Some say debt aversion is a bad thing. Maybe it is, “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and all. I was born in the mid-1960s, but my parents were late bloomers, reproduction-wise, so I’m a demographic oddity for my age in being only one generation removed from the Great Depression.
My parents were also low-achieving enough that I qualified for a Pell Grant, and Work Study. Do those programs even still exist? Had I not qualified for non-repayable financial aid, I’m pretty sure that either I would not have gone to college (most likely) or limited myself to majors that were directly applicable/marketable at BS-level (accounting, nursing, engineering, etc.) As it is I majored in math, but with a very broad-based selection of electives. I also chose challenging courses over being grade motivated, which may be the main reason I have no degrees beyond the BS degree. As it turns out I’m even more of an underachiever than my parents, career-wise, so I can’t say with a straight face that I’ve given the taxpayers a return on their investment by breaking out of the 15% tax bracket.
Perhaps we were wrong, as a society, to challenge the conventional wisdom that learning for its own sake is a privilege of the leisure class. Perhaps it is good that the university as we know it is seeing its business model break down and its student body siphoned off by disruptive innovators. Academic careers have become a sort of refuge for people with attitudes that simply don’t fly in a corporate setting, so maybe it is best that a seizable majority of youths should be gently prodded in the direction of practical skills training instead of ivory tower nonsense.
Leave a Reply