I’ve no idea what people are “supposed” to do.
University is probably not for everyone. Fine. Attend a much less expensive trade school, 2-year college, etc. Lots of good options out there, and those skills are important, necessary, and often pay better than white collar jobs, at least in the beginning.
But please don’t impugn or try to change the purpose of a university education, which has *never* been about getting a high-paying job.
And there are plenty of good, solid state universities with reasonable tuition rates. I’ve put three of my kids through them and am about to start a fourth. There are also lots of scholarship opportunities for those who work hard in high school. I got two of them.
I love this quote from Tim Wise’s piece “Yes, College is Worth It”: “American culture makes us think education is a waste, but America, as usual, has it wrong”
A university education exposed me to people and ideas I would otherwise have missed entirely. I learned philosophy, film, and physics, mathematics and engineering, communication theory and broadcast media, logic and the scientific method. I learned Russian from an East German as the Cold War drew to a close. I learned to hold an idea in my head and to examine it rationally without necessarily having to accept it. Those things continue to make me a more generally functional and capable adult.
One of the things all this taught me was how to identify and avoid being drawn into logical fallacies and weak excuses.
“Six figures” is a broad generalization. All three of my kids’ state school educations together didn’t cost this much.
And you’re right, it *would* be amazing if institutes of higher learning focused on creating enlightened members of society rather than grubbing for tuition money and churning out workers (and consumers), but just like so many other things in life, we can’t really blame education or educators.
I worked hard and got out of my university experience exactly what I put into it. I took responsibility for laying a solid foundation for my future. And whaddaya know? It worked.
Crazy, right?
