Should College be a Job Training Camp? Can it be?

Most college educations do not prepare students very well for the job market, or even the realities of living as self-supporting adults.  Should college be more vocational?  Can it be?

One argument raised by lefties about the current college situation is that learning for learning's sake is a laudable goal, and that college should not be a vocational training camp.   There is a nugget of truth to this, as you never know in life what you will and won't need to know later in life, and thus learning things that don't directly seem applicable to your future is not a waste of time.

But the funny thing is, the same lefties who proclaim that college should be all about ivory tower study are the first to proclaim that studying math is pointless, as "you don't need to know this stuff in real life!"

But of course, the opposite it actually true.  Basic mathematics, and by that I mean fractions, percentages, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, and probability are something that everyone will need to know in life, as they will be confronted with financial (and political) questions throughout their lives that require them to know these basic concepts - if they are to succeed in life.   Similarly, a solid financial education is seldom taught in high school or college, and yet everyone needs to know this sort of thing if they are to succeed.

Sadly, these sorts of "hard" courses are often the first to be chucked in the name of "you don't need to know that in real life".   Meanwhile, the University requires everyone to take a course in diversity studies or gender equality.   And increasingly, the new "majors" offered at Universities are bordering on the bizarre.   I am not sure you need a college degree in "Queer studies" to really understand what it means to be gay - or that such a degree is going to help you at all in life.   But increasingly, more and more colleges are offering "soft" degrees like this, in feel-good studies that require little in the way of real hard work, and offer nothing in return to the student.

But getting back to the topic at hand, should colleges be vocational training grounds?   It is an interesting question and the history of colleges and universities is part of the equation.    When you graduate from college, you are expected to go and find a job, start your adult life, be self-supporting, and find a mate and settle down (or do whatever it is your life is to be about).  In that regard, college is the last thing you do in school before finding a job, so one would think it should at least prepare you in some regard for the world of employment. 

College is that final transition between the world of being some goofy teenager and being a responsible adult.   And a lot of young people struggle with this transition - it is a hard one.  It is the age where mental illnesses manifest themselves, in part, I believe, because kids struggle to make that change from snot-nosed high-school brat to young executive or businessperson.   Part of all of us says, "Gee, how could I ever do that?" - not realizing that everyone else has the same anxieties. 

College should be grooming you for a world where you are expected to show up on time, get your work done, and be respectful and yes, even obedient.  Maybe in the past, college taught this sort of thing - at least the part about showing up on time, doing your work, and whatnot - even if it didn't provide vo-tech training.

Today, however, it seems that college teaches anti-employment - that you are "entitled" to certain things in life, such as safe spaces and freedom from unwanted ideas or hurt feelings.   You are entitled to tap at your smart phone while the professor is teaching.   You have a right to a litany of things, which the college is obligated to provide.   But of course, you are paying the college and they are not paying you, so in a way this makes "sense", particularly today when a declining student body base means that everyone who applies can go to college, and moreover, the colleges have to attract people to stay in business.

Yes, let's talk about that.   Believe it or not, in not-too-distant past, if you didn't have good grades and good SAT scores, you couldn't go to college.   No college would take you, no matter how much money you had.   Well, if you Dad went to the school and endowed a new building, I suppose they might take you.  But some middle-class kid with shitty grades wasn't going to college, period.   It was kind of an exclusive thing.

That changed, starting in the 1960's.  Community colleges sprung up, which accepted just about everyone with a pulse and a checkbook.   When I was graduating from High School, I received an "acceptance" notice from the University of Miami.   It was an interesting letter, as I had never applied to that institution.   These "acceptance" letters back then were mass-mailed out to graduating seniors.   I hear they have changed their "admissions" policy (which back then was the same as the admissions policies on an airline - you pay, you get on the plane).   But it signaled that something new was happening to colleges.

