Ron Hart: College not for all

Published 11:27 am Thursday, August 6, 2009

The experience of past service on a state Board of Regents and current service on two college boards has led me to conclude that higher education for everyone is an increasingly dubious presupposition.

Colleges have become so expensive and so self-absorbed as to render them almost ineffective. They are no longer the best way to transition an adolescent from high school to adulthood. They are more about liberal indoctrination than education, and any time liberals and politicians are involved, costs skyrocket. In my (never-so-humble) opinion, most higher education today is state-sponsored, socialist brainwashing — teaching “diversity” and “acceptance” and “non-judgmental attitudes” instead of critical thinking and (non-revisionist) history and the sciences.

Growing up in a small town, I was forbidden by my parents from drinking, drugs and wild, indiscriminate sex. But I went away to college anyway.

Before I left for college, my mom told me not to have pre-marital sex. I remember thinking that if I had no intention of marrying the girl, it would not be pre-marital sex. I spent the entirety of my college days in technical compliance with my mother’s wishes.

Mostly, college warehouses a boy for four to six years while he attempts to grow up. It allows girls to watch this painfully awkward evolution and presents them with the opportunity to marry the one boy in 20 who actually might mature some day.

My college education cost $280 per semester, and I worked part-time to pay that. It was a party school; instead of tuition, there was a cover charge. You paid the $280 and they stamped your hand for the semester. It was a bargain in the 1980s and it had value, but then so did GM stock.

The days of reasonable tuition costs are long gone. The cost of a four-year college education has more than doubled during a period when middle-class incomes have risen only 10 percent. Worse, those tuition costs are not the true sticker price of a taxpayer-subsidized education. Even if college were a value proposition for kids, inane colleges known for their spendthrift manner have spiraled higher education costs even further out of the normal person’s reach.

Government has too much influence on funding and controlling colleges, and yet Obama wants more. Much as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enticed those who could not afford a house into buying one anyway, Sallie Mae sells the crack cocaine of college justification through easy to get, government-backed, student loans. So, many kids end up with too little true education and too much debt to show for it. The only real-life lesson they learn in college might be to beware of government promises and the easy money lenders. Oh yeah, they also learn “Beer on whisky, might risky — whisky on beer, never fear.”

My son is wrestling with the question of whether college makes sense. Useless liberal majors (Women’s Studies, Community Empowerment), a dumbed-down curriculum (some colleges are so easy that if you drive through campus slowly enough, they will give you a degree), and the “everyone gets a B” mentality of colleges today make me tend to agree with him. With his Stephen Wright-like wit, my son says he might pursue a double major, Psychology and Reverse Psychology, just to hedge his bets.

What percentage of today’s kids would be in college were it not for the article of faith that college is an imperative, thus encouraging the pushing of their parents and of society? How much are they really learning? Why not view the military as a viable alternative?

I told my son to look at college from a buyer’s perspective and to consider how our Founding Fathers got their educations. I suggested that he find subjects he felt he would need and which would be of value, like statistics, accounting, computer science or even Spanish (given the demographic trend of our workforce). Then he should just sign up for those classes about which he really cares. “Make your own major in subjects that truly interest you,” I said.

The fact that the Ivy League-educated types now in charge of our government cannot figure out that socialism and deficit spending will be the death of our once independent country speaks giant volumes about the value of “higher education.” Remember, Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College — barely.