Usually by the time a high school student is looking around at colleges he or she has been subjected to many years of unrealistic, pie in the sky direct and indirect selling from teachers, other students, and guidance counselors. She has been living on her parents' dime, often with zero adult responsibilities or opportunity to find out how the world really works. This is even more likely today, when it is so hard for young people to get jobs where they would get exposure to the real world. If they volunteer at something, too often it is to polish a resume, with the sole purpose of getting into a better college. If she and her boyfriend go to a movie, they get more propaganda about how all the cool kids are going off to Princeton or Vassar, and the losers are going to be stuck in some dead end job.
She will never see a movie about what a dent in her lifestyle will be made by $100,000 in student loans, when she is an entry level banker and is forced to come back to Mom and Dad's home to survive, where Dad's rules may not be welcome but what can she do?
My parents rented apartments to students and young working people, and I remember one night in the early 60s, sitting in the garden with a couple of these girls. I asked the cuter one whät she was studying, and she answered "Implied Arts". It's been years, and I cannot remember her name, but I sure remember her course of study. She was on her way home by the end of her first semester
I hold the parents responsible, not because they caused this mess, but because they are the only experienced actors who stand to lose right along with the student when the pinch comes. They are the ones who love their daughter, and really know her.
I think we have a nation of infantile morons making decisions that used to be made by adults.
A kid should go to college on her own dime and her own borrowing, or with very clear, unambiguous limits-like you can live at home and go to local state university, or get a full ride scholarship, or get accepted into a self sustaining co-op program, etc. Only then will she ask herself, do I really know what this will get me, and will what I can from it get allow me to have a reasonably enjoyable life pretty quickly, as well as to retire the debt?
It's the decision any young person has to make when he or she attempts to buy a business, or buy tools to start an apprenticeship, or any other reasonable start to a free living, independent adult life.
Too many of our colleges and universities seem to think that their clients are like 19th century swells who went to Oxbridge to "read classics" or some such. Except those 19th century students usually did do some serious work, whereas the typical American liberal arts college teaches very little.
