Education Is a Consumer Item

Is college a good investment? More and more, the answer to this question is no. You have CEOs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who are college dropouts. Meanwhile, you have college graduates leaving school with a sheepskin and no job prospects and no way to pay off their staggering student loan debts. Why would anyone bother? And would it help if you majored in something marketable? The reality is that education is a consumer item not an investment.

Let's get one point established here at the outset. Education is free. Everything I learned in college and more can be had with a library card. I am a total fan of Good Will Hunting for pointing out this truth. If you have the time, you can become a very learned individual. The internet just allows you to do it at home in your underwear.

The second point is that education is continuous. What good is a degree if you stop reading? The reality is that most college grads do just this. They stop learning even though the continuing education is free. Why do they do this? Why do they not continue developing their intellectual abilities and their knowledge? The irony is that the people who dropped out of college are precisely the ones who do this. But I digress. . .

With education being so cheap and plentiful, what is it that college students are paying for? The answer to that is simple. They are paying for a status symbol. They are paying for a credential to impress other people in much the same way that someone would purchase a luxury automobile, an Armani suit, or a diamond studded cock ring. But how has productive capability increased as a result of that sheepskin? It hasn't. A degree has social cache, but it means nothing if it doesn't result in increased earnings for an employer. Meanwhile, a high school dropout who takes an interest in computer programming is able to find a good paying job where the Ive League grad struggles. This is because the dropout has something that is productive.

Employers don't need your knowledge so much as your skills. What can you do? What can you make? What can you fix? 90% of the majors offered by a typical college do not answer these questions. We can scoff at the religious studies major, but the hard core mathematics major is not any better off. I've heard too many business majors tell me their degrees were a joke, and I have worked with engineering majors who didn't do anything remotely related to engineering.

I don't want to discredit education as having no value. It does have value. It just has no value to anyone else but you. I was reminded of this after hearing a recent profile of actor James Franco who is a voracious reader, holds various degrees, and is pursuing a Ph.D. This is the indulgence of someone with a lot of money and the time. But you can accomplish the equivalent in your spare time minus the sheepskin. But in the end, that Ph.D. is about as useful as Angelina Jolie's pilot's license. It makes them better people, but it doesn't result in being more employable or necessarily more productive.

Education is a consumer item in much the same way that learning aikido, taking a cooking class, or learning guitar are consumer items. But no one buys an education in the same way they purchase aikido lessons. Students are notorious for ditching class or finding easy graders or tolerating being taught by a grad student. They want the best education and the best credential and the best grades, but they don't give a shit about the education itself. Diploma mills are derided for not offering a real education but just a piece of paper. How is this any different from what real universities do today? We have rampant cheating, grade inflation, and professors who could give a shit if their students learn anything. Higher ed is a fucking joke.

Where do these shitheads hope to end up? The answer to that is simple--the bullshit worlds of corporate middle management, government bureaucracies, and academic administration. In short, these are parasites in training. They don't need a real value in education because they are not going to produce anything of real value. They are going to play office politics as a career and collect a pension one day. This is where a knowledge of history and Machiavelli comes in handy.

In politics, one's resume is more important than one's skills. I think of this every time Dr. House ridicules Cuddy for not being a real doctor. This is why so many in the parasite class come across as completely fake and insincere. They do not lead. They avoid blame. At the end of the day, they don't point to what they've done. They simply say it wasn't their fault and pat themselves on the back for surviving. And this is good how?

This is what the world needs right now:

--Innovative thinkers who dream up new products and services or better ways to make and provide those products and services

--Hard working men and women to provide these products and services

The reality is that we have a shortage of both of these classes. They are hamstrung by you guessed it--the parasites. We have replaced the real with the fake and now the fake is failing.

Currently, the public sector is growing both in numbers and salaries while the private sector is declining. University administrations are growing while faculty remains static and tuition rates skyrocket. Among the business world, blue collar workers are turned out while their bosses remain employed and claim "record" profits. You do not make profits by decimating productive capacity. It is all bullshit. This is the parasite class in charge milking the host of its last drop of blood. When the host dies, the parasites die, and it will come to that.

But there are glimmers of hope. Credit bureaus are giving people who lost their homes a "pass" on the foreclosures. People are turning away from high priced colleges to online alternatives, apprenticeships, and the trades. And more and more Americans are becoming pissed off at the government. It is a tidal wave of change and the parasite class doesn't see it yet. But I see it.

Prosoperity comes from hard work and thrift. It always has and always will. The "investment" of higher education is a shortcut to prosperity except it isn't panning out for the graduates. The result is a new proletariat that serves lattes and quotes Sartre.

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