I’m an Educational Heretic

I have had this discussion with so many people that have validated my thoughts. When enough proof is shoved in front of my face to cause love-hate relationship with today’s mindset, it’s time to talk. It used to be that parents wanted better for their children. They didn’t want them to work as hard. So, they struggled to help pay for college, pushed their kids to do well in school and were able to glow from the fruits of their successes. Now, the thought is that if you don’t attend college, you won’t succeed. However, it’s creating a nation of over-educated, debt-burdened professional students that have no real life work experience and no idea where they are going next.  We won’t even go into the subject of whether or not all these kids should be in college, but suffice it to say I don’t think they all need to be.  Trade schools are a great alternative and seems more and more underutilized.

There is one thing they do know: minimum wage doesn’t pay for $100k in student loans.  And while all these kids come out of college armed with these degrees, the fact is there may be some fields where we already have too many people working in a specific field.  More people just means less wages to go around.  The pie doesn’t get bigger, the pieces just get smaller.

So we may very well find ourselves approaching a fork in the road: do we continue this relentless push for more bachelors and masters degrees for our kids or do we redefine what it means to be educated?

Maybe it’s time we started…