Well, look at me. By next May, I will have had about $155,000 spent on my behalf in order to get the degree I'll be receiving. A little less than half of that, $60-70k, I'm going to be paying back.
For all that money, $155,000, what did I get out of it?
Well, for one, I'm an English major - so almost all of the stuff I've studied is, on the surface, completely useless. The only, the only class I've taken so far that will have any direct effect on my ability to earn money is a Financial Accounting class in the B-school. As a side note, that one Accounting class has proved so useful that the knowledge I gained from it is going to end up paying for the degree, easily (within the next year or two).
Really, though, it doesn't seem like spending $155k on an English degree makes sense. The side benefits only become obvious later in life, I think - I needed four years after high school to figure myself out, I needed to be around successful, competitive people, I needed to insert myself in a sort of social hierarchy, so on.
People shouldn't NEED college. You ought to be able to become an adult without paying horrendous amounts of money to some fat, overweening institution. People shouldn't use the sticker on your back windshield as a compacted evaluation of your mind and your character.
College is an advanced form of social indoctrination. It's not really about education. High school gets you ready to be separated, and then college generally separates you into whatever social echelon you're going to end up in, not to put too fine of a point on it.
My god! What college are you at? I did my English degree for under $30k (the beauty of PR is that "expensive colleges" are about $125 a credit).
I don't want to be grouped into the " more money is my reason" category. I said that college offers new opportunities that cannot be obtained otherwise. That doesn't just include making more money. If I were out to make a lot of money, I wouldn't have studied to be a teacher. What I meant was that college offered me the chance to do something I love, which is teach. You can't teach at a university without a college education. I also wanted the opportunity to read and discuss literature, grammar, research, second language learning, etc. College gave me that forum.
Another thing. Why are so many people referring to college as some sort of indoctrination? Don't think that you're forced to go to college or that you have to take your place in the social hierarchy. That kind of thinking only empowers those very people you feel are placing labels on you. "Society" didn't force me to go to college and I have no interest in finding my place in some "social hierarchy."
I went to college for ME, not society. I went to accomplish a goal I set for myself. I don't care what people say or think about me, because in the end, none of them do a damn thing for me. If you're going to make life decisions based on social opinion, then college is the least of your problems.
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