A lot of Freepers are anti-college, especially those who haven’t a college degree and are suspicious of those they think are over-educated.
The truth is that half a century ago a high school diploma indicated that someone had the knowledge and skills people only have today after they have earned a bachelor’s degree or perhaps even a master’s degree. Only the best and the brightest went on to college and/or grad school. If we could get our high schools back, all of our kids wouldn’t have to go to college. But the way things are, kids graduate from high school with such overwhelming ignorance that they need some college just to learn some rudiments.
If you’re treating college like a trade school, to be able to get a well-paying job, you might be wasting your money. You might do better to go to a real trade schoo. But if you’re going to college to learn about Western civilization and the life of the mind, to learn how to use your mind, to write and think in ways you haven’t before, to get exposed to the greatest brains of human history, then going to college or university is a good option.
I live in an affluent community in MA. This is the kind of MA town you see on Christmas cards and in Yankee magazine. Money everywhere (except in our house!)
My daughter graduated with kids that went to Fordam, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, etc. Lots of kids went to small, New England private schools that most here would recognize.
My daughter had the grades to go anywhere, but knew she would pick up the tab through loans and work study. She had no idea of what she wanted to study or be “when she grew up.”
So she spent 2 1/2 years at a community college. Changed focus once she started to figure out what she wanted to do—hence the extra semester. Now she is ready to transfer to a school where she can focus on the major that interests her. She has worked and saved money for the past 2 years.
Now, she will get out of school with about 1/4 the debt of her peers. She has two years of near full time work experience. And she is about ten times a mature as her peers.
I think she has already “grown up.”
As a corporate type for 25 years I came to see that the college education was used as a pruning mechanism. You needed to the degree to get through the door. But it did not really matter what the degree was in—just that we had to have an arbitrary cut off tool to cull the herd.
It really meant little else.