If you scan the shelves of your favorite bookstore or search the internet for literature related to the current state of the university, the quality of college education, or the student loan dilemma, you will find publications with titles that may make you rethink your current view of higher education, including:
Generation Debt: Why Now Is the Worst Time To Be Young: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, No Benefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers--And How to Fight Back
The Student Loan Swindle: Why It Happened - Who Is To Blame - How the Victims Can Be Saved
Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood
“Coming of age in a post-recession world”
“More Parents Finally Get That College Is a Scam”
“The Great College Hoax”
College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students
Stealing America's Future: How For-Profit Colleges Scam Taxpayers and Ruin Students' Lives
The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back
Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education
Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream
Read through these book and article titles and it should be apparent that the state of American higher education is in shambles.
This predicament is not isolated simply to college students or those affiliated with higher education. The higher education bubble — which is about to burst — affects all facets of American economy and society, and is a key factor that will affect America’s future.
In the preface to his book, Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education, former U.S. Secretary of Education, William J. Bennett writes, “College should not be a universal commodity. As the K-12 experience concludes, each young man and woman should do serious self-evaluation with the help of others and then chart an appropriate postsecondary course. Doing this is wiser than blindly presupposing that college is a necessary good.”
While college is a great idea for some people, it is not the best option for everyone, contrary to what the college proponents would want you to believe.
If you’re going to be an engineer and you’ve gotten into a great university, then going to college may be a good idea for you, but if you are planning on going to college simply because that’s what you think people do after high school — yet you really don’t know what you want to major in, or what you want to do after you graduate — then maybe you should consider what other options you have.
Bennett continues, writing, “Each student and parent must critically evaluate the data: student-loan debt, return on investment, lifetime salary earnings, academic performance, skills training, the student’s abilities and interests, and so on. Rather than simply swallowing the conventional wisdom and following the conventional path, more students need to make realistic assessments of their abilities and finances and then decide the best path for their lives.”
There are other options out there for young people looking to start their life as adults. College is not necessarily the best option for high school graduates anymore. As Bob Dylan once sang:
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
Now is the time to explore all of the opportunities available to you in the construction industry.
Take a look around this website to discover your next step in life.