No longer were colleges these sacrosanct institutes of "higher learning" but instead businesses that made money by putting butts in the seats and warm bodies in the dormitories.  Syracuse University, my alma mater is one of those schools where you can go if your grades are not the best, but your parents make a shitload of money.  Don't get me wrong, we had a lot of smart students there.  And a lot of dumb ones, too.   And that's why they were happy to give me a small scholarship when I got good grades - they needed to bring up the average a bit.

Today, this process has accelerated.  As I noted before, the demographics for colleges are frightening.   High School graduating classes are getting smaller, and yet college enrollments are up.  Colleges now compete with each other by building climbing walls in the student center or offering dorm room suites that rival hotels.   College has turned into a customer model and indeed, it has become more of an extended-stay four-year hotel than an institute of higher learning.

Many lefties lament that in the "olden days" a college degree was a guarantee of a good job, and yet today, it is a guarantee of nothing, other than a car-loan-sized debt.   But what the lefties are pining for is, of course, the golden age of elitism.   Yes, in the 1940's or 1950's you could get a degree in Liberal Arts and then get a good job in "business".    Back then, going to college, as I noted, meant you were unique.  It meant you had top grades and it meant you were smart.  Getting into college was hard, the studying was hard, graduating was hard.

It also meant you came from money, you were white (likely Protestant), you were male, and from a certain social class.  Yes, back then, the secret fraternity handshake did carry some meaning.   Social connections meant more back then, in an era when "white privilege" really and truly existed.

And in fact, our entire society was structured that way.   The sons (not daughters) of the ruling elite (again, white, mostly Protestant) went to college and became part of management of a company.   And the demarcation between management and labor was a hard line.   

The same was (and is) true for the military - although the racial and gender limits have been erased.   You got accepted to West Point, Annapolis, or the Air Force Academy, and if you graduated, you became an Officer, ready to lead men you've largely never met or mingled with.  And as in industry, often the men you were leading would have more experience than you did.  And of course, "fraternizing" with the elisited men is as frowned upon as is paling around with the hourly workers at the plant.

(And yes, it is possible to "work your way up through the ranks" of a corporation or the military and make that jump from hourly to salary, from enlisted to Officer, but you will always be marked as such and your career opportunities will be limited).

But a lot has changed since those days.  Maybe the military hasn't changed too much in that regard, but the old-school model of "being from the right family" and "getting a good (liberal arts) education" is no longer a recipe for success, but disaster.   And this is probably another aspect as to why many middle-class families are sliding down the economic ladder.  The rules have changed and no one told them about it.

Of course, you can look at this as a long-term trend.   Read any of the novels of Louis Auchincloss or The Magnificent Ambersons - all set at the turn of the Century (early 1900's) when a transition occurred between the "old money" families who largely inherited their wealth and the "new money" who made new fortunes in this new industrial age.   No one told the old money the rules had changed, and slowly, over generations, their wealth dissipated.

Similarly, today, the people making the new money in our economy are the ones who can latch onto this new era of technology and online living.   You needn't be a coder or a computer engineer, but you have to be able to go where the money is.  And the answers of the past are not working anymore.

But getting back to college as vocational training, should it be and can it be?   Clearly, something will be lost if we turn colleges into vocational training grounds - focused on particularly careers or jobs.   Not only that, colleges really can't provide job training as they really have no experience in the job world.   Your learned professor took a job at the University likely because he couldn't hack it in the real world.  Those who can't do, teach.

In Engineering school, we were told, they didn't try to teach us Engineering, but to think like an Engineer.   Few of my professors were actually practicing in their field, developing new designs or theories for semiconductor devices.  The few who were, struggled to find time to teach class and to do research.  It is nearly impossible to do both.   What they could do, is teach you the basics, teach you how to analyze things, and then send you out into the world to create the next generation of technology.

In a way, it is no different than English Lit.   The professor probably isn't writing the Next Great American Novel, but odds are someone in your class just might.   He can't tell you how to write that novel, only how to think like a writer.

