Time and time again, I’ve seen some mediocre plebe taking to social media to whine about college. How they ended up with jobs don’t pay enough to pay off their student loans. They blame society or their parents with the same ole line, “They told us if we wanted to get paid well, we had to go to college”. No, the stats show that average workers with college degrees have higher earning potential than workers high school diplomas. What a lot of you dipshits didn’t do was research which degrees had the better earning potential nor did you consider trades skills as a viable option. You were clout chasing degrees for social status & in some cases you just had to go to “the best schools”. Now look at you… holding down average jobs with average pay. Meanwhile those blue collar kids you used to look down upon are tradesmen who charge you $80/hr to fix your plumbing or repair your car. And the nerds are in STEM careers where they get paid a grip to advance science & tech to the next level.
College isn’t a place to “find yourself”, it’s a place to acquire & hone your skills for your chosen career. It’s also where you build a network of professional peers. You didn’t really have a plan for college nor knew what the fuck you wanted to do in life. You didn’t academically prepare yourselves to the point of qualifying for merit scholarships or grants. You didn’t research careers and what they pay. You didn’t research what degrees and/or certifications were needed for your careers. You didn’t research which programs would return the best R.O.I. for your level of academic preparedness. Let’s face it, a lot of y’all were NOT built for college and you lied to yourselves about it.
Granted, college has gotten more expensive. But a large part of that has to do with how the GOP has been attacking education funding over the past four decades. The most heinous attacks is how many state governments are decades & billions of dollars in arrears in matching Land-grant funds to public HBCUs. All while the cost of living & operating costs were rising. To close the shortfall, colleges had to raise tuition. But there are billions in scholarships & grants that are out there. A disturbing amount of which goes unclaimed every year. But I’ll save the whole student loan thing for another post.
I’m not buying that “We were just irrational teenagers” bullshit either. There are generations of teens who had plans, saw college was needed, found out what was needed to finance it, executed their plans, and have had fruitful adult careers. Of course are many others who didn’t as well. But still…where the fuck did you drop the ball? Especially you digital natives who have had information at your finger tips for over 2 decades. It’s not like you had to go to a physical library or send off for info to be sent to you via snail mail. You were taking college too lightly and was throwing pasta at the wall. You thought you were too good for community colleges when those were the schools you were really qualified to attend. You got to those four year college and the academic rigors were on a whole other level that you weren’t prepared for. You didn’t build a decent peer network nor did you chose in demand majors that pay well. All your misery is of your own making from your haphazard career management. Colleges didn’t scam you, you scammed yourself into overestimating your abilities.