I am on a break from my other blog right now. I am having a bad case writer's block; there's just nothing nerdy to write about right now that really catches my attention. However, I do have something I need to get off my chest, and I'm sure it has occurred to several of you what the phenomenon I'm speaking on is.
I am working on a very big transition in my life. I am moving in the fall, to (guess where) Montana. Bozeman. You guys totally saw that coming. I get it. But I'm currently working on my housing application, and it is possibly the most frustrating part out of it. It largely had to do with the tech, and they were slow to send me my password, but I finally got it all done, and that is when they asked me for $200. I am a starving college student, and they are asking for two hundred dollars. Are you crazy? I paid my application fee, I will be paying thousands of dollars in tuition, room, board, books, and other add-ons, and you want to bleed me of even more of my money?
Of course, it isn't the university's fault. No, really. I am serious. We live in a society that goes beyond encouraging our youth to pursue higher education. We demand it. And in an ideal world, we would all have degrees. But that is like saying in an ideal world, everyone has blue eyes, everyone has a high IQ, everyone are dog people. There needs to be large diversity in order for our world to function. Parents, however, don't see that. They see the failings of their lives or the lives of others, and a lot of times, the biggest theme of those failures is a lack of education. College, of course, is the obvious course of action. However, I would argue that it is not always the right one. Not everyone has the software for processing a college-style education. Not everyone can sit in a classroom and handle a full load of homework. Not everyone can take in the new lifestyle of being alone and independent, and put the expectations of three to four teachers on top of it. Are they failures because of this? Hell no! But when they flunk out or drop out, or whatever they do to escape their torment, not only have they wasted their own money (or their parents money, for that matter), they've wasted the resources of the facilities and faculties of the university. This brings me to my main frustration.
Due to this short-sighted demand that ALL high school graduates participate in collegiate activity, we see an increase in drop-outs and, with it, the increase in tuition cost, room and board, and class fees, to keep the list brief. I am paying for the mistakes of Johnny Smith's parents who couldn't be bothered to ask him what he really wanted to do with his life. I am paying for his mistake of not sticking up for himself and letting himself be prodded into an education he didn't want. Remember that kid who sat in the back of class when you were studying high school algebra? The one who carved poems about darkness and bloody faces into the desk while the teacher lectured about Napoleon and the Russian Winter? Yeah, that's the kid who was being told he had to go to college, whether he wanted to or not. And because he and millions like him were too busy moping and not figuring out an alternative to this plight, I am stuck paying way more than I'm worth to become only slightly more applicable to modern day employers and their needs.
This is my plea to society, and parents in specific: ask your children what they want to do with their life. If they don't know, get them involved in their community. Get them motivated - get them employed, get them into volunteering, get them working toward a goal to integrate themselves into polite society. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, not in any situation. And for God's sake, will someone please find a way to lower tuition rates?!