In Law School, it was the same bit.   They couldn't teach us all the law on the books.   We had to learn that in practice - and make new law as part of our jobs.   Instead, they taught us how to think like lawyers and with that skill we would learn the job.

There are a few degrees in College, however, that lead directly to jobs with the same title.   Engineering, Law, Medicine, Nursing, and so forth, all lead to jobs with the same name.  And in most instances, these courses of study are either available with - or require - hands-on training in the corresponding field.

Other majors may have related jobs with similar names - but few of such jobs are available in the field, or if they are, they are academic in nature.  For example, if you are going to get a degree in "Anthropology" you aren't going to graduate and then put on an Indiana Jones hat and go to Borneo and study primitive cultures for National Geographic.   Well, a few might.  But colleges graduate more in the field than there are jobs.   Maybe a few more go on to graduate study and then become professors in the same field they studied in (and the circle is unbroken).  But most go on to do "other things" in life, and their college experience is, well, not worthless, but perhaps worth less.

And please, bear in mind that not all technical degrees are equivalent in value, in terms of the job market.  There are perfectly useless technical degrees that sound all science-y, but lead nowhere. An undergraduate degree in Physics, for example, really is of no use to the job-seeker.   No one is hiring a "Physicist" with just a B.S. in Physics.   With a graduate degree, you could become a Physics teacher (and the circle is unbroken) or if you went for a PhD, maybe you could become a researcher and work on the Large Hadron Collider or study the universe.   But a mere undergraduate degree is only a stepping-stone.

Similarly, an undergraduate degree in "Mathematics" is pretty worthless, but a graduate degree might get your foot in the door with the NSA or qualify you to teach (and there is a shortage of teachers in this area).

There is a difference between "research" and "Engineering" as the latter is usually applied to specific problem-solving studies and product design.   Time was, a lot of American companies had "research" divisions that did general (as opposed to applied) research.  When I worked at the Very Large Air Conditioning Company, we had a general research division, full of "egghead" PhD's who had very nice offices and laboratories where they would study whatever wild idea came into their head.   The idea was, maybe 1% of this would amount to anything, but that 1% could be the next revolution in technology.

That's all gone now - not a sign of increasing commercialism or anything like that, but a sign of the maturity of an industry where wild advances are replaced with incremental ones.  Also a sign that new advances come from outside sources and not so much of in-house research.   A friend of mine's Dad was one of the researchers there.  He was a bit of an eccentric, and I don't recall in his entire career that he invented anything of use to the company whatsoever.

But I digress, once again.

Getting back to the point, should colleges be vocational training centers?  A lot of lefties would argue that is "crass and commercial" and that college should impart wisdom and knowledge and not "how to" instructional videos.  And in part, I would have to agree with that.   Because as I noted above, you never know how what you learn will apply later in life.   I studied French in school.   One might argue that was a waste of time.   But it has come in handy on more than one occasion (for example, when visiting France) and also in understanding other languages (such as Spanish).   Maybe I didn't learn to speak French very well, but I learned more about language in the process, and yes, it enriched my life.

And that is another aspect of generalized learning.   When you study different things, you do learn what you are good at, what interests you and what you suck at and what you hate.   I love music, but I don't have the natural talent for it or the patience to practice an instrument.   That didn't stop me from studying two instruments and torturing some young music teachers.   Learning for learning's sake can be useful if it tells you not only what you are good at, but what you are bad at.   Learning for the sake of fun, on the other hand, is probably not as useful.

Sadly, Language, like Math, is one of those things that is more and more "optional" on the high school and college curriculum.   I recently had dinner with some nice folks from Italy and Sweden.   They both spoke at least three languages (including English, very well).   And we talked about why Americans can barely speak their own.  To them, we appear to be morons, which puzzles them, as after all, our country is such an economic powerhouse.  How did the idiots end up running the planet?   The whole Trump thing has them flummoxed.

