When measured in cold, hard cash …
the college con is the greatest sting of all.
Lovable grifters might make for endearing movie characters … but this college hoax … well, this is one swindle that punishes.
It’s a silky scam set into motion in the earliest grades … that too often ends in misery for baited undergraduates.
College has become an over-priced and over-promoted fantasy … the only sure-fire ticket to the American Dream.
And each year, millions of high schoolers sign on the dotted line … and give it the ol’ college try.
“College for Everyone!”
It’s whispered in the ears of second graders … plastered on school walls … and recited religiously as part of this Common Core delirium.
Couple that with good old fashioned classism and a powerful dose of 21st century lookism … and you’ve got one helluva sleek shakedown.
No, it’s not entirely new.
But it’s more refined than ever … and more emphatic … and more pricey.
But …
Middle America is wising up because too many have learned the hard way that sometimes a college degree just doesn’t deliver as promised.
Too many school districts measure their success not by lives well-lived, but by the number who dash off to college … even for a year or two … because college-bound kids are the new snoot-statistics.
Few mention the ugly underbelly …
that nearly 50% try and fail …
or that
just one-third of all Americans actually earn a four year degree.
That would be bad for business.
It’s seldom heard that tens of millions have created very satisfying lives without college.
Today, young trades-people seem to be the most contented segment of the newly employed …
while their unhappy college counterparts are designing foamy, broken hearts for over-priced lattes.
And those trades-people are in demand, too.
There’d be agonizing misery without such tradesmen to fix our failed air conditioners or burpy oil burners … or our clogged toilets and leaky roofs.
Schools … at every level … need to embrace these employment realities so that young people with alternative interests and skills can prepare for careers ignored by the current reform climate.
Oh! And there’s not much regret among these successful folks either.
Too many kids buzz off to college unprepared … and unsuited … for what awaits them. And in a semester … or two or three … they drop out.
But the debt drops in.
Some 44 million borrowers now owe … are you ready?
$1.45 trillion
That’s an average of just under $40,000 in student loan debt.
That’s high-hock.
It’s not okay. It’s wrong.
And no matter how you slice it … it’s a scam.
It’s a good moment to remember that public education isn’t a farm system just for for the college bound.
Missives Worth Reading 