I came across this posted in the Good Post Gallery.
Most students are studying under the pall of five-figure debt, marginal job prospects at graduation, and parents whose retirement remains totally unsecured. Nearly half of them won't finish their degrees, and increasingly large shares attend "schools" that we wouldn't recognize as institutions of higher learning in the first place. Many are "non-traditional" students, which usually entails balancing one's studies with menial service sector work, child care, or elder care.
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across most walks of life in the United States, "higher education" has come to resemble nothing so much as Saturn devouring his young.
Lately I've been finding this rhetoric ringing hollow. That's not to pick on Maddy or Averroes. This sort of argument about economic decline can be found all across the internet from both left and right.
I won't bore you with some tedious story about how hard I worked and how I did everything right, but to make a long story short, my wife and I both graduated without too much student debt and make reasonable incomes. Our parents are both set to retire in the next few years and will have comfortable if somewhat modest retirements. There is also economic data out there, that would suggest that while things are not booming, the middle class is not on the major decline some make it out to be.
Am I completely in the wrong here? Or do others feel similar to me? Is "the system" working?
Poll