And maybe right there is the answer.   We can't change Colleges and Universities.  The Dean is more concerned about appeasing the BLM folks so he doesn't lose his job.  He wants his perks and retirement and to hang on for a few more years until he can pull the ripcord on the golden parachute.  Not much will change.  The schools will continue to pander to the students and a college degree will be worth less and less.

But as a student, you still have some choices - which school to go to, what to study, what courses to take.  It is a cafeteria of knowledge, and you can fill up with cheap starches (as my brother did, taking "gut" courses in movie-watching) or you can go for something more nutritious - which does not necessarily mean an all-protein diet, either.   Acquire skills, as well as knowledge.   If you are not a science whiz, maybe learn a language (the CIA is always looking for people who speak Arabic or Russian).   Get into a work-study course, where you work in "the real world" as well as in the classroom.   These programs exist.  And oddly enough, they often have spots that are unfilled for lack of applicants.

Because, let's face it.   It is a helluva lot more fun to go to "Sociology" class than "Electromagnetics".  One requires you show up and bullshit for an hour.  The other requires mind-bending hours of homework.

In the end analysis, college is still what you make of it.  It all comes down to choices that you make.

Why Trump Will Burn Out

It is not just the prospect of looking at this for eight years that will turn away Trump supporters.

Newt Gingrich is a lot smarter than we gave him credit for.  Now that he is out of the limelight, he is saying a lot more intelligent things.  And one thing he said (very diplomatically, I might add) is that Donald Trump, the Presidential candidate, is a creation of the media, particularly Fox News, particularly Fox and Friends.   He gets a lot of free media coverage by saying outlandish things.

And therein lies his Achilles heel.   Insult humor can be very funny so long as it is about someone else, or if you are good at taking a joke.  But it is a delicate thing - not every comedian can get it right, and even those that do get it wrong on occasions.  Whether it is Gilbert Gottfried or Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, there are times when they "go over the line" and are no longer funny, but just annoying.

Moreover, over time, insult humor stops being funny.   You can sit through a half-hour "set" of a stand-up comedian who does insult humor.  But then the show is over and you go home and take a bath.  It's funny - once in a while, and not for very long.

And that's Trump's problem.   Over time, he insults more and more people.  And each time he insults a group of people, he turns them off.  Eventually, he will insult his way out of the Presidency.   And it doesn't have to be sweeping groups of people, either.  Just one small demographic, one at a time, and eventually you've pissed everyone off.

Minorities of course, were his first targets.   OK, you can still win with the whopping majority of white voters out there.   But then you have to cut that in half as the women are not too thrilled with his misogyny.  Then he goes after smaller and smaller groups.

This week, it was Michael Jackson fans.   OK, that is not a huge demographic, and likely most were not Trump fans to begin with.  But the people who are fans of the Michael are rabid as Trump fans are.  So whatever few fans Trump had, who were also MJ fans, he just lost.

And so on and so forth.   Over time, he will insult one group after another, until eventually there is no one left.   You just have to wait your turn until he gets to you.

And he will, because he obviously holds everyone who isn't Donald Trump in utter contempt.

Getting Berned

Bernie Sanders is lying to young people today and he knows it.  He is promising to make the government into a Santa Claus and hand out money and goodies to everyone.

Bernie Sanders is intentionally lying to young people today.  Either that, or he is delusional.   It is not that the programs he is proposing might not work (and they likely won't) but that there is no way in hell this will ever pass either house of Congress, much less come up for a vote.

In case you were late for class, let me bring you up to speed.  In the last eight years, we have largely seen gridlock in Washington, as for the most part of those eight years, Republicans have blocked every move Obama has made, resulting in nothing - or darn little - getting accomplished.   The GOP has threatened to block any nomination for the Supreme Court until after the next President is sworn in - basically crippling our Supreme Court for an entire year (the same thing is happening in Poland, and people are calling this the rise of fascism there). 

