While listening to a radio talk show, a caller complains about all the "lazy" people in this country who support making colleges tuition free. The progressive host of course rejected the notion that such people are lazy and noted that a college degree is now what a high school diploma used to be s therefore, it is imperative for the continued growth and development of this country that young people have affordable access to college.
I do understand this argument; I really do, but here's some things that folks don't talk about. Why is it now that people need a bachelor's degree to secure a job that twenty years ago only required a high school diploma? Does it have anything to do with us allowing our educational system and institutions to become profit driven businesses? The main goal of education was to produce intelligent, critical thinking, self-sufficient citizens, competent in political agency who would guarantee the continued growth, advancement, greatness of the country generation after generation. Now the main goal appears to be an ever increasing profit margin. I am not just talking charter schools here. I am also talking college and higher education.
Not too long ago in this country, there was an acknowledgement that college was not for everyone, and there was no shame in that. Yes, we need doctors, lawyers, engineers, social workers, and teachers, but we also need construction workers, plumbers, sanitation workers, custodians, and grounds keepers.
I remember when I was in high school, we had what were called "shop" classes. They were usually, electrical, woodworking, ceramics, home economics, and sewing shop classes. Although the classes were gender biased, ( I remember a male student having to really put up a fight to take a home economics class) students got an opportunity to learn a little about particular trades. If a student found great interest in a particular trade, the school had would then try to place the student in an apprenticeship or part time employment in that line of work. How many high school have such offerings now? Now students are being herded like so much cattle to college, and a lifetime of student loan debt repayment, to get degrees for jobs that are not there.
Education is now a business. It is the new corporate hustle. Get everyone into college. Make everyone, even the student who wants to be a plumber, electrician, seamstress/tailor, entrepreneur, fireman, police officer, carpenter, etc., think that they MUST go to college in order to have a shot at working in these trades and professions. This message is especially directed to the poor and working class who depend on grants, scholarships, fellowships, and student loans to pay for tuition and books.
The colleges, universities, and corporations that manage the student loans and terms of repayment take the lion's share of the benefits of all the students' hard work and study.
I look at photos on social media pages of college graduations, and I wonder, where are all of the good paying jobs for these people? How much debt are they in now, and will they be able to secure a job that will pay them enough to make their student loan payments AND have their own apartment or home without living hand to mouth? Well, it ain't looking so good, and it will look good or be good for generations to come as long as education is a business. Tuition free college is not enough. Education must also be a public good, and not a business/corporate profit at any cost type hustle.
Education for profit and prison for profit are very similar in that the most vulnerable are targeted and ensnared in a cycles of slavery and serfdom: 21st Century sharecropping.
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