But that is only one skill for which attending college is unnecessary.
So why are so many parents still hellbent on sending their kids to college, and why are so many young people determined to attend? Isn't a college education good for something? Is it a complete waste?
I would be the first to champion a college education in 2010 if college students arrived from high schools where they had mastered basic academic skills, if they were passionately in love with learning for the sake of learning, and if they understood what it means to be solely responsible for one's own education-beginning with: If you study, you are likely to pass or do well, and if you don't study, you probably won't pass, and you'll do poorly. But in the first decade of the 21st century, these are not the qualities with which the majority of students embark on the journey of so-called higher education.
Like owning one's own home, like the three-car garage, like the burgeoning professional career, like the nuclear family with its 2.6 children, like the 401K and something called "retirement", a college education has been for at least six decades, an integral part of the American dream. That dream and all of the components of it which I have just enumerated is now being embalmed in the funeral parlor of industrial civilization's collapse.
In a civilization based on endless growth accomplished through endless debt, the masters of the fraudulent financial universe realized very quickly that the American dream could be a debt-dream which would permanently enslave the dreamers and increase their own stock portfolios. Along with their sub-prime, "sub-slime" NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) home loans, they designed a system in which students in an economy that the masters were helping obliterate could rack up tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt from which they could never escape until it was paid off.
Moreover, the entire college education scheme fulfilled their game plan even further because they had successfully turned colleges and universities into corporations in which students were not trained to think critically but to saunter sycophantically through four years of indoctrination in how to become a corporate citizen, how to do whatever it takes to achieve the American-debt dream, and how to graduate to a lifelong career of raping, pillaging, and plundering the earth.
And now that unemployment is heading toward levels unseen since the Great Depression, American debt-dreamers can no longer pay mortgages or continue making student loan payments. One of my favorite headlines regarding the latter appeared in May: "Class of 2010 set to flood U.S. job market as '09 graduates wait tables."
Whereas a college education was once a ticket to gainful employment shortly after discarding the cap and gown, not only is there a dearth of professional jobs, but many graduates remain as devoid of intellectual acumen as they were upon entering college. Today's Business Insider online carries a story "This Manufacturer Can't Find 100 Unemployed Americans With Basic Math Skills to Hire." The story opens with: "Here's the ugly side of the U.S. unemployment problem that would be political suicide for a politician to highlight. Current U.S. unemployment isn't just about a lack of job creation from companies, outsourcing, or a lack of trade protections. Sometimes it's just due to a lack of skills on the part of Americans."
Yesterday in his blog, Doug Casey opined that going to college no longer serves any purpose unless one attends an Ivy League school in which social and professional connections can be established which will stand one in good stead in the Second Great Depression. Casey argues that travel is one of the best ways to become educated, and he refers readers to The Teaching Company which offers CD and DVD courses by some of the most gifted scholars-courses which one can take at one's own pace for the sake of learning particular skills or bodies of knowledge. However, I would add that if one is going to travel, one should do it now while that option is still available, and one should bear in mind that travel does not necessarily mean journeying to exotic places. One of the most profound learning experiences of my life was spending one year in Southeastern Ohio near the Amish community there and working closely with members of the community.
At Post Peak Living, company president Andre Angelantoni offers online courses including "The Uncrash Course" for understanding and preparing for intensifying stages of the Long Emergency. Also available is a course on "Post-Peak Livelihoods" with Sarah Edwards, Ph.D. and Paul Edwards, J.D.
In 2006 I was deeply moved by Anya Kamenetz's first book Generation Debt. At that time I was in the throes of college teaching and watched everything the author articulated in her book played out with my then-current students before and after their graduation. Anya more than anyone else at that time examined the student loan hell that most college students had unknowingly signed up for or perhaps signed up for but did not want to think about until they were forced to, post-graduation. More recently Anya has authored DIYU (Do It Yourself University): Edpunks, Edupreneurs, and The Coming Transformation of Higher Education. Anya writes optimistically about revolutionary new forms of higher education that will essentially be about students educating themselves for their own reasons, not necessarily to acquire a degree or traditional employment. Regardless of how many of Kamenetz's projections become future reality, one thing is certain: In a post-industrial world, DIY will be the modus operandi for most human activity.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
1
