The Problem with Higher Education

I remember being a kid and hearing about college and how it can change your life for the better. My teachers boasted about their days in their sororities and how we could be anything we wanted to be if we got a college degree. As a child, I thought the college admission process was slightly different from the actual procedure. When I was a child, I thought, if you had money, you just applied to college and got in, and if you were poor, you applied to scholarships and took out loans. As I grew up, I realized that college was really a club only for the “intelligent.” If you are not smart enough for our institution, you can’t join. “Thank you for expressing interest in our university. The admissions committee has given careful consideration to your application.” I read this over and over before I graduated high school. I felt like a failure; I wouldn’t be able to have the life I dreamed of without a degree.

Years went by, I worked menial-paying jobs, and I thought I should try applying to college again. When I was 24, I was finally accepted into the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; my ACT scores weren’t reviewed because I was older. My admissions test scores weren’t even that good; they mirrored what I would have done in high school. So why can’t college admissions always be like this?

Then the college admissions scandal happened, but to be honest, I wasn’t upset about it. These people did this because they knew their children wouldn’t get into college with their smarts, but their money should get them in. If college was set up the way they were doing it, college would be more economical. Just think, Felicity Huffman pays $500,000 to get her daughter into college; what if the school used that money to admit a person who couldn’t afford college. The university I went to costs about $50,000 per undergraduate; this is an overestimate. Do you know how many students would benefit from that “donation”? The problem is that the college is greedy; they put it to sports and frivolous things that don’t help the students. Scholarships are excellent, but if you don’t have a talent that merits that award, you will owe thousands and thousands of dollars just to get a higher education.

The other problem is that even if you get that degree, if you didn’t go to college for something that has value to society, you wasted your money and time. College is a fantastic experience, but a lot of the stuff you’re going to learn has no actual use in society. After working in offices and sitting in board meetings before I went to college, listening to children who just graduated high school discusses “the world” and “society” made me laugh. I would audibly laugh at them. College gives you this ideal, this feeling that you have your choice of fantastic, successful futures. You can be an archaeologist, the best actor, the next Sigmund Freud, or the next Tom Brokaw. These are pipe dreams that college gives you when what they should do is give you a list of the most sought-after careers. Goals are admirable, and “you should never give up on your dreams,” but you should also be able to pay for your next meal.

I’m not saying that no one should go to college; on the contrary, I’m saying that everyone should have the opportunity to go to college. Let the ultra-rich pay for their children to go to college; the colleges will get more money, giving other people the chance to go to college without worrying about the cost. If their children drop out of college, more room for people who deserve it. If you disagree, that’s fine, don’t @ me.