Even when Obama had a friendly Congress, early into his term, it was still hard to get things done - although Obamacare did pass.   And this is not an anomaly.  When Democratic Presidents have Democratic Congresses, often not much gets done, as some obscure representative will hold out for some pork-barrel swag.  When the Republicans control it all, the same is true - gridlock does not go away, it just abates slightly.

Now, given this background, and the realization that the Democrats are not likely to sweep both houses of Congress in 2016, does the election of Bernie Sanders make any sense?  Or put more succinctly, does anything he has proposed have a snowball's chance in hell of ever becoming law, much less ever coming up for a vote?

The problem, once again, is not the politicians, but the people, who believe that Presidents are dictators and can write an enact laws as they see fit.  This is not true.  Congress holds the purse strings and can foil the best intentions of any President, as they have aptly demonstrated over the last six years.

Sanders' proposals are so far-left and so socialist that many Democrats will likely shy away from them.   Even assuming Democrats could win the House AND Senate, odds are, he could not muster a majority for major tax increases and free college and student loan forgiveness and the rest of his "social justice" platform.

I don't doubt that Sanders believes these policies would work.   That is not the point.  They would of course, not work.   People need adversity to force them to work.   Giving everything away for free sounds nice, until someone else has to pay the bill.  And when people get things for free, no one appreciate them - they are valueless.   A free college education is not worth more, but less.

And of course, the big problem I have with Sanders, is that he would view people like me - who have worked a lifetime to save up a pittance of money to retire comfortably - as the "enemy" whose savings should be confiscated to pay for his Socialist schemes, which of course would turn me, along with everyone else, into a supplicant for government assistance.   His vision of the future is a nightmare, not Shanghai-la.

But again, that is beside the point.  Sanders truly believes this nonsense would work.  He ain't lying about his belief in that.  But he would have to be a moron (apologies to all you morons out there) to really think he could get this shit through Congress.

And in that regard he is lying to these kids.  He is telling them what they want to hear ("Free Party!  Whoo-Hoo!) and not what they need to hear.   And the reality they need to hear is that Congressional elections, local elections and State elections are all far more important than Presidential ones.   State governments determine the gerrymandering used to determine election districts, which in turn sways Congressional elections.

Without a power base at the Congressional and State level, Bernie can believe in what he wants to believe in, with all his might - but none of it will ever, ever happen.

(And the young people, while vocal about supporting Sanders, are not turning out en masse to vote for him.  Primary election turnout for young people is less than it was in previous years.  One potential caucuser in Nevada complained that the "lines were too long" so they left before voting, entirely missing the point of Democracy.   Apparently they were "feeling the Bern" at a rally, but when push came to shove, well, there was something more interesting to do.)

This of course, begs the question whether Hillary will have any better luck if she were elected.  Republicans hate Hillary with a passion, or at least project that image to their constituents.   A lot of this, like the Obama-hate, is just posturing to get the "base" all riled up and voting.   Most Republicans (like most Democrats) on the Hill don't really give a shit about Benghazi or your latest social issue.  They care about who is giving them money, and the people who give them money are only interested in money issues. 

Hillary will have about as much luck as Obama as President.  That is to say, eight more years of gridlock and incremental changes.  But at least she is being more realistic about what can and cannot be accomplished in the real world.  And both she and Senator Sanders have lived in the real world of politics in Washington long enough to know how the system works.  Hillary is at least being realistic.  Sanders is, well, lying.

And the funny thing is, Sanders supporters are the first to accuse Hillary of dishonesty.

Sorry Bernie.  I just don't buy into fairy tales.   Reality is the way it is, and I'm good with that.   We really have no other choice.

Window Tinting - Don't Do It Yourself!

Should you tint your car windows?  And if so, how?

A reader asks about window tinting.  It is worthwhile to do?  Does it cause the A/C to work less hard? Do those do-it-yourself kits work?

