I’ve got two sons in college.
One is the product of a liberal undergrad education, has spent the last 6 years studying all over the world, can’t find a job because he has a worthless Masters degree in cultural studies, and is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt because Sallie Mae has, since he was 19, continued year after year after year, to give him private student loans knowingly WITHOUT a required co-signer. His only chance at successful repayment may be to incur MORE debt by getting his Doctorate in a marketable field. On a positive note, at least he didn’t accept the untold number of credit cards that were thrown at him when he first entered school.
The other son who I never thought would go to college is now 27 and is attending Phoenix, on-line, for a bachelors in Criminal Justice. He will have only Stafford loans to re-pay, but after only one year of study has already begun working in his field.
I’ve seen 50+ year old students working on PHDs and the only job they can hopefully get is a teaching job at a university making $16K per year. They keep going back to school and the government keeps bankrolling them with taxpayer money. It really doesn’t matter if their field of study is something like political science. Like the world needs more political science PHDs — all we get in the end is more pontificating liberal gasbags that cannot hold down a job.
If they get the PHD, they usually spend a few years making 16K because they’re trying to find a job.
The “blank check” is also the reason we have so many freakin’ lawyers. Our society has about 10x as many lawyers as we should have. A lot of folks don’t know what they want to do when they get out of undergraduate so they end up going to LAW SCHOOL. They’re not ready to work so they stay in school and we get more lawyers every year.
So many of these young people are led in the wrong direction. They’d be much better off if they learned HVAC, electrical work, welding, etc. If they’re good at those things, they maybe one day own their own business. In fact, I believe there is now a greater opportunity for success is someone is trained in those areas. Additionally, the person should almost always be able to find a job.
The folks at these places of higher learning are corrupt and they’re doing young people an injustice. They need to be helf more accountable.
Also, the colleges and universities squeeze more money out of taxpayers every year. The colleges and universities in my state own most the hospitals and a lot of other properties. In fact, the largest land owner in my county is the school board. They ask the state for more money than they need every year. They never go back and ask for less. They’ve got excess money so they buy things like hospitals and more land. Their focus should be education but they’ve become BIG BUSINESS.