This tearful question was raised by a beautiful young college grad on arecent Fox News special on the high cost of college.
She had just graduated from an expensive four year college and was face to face with the harsh reality of being 80K in debt. “It’s so hard to go shopping with my friends, and have to shop from the clearance rack for a special dress.”
This young woman knew her parents couldn’t help pay for her college education. She consulted financial aid people, got grants, worked hard, and made loans to attend this school. She said she chose this one because a guidance counselor thought it would be a “good fit” for her.
It would be so easy to judge this young woman as self involved, shallow and not too bright, no matter how high her GPA. It would be easy to blame her parents for not teaching her the value of a dollar, or the basic economics of debt.
Yet I’d bet her pain was as real to her, as that of a poor single mother who wonders if she will EVER be able to get her teeth fixed.
So, who IS to blame for the ever growing numbers of our young people coming out of college in debt up past their eyebrows, many of whom, like this young woman?
Easy answer? Everyone who profits the most from it.
Do our kids REALLY need to be at campuses with ballrooms, giant Jacuzzis, nightclubs, and climbing walls 50 kids can climb at once, on beautifully landscaped, billion dollar campuses, where many classes are taught by TA’s while professors are off “doing research?” (Often tenured professors who can’t ever be fired no matter how little actual quality “teaching” they provide?)
This young woman was a raised in a culture that did anything BUT prepare her for life as a responsible, balanced adult. She was raised in a culture that programmed her, from birth on, to value appearances, material status, personal comfort, and enjoyment of the moment, over all else.
She is the embodiment of a child raised to adulthood wrapped in a sense of entitlement and exceptionalism.
She will pay very dearly for this, far, far beyond her current pain of having to shop at the clearance rack while her friends buy “brand names.”
All the while the fat cats elites at the top of the Education Pyramid, like the fat cats at the top of the Health Care Pyramid, and all the other Corporate/Political Pyramids, make obscene, ever increasing profits from exploiting every single human need that can possible be exploited.
Young students like this are a cash crop, carefully planted, and well tended till ripe for harvest by corporate overseers, who have managed to drug the parents into a necessary state of compliance.
So, here we have a young woman who unthinkingly assumed a debt of 80 K (plus interest) to assume a career teaching kids who have special needs, for which she will earn 30K a year. Nice.
This is NOT “America The Beautiful”
This is “America The Ugly”
