Here’s another reason for Americans to change their view of higher education:
Parents will have to navigate unfamiliar and difficult terrain when it comes time to pay for college this year, with student loan companies in turmoil and banks tightening their standards and raising rates on other types of borrowing.
I feel like I’m writing the same post over and over. Supply and demand. If people reduce the demand for higher education in the United States, the price will fall.
Not every needs to go — or should go — to college. Employers should not penalize people for not having a bachelor’s degree (especially when it would have been in eighteenth-century Russian literature) when the job does not necessitate one. High schools in the United States should put students on a two-track system: university or trade school. This is not a value judgement; different people have different abilities. (I don’t know how to fix anything in a car.) There is a high demand for blue-collar professionals, and many of those jobs cannot be outsourced.
If people want to study liberal arts, they should choose a state university or a foreign one because they are less expensive, and students would read the same Dante’s “Inferno” in any university. Go to an expensive school only when it is renowned in the field you want to study (like law, business, or medicine). Don’t pay nearly $50,000 per year to get the same books you would find at the library. Don’t pay nearly $50,000 for a giant social club with frat parties.
Universities have a monopoly. This is why they can charge whatever they wish: people are pressured throughout their lives into going, and the U.S. government (along with private banks) will usually be glad to loan them the money, whatever the cost. Let’s end the monopoly — and the high prices — by reducing the demand.
