College is for Dummies

A college education is thought to be a requirement for success in modern America. We swallow, hook, line, and sinker, that higher education is an unassailable good. But what if it isn’t?

• Revisionist history. You get to learn that our founding fathers were unchristian, that the American Indians were peaceful savages, and that the Earth would be better off without humans. Then you’re tested on this, and you’ll “fail” if you don’t give the right answers.

You got enough of this in high school; do you have to subject yourself to four more years of it?

• All the great entrepreneurs skipped college, or dropped out as soon as their idea went big. (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the creators of Google and Facebook, etc.) If the college experience is so inherently valuable, why would anyone leave as soon as they started making lots of money?

• A continuation of high school . . . The modern Associate of Arts degree is nothing more than a repeat of what you were supposed to be taught in high school. You aren’t gaining any “specialized” skills for your place in the workforce, nor any “life experience” that you wouldn’t be better off acquiring on your own.

• The whole idea of going to college to get a job, to “appeal” to your employers, is all that higher education stands.

• Algebra. Who ever thought that you should mix letters with numbers in math? In the computer science degree I’m working on, I have to go through five courses of this nonsense (algebra, precalculus algebra, trigonometry, calculus 1, calculus 2). All of it completely unuseful to the math problems that will pop up in my life, or any math problems that will appear in computer programming (none of the major programming languages use algebra anyway; it’s too complicated and esoteric). The only reason to learn algebra, is if you’re going to become an algebra teacher.

• No intrinsic value. Today’s college education has no value on its own. Any value it has is assigned by our society or mainstream employers, for the sake of continuing the college charade.

• It’s a job. But unlike a normal job where you’re paid to work, you work for free and you pay them. Then, you get “graded” on your “performance”? Is this for men or for mice?

• Most of the people who are going back to college, are going because they can’t find a profitable venue on their own, have given up hope, and accepted their place in this juvenille system. You’re going to be surrounded by weak people with broken spirits in most college class rooms. Are those the traits you want to rub off on you?

• Start life in debt. Who pays their student loans anyway? Even if you’re not in debt, you’ve wasted years of your life.

• An imaginary safety net. There is no safety. Safety is an illusion. When you can’t find a job and nobody wants your college degree, tell me how safe you are.

• Go to college to be home-schooled. For every hour in class, you’ll need to do two or even three hours of writing and studying on your own to get the actual work done. But when you learn on your own, you must learn what is proscribed, not what could be interesting or valuable to you.

In English, you’ll have to read garbage like Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas… nevermind all the fascinating, historic, non-fictional works you could be learning from. And then you’ll have to write essays proclaiming that everything is sexist / racist / ageist.

• Toe the party line. You’re required to use gender neutral language and other newspeak. You have to agree that global warming is real, that we need socialized healthcare, that we need to murder our young and old (abortion and euthanasia). You will be tested on this stuff, and don’t you dare step out of line if you value your grades.

• An exercise in Marxism. The purpose of the public schooling system is to indoctrinate our children in the principles of communism, under the veil of community, democracy, socialism. It’s the same thing.

Wake up. College is a monumental waste of time and energy. You’re being jerked around like a cuckold.