The True Cost of Higher Education
“The cost of education is too high!” “College graduates can’t find good jobs!” “College graduates are being crushed with student loan debt!” “We have to do something!” But what? Like solving any other problem, solving the higher education problem requires us to first analyze the nature of the problem and its root causes. So, let’s take a look.
The Values Of The American Adult – A Cultural Problem
We can’t talk about schooling without first addressing the elephant in the room. That is, most people really don’t want to go to school. School sucks! Much of the instruction is boring and the schoolwork is make-work. People want good jobs, where they can make as much money as possible at the least cost to themselves. That is, a not so strenuous, somewhat interesting, and relatively high paying job. Again, people want good jobs, not a college education. They only endure a stint at a college or university as a means for obtaining a good job.
American adults have been pushing on American children, the idea of higher education as a path toward obtaining higher wages and a job they deem to be respectable, for at least three decades now. If little Johnny doesn’t go to college, there’s this fear his choices for employment will be limited to digging ditches or riding the back of a truck to collect other people’s garbage. Neither of which are jobs people ought to look down their noses at.
Elitism has taken hold on Main Street it seems, to the point where receiving a four-year degree has come to be seen as an end in itself, rather than as a tool to be used in the service of the graduate’s other ends. Any proponent of trade programs, apprenticeships and internships is acutely aware of this, as are the elitists who scoff at them. And we all stood by and let this happen for far too long. Many of us have even joined the flock of sheep, echoing their call to slaughter, beckoning America’s youth to go where souls are ground down, dreams are crushed and where the spark of curiosity and imagination is snuffed out by mind-numbing and pointless intellectual torture and conformist conditioning. Human minds are not capital goods to be molded into ready-to-consume widgets for the labor market.
What this society is doing to its children is barbarous! From age 5 to age 18, children are sent to quasi-prisons to learn about things neither they, nor their wardens and COs could care less about. Things that have to be revisited at each grade level because so little import is given to these subjects, in the minds of students, that they forget nearly everything they’ve learned almost as soon as they’ve passed their exams. But now, even this doesn’t satisfy us. Somehow, we feel they have yet, in spending all of those most formative years getting ground under the heel of the modern education system, to be made fit to enter the workforce and actually learn something useful and important to them. Oh, no! Parole denied! More “education” is needed before we can let them join our ranks as productive members of society. This, my friends, is the hidden cost of the modern education system; paid in wasted years and diminished human spirit.
Illustrating The Point – Elementary Economics And Higher Education Zealots
Today’s higher education zealots are so economically illiterate, it makes me wonder if they’ve retained any knowledge from their years spent in school. How else could it be possible for supposedly educated minds to be so ignorant of the fact that, when demand increases, prices rise? Surely, most of these folks have taken Economics 101 at some point. They must not have cared too much about it at the time and probably still don’t care to understand. Else, they’d have at least remembered the two most basic laws in economics; the laws of supply and demand. But they seem to not understand that shifting more of the burden onto taxpayers—and the demand curve along with it, will make the net cost of college rise, further compounding the problem—for taxpayers.
Now, I’m not suggesting these people should care about basic economics, a rather dull subject in formal schooling. Rather, I am pointing out the folly of higher education zealots in their quest to shove manure down the throats of an increasing number of captive audiences and have the rest of us fund the torture. Since they clearly didn’t retain their own formal instruction on a subject relevant to their current endeavor, what makes them think anyone else is any different? And if people generally don’t retain knowledge of subjects they are disinterested in, what’s the point in expending the resources to have them waste their time and effort sitting through it all and suffering through the motions?
What’s The Point – Bursting Their Bubble
Children and young adults spent an ever-increasing amount of time and money on school over the past 30 years. And more are being diagnosed with anxiety disorders. For what? To receive a USDA Grade A stamp on their foreheads as an indicator for employers. Sometimes, just so they can get a job as a replacement for the high school dropouts who retired the month prior. But still, the education zealots press on with pushing for stimulating more demand for education via subsidies and giveaways to prospective, yet uninterested college students, and public universities. With the message of, “Trust me, you don’t want to dig ditches for a living, that’s what immigrants are for”. And what’s even more perverse and irritating, is this renewed push comes on the heels of the worst labor shortage since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking job turnover, which is affecting all sectors of the American economy.
So, can we please drop this attitude that everyone needs to get a four-year college degree to earn a decent income and that everyone is well suited to completing the required coursework? There has been massive credential inflation since at least the 1980s. Combined with the current high cost of education in both time and money, increased teen anxiety and the current labor shortage, why in the world would we want to push more students toward four-year higher education institutions and exacerbate the problem further? It seems pretty clear to me, there has been massive overconsumption of education for the past few decades, thanks to the efforts of our benevolent overlords. Who of course, know better than parents, what’s best for their children.
I thought people usually outgrow the fun of playing with bubbles as they enter into adulthood. Apparently I was wrong. Expansion in federal student aid fueled a private college boom between 1990 and 2010. Now, with college enrollment on the decline, private colleges across New England are closing their doors. With increased scrutiny from accreditors and falling enrollment, what has started as a slow market correction, may turn out to be the second major bubble to burst in two decades.
For those of us who came of age during the 2008 financial crisis, the story seems all too familiar. A boom fueled by credit expansion from government programs and the shady business practices they incentivized, followed by a rapid market correction, leading to financial instability in that sector of the economy, and ultimately the failure of major financial institutions. Let’s just hope it doesn’t go that far this time. We’ve already tasted the medicine of bailing out banksters. I don’t think anyone is in a hurry to step up for seconds.
About The Author
