It seems nowadays that you can scarcely engage any younger person in conversation, without hearing these tales of woe with regards to student loans and the crushing debt they create. We're all aware of how expensive college and university tuitions have become over the years. But when you talk to these young people a little longer, you discover that none of them are employed in a field which is even remotely related to the subjects they have bankrupted themselves to learn. D-Uhh...
I realize that I myself am from a now-defunct era, where practicality, thought and reasoning prevailed for the most part. Or at least one would like to think so. Where does this mindless and overwhelming push to attend university come from? Who ever started this train of thought where it is somehow mandatory for young people to bolt for university, right after they have finished high school?
Universities are a wonderful place for someone who knows what they want to do with the rest of their life. Or at least what their career path will be, for the next 10 to 15 years. If your career choices demand that you have a certain degree in a specific discipline and if you are willing and able to take on the financial burden of your final education years, go for it.
Universities are a horrifyingly expensive place to hide out "simply because you're not ready to face the real world". Suck in your pride and do that at home, with your parents blessings. Campus life has regularly been portrayed by Hollywood and the rest of the media world, as one long period of drunken debauchery, briefly interspersed with unsuccessful attempts at forced education. This particular slant on the hallowed halls of academia, has now been generally accepted as fact, by those who venture out in search of their degrees.
I realize that I myself am from a now-defunct era, where practicality, thought and reasoning prevailed for the most part. Or at least one would like to think so. Where does this mindless and overwhelming push to attend university come from? Who ever started this train of thought where it is somehow mandatory for young people to bolt for university, right after they have finished high school?
Universities are a wonderful place for someone who knows what they want to do with the rest of their life. Or at least what their career path will be, for the next 10 to 15 years. If your career choices demand that you have a certain degree in a specific discipline and if you are willing and able to take on the financial burden of your final education years, go for it.
Universities are a horrifyingly expensive place to hide out "simply because you're not ready to face the real world". Suck in your pride and do that at home, with your parents blessings. Campus life has regularly been portrayed by Hollywood and the rest of the media world, as one long period of drunken debauchery, briefly interspersed with unsuccessful attempts at forced education. This particular slant on the hallowed halls of academia, has now been generally accepted as fact, by those who venture out in search of their degrees.
College and university has become an entitled vacation, after surviving the "harrowing and socially awkward years of high school". Seriously? Just what kind of young people are we releasing into the world? Get over yourselves... school is no harder, nor more 'socially awkward' today than it was back in my day. We just have young folks that are more screwed up who are attending it, that's all. Why? 'Cause largely they've been allowed to raise themselves, without noxious 'parental interference'. We can all see how well that worked out...
Yet time spent (wasted) in an educational institution, should not be equated with knowledge. The two are certainly not mutually inclusive, by any means. The employee rosters of fast food joints across this nation, are fairly teeming with those who are over-educated and under-smart.
Here's your diploma... one, possibly two minor unusable degrees, upon which you've blown some $58,000.00 plus, and four years of what should have been some of the most productive years of your life. Now repeat after me: "Do you want fries with that...?"
There is certainly a sustainable argument for higher education, providing those seeking it actually have some sort of clue as to what they want to do with the rest of their life. Universities and colleges are for those who have a direction in their life. Those who waste time and money attaining degrees which are inconsequential in the real world, simply to delude themselves that they have attained a higher caste in our society and are somehow 'better' than others... well that's just sad. To say nothing of being ridiculously pompous, misguided and an indication of other dysfunctional traits that will require some serious therapy to resolve. And you thought university was expensive...
Higher education indeed...
Yet time spent (wasted) in an educational institution, should not be equated with knowledge. The two are certainly not mutually inclusive, by any means. The employee rosters of fast food joints across this nation, are fairly teeming with those who are over-educated and under-smart.
Here's your diploma... one, possibly two minor unusable degrees, upon which you've blown some $58,000.00 plus, and four years of what should have been some of the most productive years of your life. Now repeat after me: "Do you want fries with that...?"
There is certainly a sustainable argument for higher education, providing those seeking it actually have some sort of clue as to what they want to do with the rest of their life. Universities and colleges are for those who have a direction in their life. Those who waste time and money attaining degrees which are inconsequential in the real world, simply to delude themselves that they have attained a higher caste in our society and are somehow 'better' than others... well that's just sad. To say nothing of being ridiculously pompous, misguided and an indication of other dysfunctional traits that will require some serious therapy to resolve. And you thought university was expensive...
Higher education indeed...
No comments:
Post a Comment