment outside of Utah?

After reading this, I am in favor of any and all efforts to encourage people to have more children, whether they can afford it at the moment or not:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/america%E2%80%99s-one-child-policy

PDoE–The post stands untouched, curmudgeon and all. Welcome back to the bloggernaccle.

Kari,

You are inferring that proceeds from real estate can or should fund Religious activities?

I’m not sure you understand the not-for-profit implications of such a thing. Or the separate function and benefit of the church real estate arm.

How many of you commenting here (i.e. begee #6) have had to actually navigate the tension found in the following pieces of counsel:

1) “Get all the education you can” (after a 2-year delay, of course)
2) “Avoid unnecessary debt”
3) “Multiply and replenish the Earth”

We ultimately did the best we could to balance all three, which meant taking on PLENTY of student loans (every cent we could qualify for…) to get a graduate degree, have our first child between undergrad/grad school, and rely on some welfare to get us through (a wrenching personal, and not pre-meditated, decision) to minimize credit card debt. Could we have done it differently? Sure. Did we live exorbitantly? Hardly. Did we prayerfully make the best decision we could? Yup. Still wonder about all the ways we could have done it differently/better? Absolutely. But it sure is neat to see all the Monday morning quarterbacking going on here regarding those who have had to make difficult life decisions within this framework. Maybe Joseph Smith should have actually said “I teach them correct principles so they can question each others’ judgment.”

All that said, I think that ad made me throw up a little in my mouth. Don’t necessarily fault the purpose of the campaign, but seriously…