Ron Johnson: Students Graduating Late because "College is Fun"

[pbrower2a]

College is certainly fun in contrast to doing the sort of job that one typically gets out of high school (retail clerking, restaurant work, farm labor, cleaning, construction labor)...

If one needs to work full time to avoid ending up with a debt as heavy as that for a sports car, then one cannot reasonably expect to complete to complete college in four years. Some part-time and summer work won't hurt, and might help one avoid some guilty feelings... but the part time work had better be slight.

The GOP simply wants cheap, scared labor.

[pbrower2a]

They are graduating late in part because they are stressed financially.

During the Bush II disaster, the federal government heavily pushed for-profit education, often from overpriced but substandard schools that offer a little bit of specialized training but little real education. The Obama Administration has been shutting down some of those schools or putting pressure on those that remain to get better results -- but that takes time. Those schools get execrable results.

Students focused on the cost of education are more focused on activities that get them hired quickly even if those activities allow practically no professional growth.

The cost of college education needs to be addressed. College education used to be heavily subsidized, so people who might have still ended up with proletarian jobs might become leaders. What is wrong with someone graduating from college, getting or keeping a job in an auto plant, becoming a union steward to find some meaning in his job, and using some of what he learned in college (let us say financial analysis) as an asset in union negotiations? What is wrong with some kid from the Reservation graduating from the University of Arizona, returning to the Reservation, and becoming a tribal leader who better knows how to deal with non-Indians because of having had more exposure to them for about four years in an unthreatening environment?

Someone who gets a good education and returns to a blue-collar world is not a tragedy. Someone who gets a second-rate education and an impaired life but has a huge student loan to pay off is a tragedy.