RECOMMENDED READING
If there is one message that America sends loudly, clearly, and consistently to our youth, it is this: Go to college. We operate our high schools as college prep academies. We offer more than $150 billion in annual public subsidies to college students. Our culture defines the campus experience as the sine qua non of a successful life, while also advertising it as a veritable amusement park entitlement: a bacchanalia that offers enrichment classes you should attend at least sometimes.
Politicians now argue with a straight face for simply waving away tens of thousands of dollars of student debt per borrower, as if financial obligations incurred in the ivory tower deserve some special status that we would never accord to the lowly car loan or home mortgage.
This message is a bad one. Yes, for people with the academic aptitude to succeed in college and the desire to pursue a career that requires the training only higher education can provide, the college pathway is the right one. But that is not most people.
Recommended Reading
College Is Not for All
American Compassās Oren Cass and Wells King discuss the reality that most young Americans miss out on commencement.
After Student-Debt Relief, America Must Move Beyond ‘College for All’
American Compass research director Wells King argues for building real alternatives to the ācollege-for-allā education pipeline in the wake of Bidenās misguided student loan forgiveness.
Bidenās Student Loan Forgiveness is Wrong. Hereās How to Handle College Debt Instead.
America has turned higher ed into a lavishly expensive sacred cow, and now weāre all footing the bill. Letās make college debt boring again, argues Oren Cass.
