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Blogs > greg16ge > Musings, dreams, and visions

College is a trap  

greg16ge 67M
0 posts
5/6/2016 12:55 am
College is a trap

I entered higher ed out of high school, and didn't leave until my mid-50s. Learning was my life's passion. All that is good in me blossomed within those ivy-covered walls. I climbed its highest mountain, earned those magical three initials after my name, and couldn't be prouder of that achievement.
And now I'm out. I'm working for barely above minimum wage at my local supermarket, and I couldn't be happier. Sure, I could go back. I could earn about twice what I'm making now as an adjunct. But it'll be a cold day in hell when I stand in front of a group of tuition slaves, marching to the tune of the ugliest Ponzi scheme I can imagine. My passion now is to use my skills and wisdom in service to my community, and to keep my faith journey as close to the core of my being as I possibly can. I respect and admire my friends and former colleagues who still toil in the vineyard of higher learning. I just can't stomach or tolerate the forces that are corrupting and thwarting their best efforts to the most perverse of ends.
Here's the deal. College never was, is not, and never will be a Willy Wonka golden ticket to the good life. Its core vision statement is that the unexamined life is not worth living. Its truest rewards are intangible, even inscrutable. To pretend otherwise is to dangle bait, poisoned with debt, in the face of the desperately poor. To twist a diploma into a hall pass to a living wage is to enable and codify the cruelest attack ever perpetrated against the working class.
We need to blow up college. We need to break up this monopoly and release the market of ideas and learning. "Student" athletes aren't the only ones who should be allowed to ply their skills and talents in the free market. Upperclassmen in the hard sciences, social sciences, mathematics, hell, even the arts, deserve the same opportunity. Young adults, all young adults, deserve to take their first steps into self-actualized lives without being forced to mortgage their future.
We can do this. We must do this. In upcoming posts, I'll walk you through what brought me to these conclusions, and I'll invite you in to a conversation about their validity and implications.

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