I agree that the percentage they take is predatory. However I have a junior we hired right out of lambda school who was not in a position to go back to college even if they could have gotten loans. He now makes six figures and has a career he doesn’t hate.
The elitism of keeping knowledge in overpriced institutions is what needs to die. I know dudes who work construction that have deep math skills, but believe themselves idiots because schools don’t meet them half way or peak their curiosity and thus they did poorly.
The overpriced part is the problem, not college itself.
40 years ago anyone could complete a 4-year degree at nearly any college with grants and a part-time minimum wage job working 10/hrs a week.
Today you could only do the same if that job paid $70/hr.
The reason? Reagan and his racist republicans hated that college was a leveling playing field. They wanted to put a financial gate in front of college that only white upper middle class/rich students could navigate.
Unfortunately, it went too far and it’s now even too expensive for anyone but the most wealthy people.
We need to go back to subsidizing public college so anyone can work a part-time job with federal grants to complete a 4-year degree while affirming minimal grades along the way.
I disagree here. Unified courses work for only a percentage of people, a lot of (most?) people find it boring. These are the people we are failing. We teach math, history you name it in such a mundane way that even I (who is obsessed with math and history) did poorly in the day to day (but passed because I’m a good test taker.)
I wasn’t arguing about curriculum though if I were I’d suggest the reason college starts with basic skills is to allow students to learn how to manage themselves.
Once they garner that foundation, learning new skills has a known pattern.
But as importantly, the entire experience of a four year college helps our children grow into responsible adults, learn about peers they weren’t forced to go to school with, and learn to think on their own.
If our kids fail at any given step, there are plenty of adjustments to be made in this process. And that too is a critical life lesson.
