Why frum Women need College

There are some figures we should all know about: the federal poverty guidelines and the minimum wage. Our government uses these figures in determining who is poor enough to receive certain government services. For 2007 the figures are as follows:

Minimum Wage: $5.85 per hour
Poverty Guidelines per Persons in Family or Household: 1-$10,210; 2-13,690; 3-17,170;
4-20,650; 5-24,130; 6-27,610; 7-31,090; 8-34,570. For each additional person, add
3,480.

If you are a woman who is considering supporting a husband who is learning in kollel you should be staring at those figures very carefully. They may end up applying to you. If your parents will be supporting you for the first years of your marriage those figures may also apply to you. The poverty guidelines are also used in determining eligibility for certain programs such as food stamps, WIC and Section 8 housing.

If you graduate high school, go to seminary and then get married and go to work you can expect that you are not going to be making much money. Jobs for those without college pay less then those for college graduates. At minimum wage, working a 40-hour week for 52 weeks, you would earn $12,168.00 per year. This would make you and your husband "officially" poor. If you get a "good" job at $10 per hour, you would be earning $20,800 per year. This would make you and your husband not officially poor, thus not qualifying for a number of state and federal programs.

How much do they pay yeshiva teachers? Not much. Particularly to teachers who have no college degrees. Teaching limudei kodesh? You'll make less then if you teach limudei chol. While there are some yeshivot who pay more, those are the yeshivot that are looking for college graduates for limudei chol. Expect, if you are lucky, to be making around $12,000 to $14,000 to start. Note: if you already have children you are going to be paying a baby sitter or yeshiva tuition from this salary. Think you can do that?

Given the number of girls graduating from all the yeshiva high schools in the country, another fact comes up: Even if every teacher presently teaching in a yeshiva were to quit right now there still would not be a sufficient number of teaching positions for all of this year's graduates. And the teachers already teaching aren't quitting. Still think you can support a family by teaching in a yeshiva? Wrong. So, what can you do with only a high school diploma? Not much.

A secretarial position for a government agency will pay you at about $8.58 an hour. That's $17,846.40 a year. Just enough to keep you out of complete poverty until you have your second child. And unlike most employers paying low salaries, at least our government provides health insurance; the others do not.

Does anyone need more persuasion that getting a college degree makes sense for frum girls today? A college graduate entering the teaching profession and teaching in public school will begin at $40,000 and change. She will get health benefits and automatic pension contributions. A college graduate majoring in accounting can expect to enter the job market also in the $40,000 plus range, and if she is a "top" graduate applying to the bigger firms she may start in the $50,000 or $60,000 range. And those firms pay health benefits. In short, college graduates make more money then those without college. They find better jobs with more benefits.

If the women of Klal Yisroel have to go out to work, we ought to be preparing them to make enough money to support their families, not in poverty but in something more. Far from being looked at as undesirable, college should be pushed by the yeshiva high schools. It is to their benefit to do so. Just how do they expect that the next generation will pay the tuition bills on minimum wage salaries? They won't. And then what will the yeshivas do for money? Just when did poverty get to be something desirable?

Going to college is an investment in the future of Klal Yisroel. It should apply equally to the men and the women of Klal. We can no longer hide our faces and avoid the truth that frum women work outside their homes. What ever the "evil" in going to college, there is a greater evil in the "planned poverty" that not having a college degree will guarantee.

But then we run into this: a lot of the boys who are going to be sitting and learning for the first five years of marriage don't want girls who have gone to college. It doesn't "fit" with the "lifestyle." Or they insist that, if a girl has gone to college, she be working as a teacher or some kind of therapist in the "helping" professions--business-oriented women are not acceptable. They have romanticized the sitting and learning years, forgetting that bills have to be paid, and people have to eat. It may well be one reason why these boys want the girls' parents to do the supporting--this way the girls don't have to go to college. Klal needs to take a reality check. The only thing--short of the men not sitting and learning but getting their college degrees and going out to work right away--that makes financial sense is to make sure the girls have college degrees and can earn enough money to avoid poverty.

Years back I "inherited" a small group of boys who were learning for smicha at YU. They were all of them very nice. One in particular was a "maiden's dream"--handsome, bright, fine midos. He called me up one day for advice. A different shadchan was bothering him no end to go out with a particular girl. He kept saying no but the shadchan wasn't listening. He wanted me to tell him how to get the woman to stop. What was the problem with the girl? She was a doctor, in her first year of residency. How could this be a match, he asked. What could she possibly want with him or he with her? What could they possibly have in common? I spoke to the other shadchan, a woman I had worked with before, and got all the particulars. Then I called back the boy and told him that he was going to go out with this girl. He "owed" me that much for my efforts over the year. With two shadchanim now nudging him, he reluctantly agreed. And yes, you know the ending--they are very happily married. And every year he calls me up to ask mechila before Yom Kippur for having been so stupid and blind as to give me and the other shadchan a hard time. His father, brother, sister and brother in law were all doctors. They loved his wife. Her father was a pulpit rabbi--he loved his new son in law. Everyone was happy. He works as a rebbi and she works as a doctor and they live happily ever after.

Yes, there are many frum girls who do go to college--not nearly enough of them. It's a dark ages mentality to say that college ruins our girls or ruins their prospects for a good shidduch. Everyone needs to open their eyes and look at what really happens when we don't educate our women.