Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"Higher" Education

Wow, long time no post.  Been workin my tail off on QuickPix (an iphone app), which you can learn more about here.

In any case, I had to take a moment to talk about college in this country.  It's driving me nuts.

First, as a culture, we strongly encourage, even coerce, nearly every high school graduate in America to run off and attend college immediately after high school.  For many, this means moving out of the house, amassing large student and consumer debt, and becoming somehow "educated" by the academic machinery of America.  Lessons include: binge drinking, drug use, promiscuity, athletics and a few classes sprinkled in between for good measure (and to justify the price of admission).

In these times, few college graduates are able to find jobs.  It's no wonder.  The jobs that most grads are qualified for range from frat party coordinator to entry-level drug dealer all the way up to professional alcoholic and surf bum.  There are exceptions, of course, there always are. . . .

To top it all off, upon leaving college many students are left with tens of thousands of dollars in debt with no means to repay.  Even if they DO get a job - a GOOD job - right out of the gate they start on the American treadmill of life:  Go to work to repay a bank loan (or 6).  Don't forget you'll need a new car to get to that job, and we know just the bank to loan you the money!

College is a good investment in your future.  Just ask the banks (with their record profits) and the Universities (with their skyrocketing revenues and double-digit annual increases).  College grads make more money than non-grads.  Look at the research!

So who does the research?  The same people doing virtually all of the research in this country - the Universities.  Enlightened self-interest?  You be the judge.

The most valuable lesson to be taught in this country is fiscal responsibility.  Millions are made by the likes of Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki and countless other financial geniuses (no offense - I've read them all).  Their message is overwhelmingly the same:  That all debt is bad and that to be free, one must cast off the shackles of debt.

So what do we teach our kids?  At age 18, we show them the enlightened path that we know best as a country:  Borrow money you don't have to invest in something that you can't afford the risk of investing in.  We do it with everything - real estate, transportation, stocks, bonds, options, and now "education".  It's the American Way.  Might as well get started as soon as possible.

30 years later, with a mountain of debt, "investments" tied up in inaccessible or prohibitively expensive accounts (IRA/401k), and virtually no asset base, we, as adults, turn to the financial experts.  What do we want to know?  How we can get get OUT from under the debt we've accumulated and not work until the day we die.  We call it "retirement", and less and less of us have any real hope of getting there anytime soon.

What are we teaching our kids by saddling them with debt before they even get their first job?  Our culture of debt-financing and unrealistic expectations are a major contributor to so many of our cultural problems.  It nearly defines the difference between rich and poor, income disparity, the drain on our public treasury.  If the good, hard-working people of this country could stop buying shit they can't afford with money they don't have, perhaps they would save a buck or two, or even invest in income-producing assets over the course of their working lives.  Such a thing could lead to the unthinkable:  reduced reliance on government-mismanaged systems like Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid.

The good news is that we're all on the same page.  The government does it, most Americans do it, and we teach it to our kids.  That many people just can't be wrong . . . can they?