Warren holds up confirmation of a Biden pick at Education Department

[ancianita]

76. I agree with you up to the last four sentences.

There is no "we" who decided to increase tuitions many times higher than rates of inflation over the last 35 years. Soaring college costs were not decided by us, but by those who wanted to make college harder to afford in order to lessen any competition their own kids might experience with the other classes of America's young. Merit kept being pushed, but legacy admissions still lived on. Most of us didn't see it happening, but high school teachers and counselors did.

Colleges are where the wealthy's influence act as gatekeepers to knowledge. They sold us on the idea that we could all be like Bill Gates even as they made sure we couldn't get easy access a 'higher' education.

The result: only 25% of Americans have college degrees, and 30% have some college -- the associates degree, which is really a review of high school subjects, not rigorous concentration on a 'major'; the original design of the first two years was to help the young "find" a knowledge avocation to study in depth, it was not to make the claim that someone had "some college."

That means that 70% can be convinced of all manner of "justifications" for not going to college, along with all the rhetorical tricks and traps used in presenting them a lot of other "issues". Which is exactly the way wealthy elites like it -- inure Americans to the economic and information "free market" they "deserve," without their knowing what they've missed. Blame the victims; tell them "life is choices," and their lives are exactly what they've "chosen." It's all lies.

No, a college degree is never a degree in moral growth, but it does give exposure to understanding related disciplines' areas of ethics, and the basis of goodness outside religious dogma.

As my non-college parents from different parts of the country always told me, "It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it." The problem is that most people can't tell when that holds true. Like Bob Marley once said, "Some people feel the rain. Some people just get wet."

Colleges and universities build into their design the knowledge that 18 year olds need guidance.

Anyone with a sympathy for intelligence should feel okay with going to college at any time in life. It's time and money that's never wasted; it's an important investment.