I’ve been reading quite a bit online about the ridiculously large amount of debt students have found themselves in. Right now, over 1 trillion dollars are owed by our generation of young adults who happened to want to put time and effort into obtaining an advanced degree. People are so discouraged by the price tag of education that they venture to say an advanced degree is not worth it. It’s hard to argue with them when you look at the nature of hiring right now and the job market. I’m not writing another blog entry about how ridiculous this is, or about how terribly it’s affecting our youth, because I feel like there’s enough information out there on this already. I want to focus on how our mindset on education needs to change for a better future.
When we have groups of adults who can perform specialized tasks and know deep amounts of information, we have the opportunity to exchange and enrich existing ideas. The more intelligent discourse is in a society, the easier it is for ideas to take root and bring change because most people are on the same page.
We discourage our youth within our current system because they see friends, siblings, mentors with degrees that net them 0. And then they turn on their phone and see the newest story about another kid gone viral for nonsense. What message does that send really.
Why don’t we look at High School graduates and ask them to dump their pockets? Having a high school degree will earn you substantially more than someone who doesn’t earn one. We didn’t consider high school to be ‘normal’ until the turn of the last century. Why do the same to our young adults, to our middle age+ adults who seek to expand their minds?
The issue is that college should not be made into a commodity SO supply/demand should not apply; like it is a library or high school the cost shouldn’t be affected by attendance. It’s not a service that we package and market to people, but a right for our citizens to attend if they choose to. And if a college should charge a substantially higher rate, they should have to prove the worth and provide work post graduation for immediate relevant experience.
The sooner we can work toward a change in the paradigm, the less debt our nation will be in. Institutions shouldn’t be able to take advantage of students and charge impossible interest rates on their loans for the right to learn.
It’s our choice, so what’s next?
xoxo