College Students: The New Indentured Class?

Are college students and graduates perhaps the new members of the indentured servitude class?  It seems that while once college was celebrated for creating riches for those who enrolled, the type of thinking and debt that college bestows upon one is making people become less individualized, and instead, part of a mass of people who are being left behind. 

A new article by the New York Times states that many individuals are now starting to say no to college.  Many of these individuals are becoming quite wealthy and living their life according to their own terms.  Instead of working through six years of education for a degree in which they can rely on other individuals for a paycheck and to be fed, they are starting their own businesses and going out on their own.

I often have questioned the point of educating oneself in order to maybe be good enough to land a job in which you can be someone's slave.  And that person is going to reap the rewards for your labor.  You will be a small percentage of it.  And that's if you are lucky.  You may not even get the job in the first place.  In fact, you may only have debt to show for it! 

What is the point of college?

While it is important to learn and open your mind, in today's modern world that can be done easily.  Travel is cheaper than ever before.  One can use the internet to find information on any subject.  Books and information is plentiful.  College has become a way for people to sell kids a product.  Textbooks are mass produced in a "one size fits all" form.  You are told that in order to learn something you have to read the book that the teacher assigns.  No longer do colleges give students free reign to research a subject on their own.  Now it's all about a textbook that may cost near $100 or more for.  And all that is paid for with student loans, creating a new indentured servitude class that will have to spend years and even decades paying it off.

Sadly, the parents of the current generation are still telling their children that college is the "golden ticket."   

"The idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Feeling squeezed by a sagging job market and mounting student debt, a groundswell of university-age heretics are pledging allegiance to new groups like UnCollege, dedicated to “hacking” higher education. Inspired by billionaire role models, and empowered by online college courses, they consider themselves a D.I.Y. vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing maverick."

Those who do not go to college are told that they will meet failure in today's modern society.  However, skills are now easier than ever to learn.  One can learn a programming language on their own or over the internet for free.  One can learn how to start a business without amassing huge amounts of debt through the internet and community programs that are often offered free of charge.

"Even the staunchest critics of college concede that a diploma is still necessary for many professions — law and medicine, clearly, and in many cases, for a Fortune 500 executive, too. But that’s the point: how many more lawyers and middle managers do we need?

“College is training for managerial work, and the economy doesn’t need that many managers,” said Michael Ellsberg, the author of “The Education of Millionaires: Everything You Won’t Learn In College About How to Be Successful.”"

 College is teaching many people to think a certain way.  A type of "group think" in which new and novel ideas are often seen as no-good or even threatening.  Throughout history a hallmark of the indentured class was that they all were taught to think alike. 

"“Here in Silicon Valley, it’s almost a badge of honor,” said Mick Hagen, 28, who dropped out of Princeton in 2006 and moved to San Francisco, where he started Undrip, a mobile app. He is now recruiting from the undergraduate ranks, he said, which is becoming a trend among other tech companies, too. In his view, dropouts are freethinkers, risk-takers. They have not been tainted by groupthink."

We have been told all our lives that in order to be successful and to have a good life we need to live a certain lifestyle.  College was an integral part to that life.  Other ingredients for a perfect life include getting married, buying a house, and having children.   If you do not do all of those things, many think that they have failed.  Yet, there is no reason why a person should feel compelled to do any of those things.

I have been conditioned, like many individuals, to see getting into the elite school as a mark of honor.  The ultimate goal in one's young life.  Many young people are force fed the idea that getting into an Ivy League school is the greatest achievement they can attain before adulthood.  They spend their youth trying to learn methods for beating the SATs and other standardized tests.  They are told that once they get into the Ivy League, their life will be perfect.  Many don't make it, and lament that forever.  Others get into the Ivy League and their reward is the chance to make another person richer with bouts of unemployment thrown in for good measure.

And there are those who think somewhat different than the masses.  Throughout history those who have thought different have received resistance, but in the end, history has shown them as trendsetters.  Many parents scoff at the idea of a child doing something so radical as not going to college or dropping out.  If a child goes to college, however, the parent is proud, proud that their child will one day be another puppet for society.  The child will become an adult, hopefully lucky enough to work towards a home and maintain a family, dodging unemployment and bankruptcy in order to maintain the material possessions that are thrust upon him/her via advertising and media.  As a student who was fed student loans and credit cards during college, he/she will battle a mountain of debt that maybe can be discharged in thirty years.  Yet the parents of this young person will fight tooth and nail to make sure the child goes along with what society has told him/her was the ideal life.

Many college graduates think that they are smarter than the rest of society due to a piece of paper that hangs on their wall.  They bought into the commercials and the media all their life.  Now they have the diploma and the debt to show for it.  Their 'reward' is perhaps psychological.  To think about the full implications of the time they spent in their youth, while others created something without amassing debt that can not be discharged in bankruptcy, is too much.

Consider the fact that entrepreneurial individuals can discharge their debt if their business does not work as planned, a business that has a possible upside of millions of dollars, and compare that to the fact that a person can not discharge a student loan, something that makes a person possibly good enough to work for the business creator.  Consider the fact that your degree will likely make it so that you must work for another individual for the rest of your life, until you can retire. 

College has taught me that their are winners and losers in life.  When put in a room with other people, some who obviously have a wealthy background, I have often felt that I was inadequate.  When graded on my performance I was reminded that sometimes risks are not worth taking.  However, the entrepreneur constantly tells him/herself that the risks are worth taking, because the individual is good enough to take risks.  Instead of telling themselves that a risk is too dangerous, or reminding one's self that they could fail, the entrepreneur realizes that the risk is an integral part to success.  The entrepreneur will take the risk.  Not going to college is seen to many as a risk.  Many won't take it.  And many who don't are not entrepreneurs.  If some of the intelligent people that succeeded and excelled in college would have went the other route, and used their creativity for themselves, they would have perhaps had great success.