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Equality

People shared their experiences encountering insanely rich kids for the first time

"Her parents used to call her and check on her because she 'wasn't spending enough money.'"

avia rkoi / Instagram

Are they out of touch with reality or just living in a different one?

Most people grow up going to schools where people are of a similar social status. Lower-income people tend to grow up with people in the same situation and affluent people usually grow up around people who are rich as well. But things can change dramatically in college. People who are from completely different sides of the socioeconomic spectrum attend class together and sometimes wind up sharing the same dorm room.

One student can be there on a scholarship and have a part-time job to make ends meet. The other may be on a massive allowance from their parents who pay full tuition without batting an eye. What exacerbates the issue is that many people go through college dirt poor. If they have a job, it's often low-paying, they can't work many hours and they aren't old enough to have accumulated any wealth. According to the Lumina Foundation, a nonprofit based in Indianapolis dedicated to providing "opportunities for learning beyond high school" for all, 47% of today's college students don't have or rely on parental support, and of those students, one in four live below the poverty line.

The differences are stark. So stark that seeing one of your peers wasting other people's hard-earned money can be downright stupefying. It can also seem highly immoral for some to have so much and not appreciate it when others are struggling to get by.

College is also a time when people begin to learn about income inequality and why it exists.

college students, income, inequality, socioeconomic status, richIncome inequality becomes more obvious in college. Image via Canva.

In the summer of 2020, freelance journalist Jake Bittle started a fun conversation on Twitter where people shared stories of some of the insanely rich kids they knew in college. Many of the responses came from people who went to the University of Chicago.

Bittle's story started with seeing a girl open her laptop to reveal a ton of money in her bank account while they were taking a class on Marxism. The tweet inspired people to share stories of the insanely rich kids they met in college and how some of them were terribly wasteful with their money.

(Jake has since deleted his original tweet.)


shock, rich kids, college, students, socioeconomic spectrumDonald Glover Reaction GIFGiphy


facepalm, insanely rich kids, rich, college studentsJudge Judy No GIF by Agent M Loves GifsGiphy


One thing really becomes apparent when reading all of these Tweets: the severe lack of financial literacy among the college students in these anecdotes. According to EBSCO, over 40% of college students are "still not equipped with adequate financial literacy knowledge and skills." This also touches on the correlation between student debt and financial literacy. A 2024 study from Auburn University published by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) notes that students with more than $100,000 in student debt especially lack "adequate financial understanding," exacerbating the student debt crisis.

student debt, student, finances, financial literary, rich, poorThe student debt crisis affects millions.

No matter what side of the socioeconomic spectrum these students hail from, it's well known that schools do not take the time to educate students on real-life skills like taxes, banking, budgeting, etc. before they head out into the world. Even if a student's affluent family hasn't wised them up to how money works in the real world, imagine how much better off everyone would be if we were required to take financial literacy courses before we hit adulthood?

This article originally appeared five years ago.

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Why it matters that more college students now smoke pot than cigarettes.

Higher education has been getting a whole lot higher lately.

In case you've missed the memo, cigarettes have lost their luster lately — especially to those crazy college kids.

Just this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a historically low percentage of American adults — a mere 15.2% — are choosing to light up on a regular basis.

That's great! Although, not very surprising.Cigarette use by Americans has been dwindling for several years now. And that includes for college students.

Photo via iStock.

But not all smoking is falling by the wayside for millennials obtaining a higher education (if you get my drift). New research found that marijuana is actually more popular now among college students than it has been throughout the past three decades.

For the first time, more college students report smoking pot than cigarettes.

The University of Michigan's newly released Monitoring the Future study found that, in 2014, only 5% of college students said they smoked cigarettes daily — down from 19% in 1999.

Lloyd Johnston, a lead researcher on the study, said the drop is "particularly good news," seeing as these same students had fewer rates of cigarette smoking while they were still in high school. So their smoke-free (or nearly smoke-free) habits apparently had staying power.

Photo via iStock

Here's where it gets interesting. A higher percentage of college students — 5.9% — reported smoking marijuana either on a daily or near-daily basis (which was defined as on at least 20 of the past 30 days for the study).

That 0.9% difference is a big one. It marks the first time daily weed-smoking habits surpassed daily cigarette-smoking habits for college students, the study concluded.

This historic report should encourage us to review some of our drug policies. Because, let's face it, they need some updating.

Here are the facts.

Smoking cigarettes:

  • Legal across the board (for adults).
  • Terrible for you. Like "the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States" terrible. As in, responsible for more than 480,000 deaths in the U.S. every year terrible.

Smoking weed:

  • Illegal for recreational purposes in nearly all U.S. states and for medicinal purposes in 27.
  • Terrible for you? Well, certainly not good for you. But it depends. Some research suggests smoking pot may negatively interfere with areas of the brain that regulate emotions and anxiety. But a notable 20-year study published in 2012 found that — while smoking cigarettes harms your lungs (without a doubt) — occasionally smoking marijuana does not. And when it comes to treating various health ailments, many doctors agree — medicinal marijuana works. So, as researchers have said, more data is needed to be certain of the negative longterm affects of smoking pot on our bodies.

Shouldn't facts like these affect our policies on marijuana? I mean, if just as many (if not more) young people prefer weed over cigarettes, shouldn't legal weed be on the table as a viable option? Legalizing and regulating pot may actually help in keeping it out of the hands of children, after all, and legal weed may help reduce our expensive and overpopulated prison system without sacrificing public safety.

The good news is, more Americans are recognizing these realities. As Gallup found in November 2014, a slim majority of Americans now support legalizing weed — up dramatically from a decade prior, when that figure stood at just 34%.

If America's acceptance of weed is changing — on and off college campuses — maybe it's time Washington takes note.

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