To answer the first question, it depends on where you live and why you want to tint your windows.  If you live in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, or Florida, there are window tinting companies on every street corner, and indeed mobile tinting companies that come to your home.  And speaking of home, they will tint your home windows as well.

If you live in a Southern State, tinted windows make sense, as a car can turn into a furnace in the hot sun in a matter of minutes, quickly turning every piece of plastic in the car into a hard brittle flaky chunk of crap, within a few months.  It also means you will literally burn yourself on your seats, if you leave an un-tinted car out in the hot sun - and the A/C will have to work a long time to pump all that heat out of the car.

Now, on the other hand, if you live in Pennsylvania, do you really need window tinting, or are you just going for a bad-ass gangster look?   You really don't need window tinting so much in Northern climates, so why bother?  It is largely a cosmetic thing.

Many cars today come with tinted windows.  My cheap Nissan pickup truck had dark tinted rear windows from the factory and the Florida dealer where I bought it had already tinted the fronts to match.  Here in the South, it really helps.

We've had windows tinted on our cars, trucks, a boat, our condo, and even a motorhome.   Anything that sits in the hot sun can benefit from this treatment.

If you live in Sun country, getting windows tinted is pretty cheap.  Like I said, in the South, there is a tinting place on every corner, and people will come to your home to tint your car or house or boat or RV.

And the prices are pretty cheap.   All of them use the same stuff - 3M or other brand window film.   You have some choice in the type of film.   You can go crazy with expensive stuff, and you can go stupid with jet-black films that might not be street legal.  My suggestion is choose something mid-grade and not a gradient pimp-ride tint.  This is for practical reasons, not cosmetic.

A tint that is too dark might not be legal in your State, and it could cause more trouble than it is worth.  Really dark tint jobs are cop magnets.  If you leave roaches in your ashtray, think hard before you go with a gangster "limo" tint job.   I had a Toyota pickup I bought from a guy in Texas.  He had the windows tinted jet black, which looked cool, but was a nightmare at night.  It survived three Virginia inspections until one dick inspector made me scrape it all off with a razorblade before he would pass the truck.  Super-dark tint ends up being wasted money.  If they don't just make you remove it, you may likely get a ticket from it.  Cops hate it and basically assume you are hiding something.

The cost of having a professional do it is pretty reasonable, and those guys do a good job, in a short period of time, and leave professional results.  They also will (or should) know what is legal and not in your State.   While not free, they are reasonable, and the resulting job is worth something and looks good.

DIY window tinting kits, on the other hand, are quite difficult for the amateur to use.   Practice makes perfect, as they say, and a guy who does windows all day long can make it look easy.   For the amateur, it just ends up as wasted money on a job that comes out looking like crap - with air bubbles and pubic hairs in it.

I tinted only one set of windows successfully in my life, and I remove them from the car before I attempted it.  Compound curve windows, windows with rear defrosters?  Not for the faint of heart.   The cost of one window tinting "kit" can pay for a professional to do half the job.   And spray-cans of "tint" just make the car windows look really, really dirty.  Avoid at all costs.

So to answer his question, yes these can be useful in the scorchingly hot areas of the country in the South.  Elsewhere, they are just useless cosmetic add-ons.   If you decide to do one, call a professional company to have it done.   In the South, they are all over the place, so it isn't hard to find someone to do the job - right.

Student Loan Debt Crisis? Don't think so...

Is the cost of a college education worth about as much debt as a fully-loaded Camry?  One would hope so.

The cost of college has been rising considerably, and it is a trend that has been going on for some time.   But the questions remain - do we really have a student loan debt crisis and exactly how much debt are we talking about here?

A recent article including the graphic above sheds some light on this:

The class of 2015 will each graduate with $35,051 in student debt on average, according to an analysis from Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Edvisors.com, a website that provides information to parents and students about college costs and financial aid. That’s about $2,000 more than their peers who graduated in 2014, though the share of students graduating with debt remained roughly the same as last year at about 70%. 

