@baseballhs makes a good point. I imagine that most posters on HSBBW have a college degree. Some more than one. We were all conditioned to believe that attending college, and earning a degree, was critical to having success in life. Back in the day there was a lot of truth to that. The sad fact is that times have changed in that respect. Unless you are pursuing a career that requires specialized education a college degree today isn’t worth what it was 40 years ago. Especially if obtaining that degree puts you tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Today you really need to do a cost/benefit analysis to determine if it’s even a good financial investment. Look at the historical rise in the cost of college tuition. University administrations have become incredibly greedy. They are every bit as corrupt as corporate executives and politicians. Corporations want employees that are saddled with debt and lack the freedom of choice. People in that situation are easier to control. And Universities are more than happy to do their part to make that happen in return for corporate partnerships (that include donations, grants, collaborative research projects, etc.). Even if attending college is not a financial burden you still should be asking if it’s worth the time and the money. For many it isn’t. And IMO it didn’t used to be that way.
I can see your point, but let me give you another perspective.
This all depends on your purpose for going to College, if simply to get a job, then you are probably right. If you want to simply become part of the new Working Class, sit in a cube-farm and take it up the rear side by corporate america, then yeah, it's stinks, I live it. I see the concern with escalating tuition, states barely funding their Public Universities, let alone their public schools, student debt, etc. Colleges falling into the game of spending money on perks to entice students (rock walls in student centers, award winning dining, etc) rather than actually improving quality of education. But without an Education there is no opportunity to improve your station in life. So no I don't buy into the rhetoric by many to discouragement kids from going to college because it's not "worth" it.
I'll tell you a story: My Dad, when he was young and working a passenger train detail, he overheard a fellow train man tell a passenger on the train, "See that young man over there, 4th generation railroad man". The woman looked up and gave a snooty reply, "Not much improvement in that family". Well, my Dad said "no more". He made sure all of his 4 kids went to college. He worked freight, 16 hr shifts, etc. to make sure that happened. Because of it, we all do better. My job now is to make sure my kids do better than me. I am just a cog in a corporate world, but my kids will not be. Since day one they've been taught to be something more, don't' just work to make someone else money, be a Scientist, Doctor, Entrepreneur, change the world, don't just exist in it. The goal is to continue to improve, generation by generation, that's what Education does.
Is the college system starting to become broken, maybe, but it needs to be fixed, not abandoned. The privileged society seems to want to tell everyone that college isn't worth it, but they aren't sending THEIR kids to Trade School or telling them to go sit in a cube-farm and make someone else money.
