by Bruce Humphrey, MSCSA Treasurer, Student at South Central College-North Mankato

For two decades, I was a member of the American workforce with my nose to the grindstone. I worked hard, paid my own way, and hoped for a better life. 

“I don’t need a college degree.” That’s what I told myself. “I’m smart,” I would say, “and all I have to do is work hard, put in my time and effort, and the raises and promotion will come. While all of my friends have their noses stuck in a bunch of books, I’ll be climbing right up past them. In fact, I’ll probably be the guy who hires them.”

That didn’t happen.

Job after job in state after state, I met the same results. Getting a job was easy. Getting a promotion was even easier. Getting any more promotions was impossible.

I know now that it’s called a glass ceiling, an artificial barrier that I just couldn’t overcome without a piece of paper that said that I had finished college. 

It didn’t seem fair. 

It didn’t seem right. 

After 20 years, it did seem like a reality.

With a son about to move on and start his own family and a wife recently declared disabled, I decided to take a huge gamble. I was going back to school. It was time to get my degree.

My educational paths will open doors to career options I never had before. With my degree in liberal arts and administrative assistant, I will no longer limit my search to food service, construction, and retail as I did before. The more I’m learning in the classroom, the more possibilities I see in my future.

It was involvement in student government, however, that really opened my eyes to the benefit of a college experience. Coming into college with an older, and hopefully wiser, mindset, I embraced the opportunities available to me. Student activities, Student Senate, and MSCSA have enlightened me far beyond the ability of any course curriculum. 

I realize now that while I may have been a fantastic worker, I hadn’t learned leadership skills, skills that enable me to build teams, establish relationships, and utilize networks. These are the skills that employers look for when it’s time for a promotion. These are the skills that I could have learned anywhere else but college.

Having the time to complete my homework and the time to participate in student government has forced me into a very limited work schedule, and that has forced me to accept public assistance for the first time in my life. It has also forced me to accept more debt than I ever imagined needing for anything but a home. Both of these things have forced me to swallow a huge amount of my pride.

I know far too many people who won’t make that swallow and, for that, they will find themselves forever stuck beneath that glass ceiling. That is a shame. It’s a shame for them and their families and it’s a shame for society.

Today’s times and economy are going to require some incredible bright ideas. I hope that somewhere in all those bright ideas are ways to make education more affordable and more accessible. There is such a huge well of untapped potential out there. I hope we will never lose the courage to keep searching for it.