You'll pardon me if I don't find this to be a staggering amount of debt, as I had to pay back $38,500 in student loan debt.   Back in 1992.   That's over $68,000 today.   Was it worth it?   Well, that was equal to less than one years' salary at the time. 

The key of course, was that I got a worthwhile education - one that would lead to a productive and profitable career that would more than pay back the cost of the education (which was far more than the debt) and also pay back the loans.

But even if we assume the "average" college graduate gets a worthless degree in something stupid, from a no-name university with shitty grades,  is this really an injustice?   Because 38 grand isn't really a lot of money, even if you are working a slacker job.   Yes, this may represent two years' income and take more than a decade to pay off.   But it is not an onerous amount of debt.   Indeed, many people pay more than this for cars today.

Of course, averages and means can be misleading.   There are outliers.   There are folks who have parents pay their way through college and graduate with no debt.  This lowers the average somewhat.   There are other folks who borrow huge sums to get graduate degrees - hundreds of thousands of dollars.   These folks usually are able to pay back the debt because the advanced degrees they get (doctor, lawyer, dentist, whatever) will generate sufficient income to pay back the loans, over time.

There are, of course, the real outliers, which the press love to harp on.   For example, the lady who went to a high-priced ivy-league college to study religion so she could become a Nun.    Problem is, with $100,000 in student loan debt, the convent would not accept her  - you have to be debt-free.   Odd that she never bothered to figure this out in advance, you know by maybe calling the convent and asking.  Odder still that she felt that an ivy-league degree in religion was a prerequisite to being a Nun.   I think the real truth is, she really didn't think this through all the way, and the idea of becoming a Nun came to her only after graduation.

There is a similar story about a lady who wanted to become a nurse, and instead of going to nursing school, went to a very expensive college instead - and then went to nursing school.   Even with the steady employment of being a nurse, she struggles to pay the loans back.

Statistics are fine and all, but as I have noted in the past, statistics do not negate choice.   Just because the vast majority of 18-year-olds still go off to college with no clue as to what they are doing (and rack up a ton of debt in the process) doesn't mean that everyone has to.   There are alternatives - cheaper schools, work-study programs (which I used and still exist), getting valuable degrees instead of worthless ones, and of course not going to college at all if you don't plan on doing more than just partying for four years.

Let's face it, college is a big party.  I say this having spent 14 years of my life in college.   And I delivered pizzas and chicken wings for about five of those years, and I visited every dorm, frat house, and flophouse on campus.   And it was always the same.  The bongs were out, the kegs were tapped, and everyone was having a really good time - on a Tuesday night.   The weekends were even crazier.

What people are pissed off about is that they made poor life choices early in life, and these are poor life choices that will now dog them for years to come.  It took me a decade to pay off my student loans.   But pay them off I did.   Others will refinance over 30 years and be near retirement age before they pay them off (although likely most will pay them off by refinancing a house when they are in their 40's).

I guess what is sad to me is that this trend has been going on for over a decade now.  It is all over the media and talked about (and protested about) every day.   You would think by now that young people and parents would have figured this all out and taken action.   Mom and Dad would sit down with Junior and say, "Let's figure out this college thing - why you are going, what you are going to study, how much it will cost, and what the ultimate cost/benefit will be!"

You would think, anyway.   But perhaps they are already having this discussion and perhaps maybe they are finding that borrowing as much money as you'd pay back in a 4-year car loan isn't really all that much burden as you might think - to get a college degree.

And perhaps maybe the graphic and story above are entirely misleading.   While the fonts are fuzzy, note that the amount of debt and percentage of debt is for "student and parent loans" - not just student debt.   The chart above also includes debt incurred by parents (such as a second mortgage) used to help pay for school.   To say this is "Student loan debt" is a bit disingenuous, but hey, actual student loan debt might not be as alarming a chart, right??