We've Got to Stop This!

More and more in the past couple of years I have come to the belief that the college path is not for everyone. In point of fact, it is not for most people. Yet our politicians, with Barack Obama at the helm, are encouraging more and more of America's school children to attend, to the point now where it is being suggested that EVERYONE go to college. This is a notion that is so ludicrous it is almost unbelievable that it is being propagated.

Regardless of the fact that there are myriad career paths that do not require a college education (ie plumber, auto mechanic, electrician, professional driver, hermit), the fact is that even with those career paths that do require a college education, the vast majority of them don't, not really. For instance, teaching. Since the dawn of time we have had people who were willing and able to teach. They passed on specific knowledge as well as general wisdom. Most of them did this for free. Most of them were very good at it, because if they weren't, their students would just move along to the next person, who was. Today we have a highly schooled professional teaching force, yet most of them possess little to no wisdom and very little actual knowledge. They use prepackaged lesson plans and textbooks that weigh forty or fifty pounds to collect their fat government paychecks and pensions. Basically, I'm saying that the current status quo, that of the teaching profession requiring a college education, is inferior to previous systems in which teachers were driven by a need to pass on knowledge that they had acquired through non-college means.

Another example is the business world. In the past, people would apprentice themselves to established and successful merchants, and once they had proven their abilities, they would be allowed to go out into the world to start businesses of their own. The same model still works today, but far too many people instead feel that they must plop 40-100K down on a business school education, only to find themselves entering the business world in the same positions that they would be without it.

With the cost of the college education ever rising, it makes me livid that America's youth are being told that this is the only and best path to a secure future for them and their families. The worst part of the whole scam is that for the majority of majors, nothing is learned that couldn't be self taught for free using the public library and by meeting with groups of like interested people in local coffee shops. We should not be encouraging such a ridiculous waste of money, especially not in these bleak financial times.

Someday I would like to see true leadership, leadership that challenges the dominant ideology instead of reinforcing it. It is so safe to encourage everyone to go to college; it would take real guts to suggest alternate career paths as a viable alternative. I'm talking about apprenticeships, trade schools, or simply small business loans to intelligent, yet young entrepreneurs. At the very least there should be a concerted effort made to reduce the cost of college significantly, thus allowing people to attend if they wish without breaking their backs with debt.

Perhaps, one day, this too will come to pass.