Jon McGee has been a college administrator for two decades. So he has a pretty good grasp of why, for example, it costs so much to go to college these days.
But as a parent, it really hit home when his eldest child, now 19, started his own college search two years ago.
"I don't just have one child, I have four," said McGee. That means his family has just begun "a postsecondary parade that will not end until 2028," he writes in his new book, "Breakpoint: The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education."
By his own estimation, financing four kids' education could cost as much as $1.1 million, "a gulpworthy, stomach-churning total by any definition," he writes.
The book, which will be published Sunday by Johns Hopkins University Press, was meant as a reader-friendly exploration of the trends that are transforming higher education before our eyes.
Costs. Technology. Demographics.
Yet McGee, 53, who is a vice president at two Minnesota colleges (the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University), offers a distinctive perspective as both a dad and an insider.
He points out that, since World War II, college has evolved from a "luxury good" to a necessity.
