Jaded with education, more Americans are skipping college

[Chainfire]

14. I didn't go to college, but I am glad that my doctor did.

I married early and worked an apprenticeship program. My wife had not yet graduated from high school when we married, but we put my wife through a master's degree on a pay as you go basis; helped by academic scholarships. Our income path through our working careers went like this; I made most of the money in first third of our working careers, we were near parity in the middle third, and she made more money in the final third. As it turned out, over the totality of our careers, I ended up making slightly more money, but that was more due to women being chronically underpaid than anything else.

The truth of the matter is that when I was college age, I was too immature to buckle down and study. I had breezed through high school with top grades without ever studying and discovered in my first semester at college that that didn't work, I was shocked. Unlike my wife, I did not have the courage to work 8 hours, go to class for four hours and then study for four more hours every day. She was a champ!

Republicans are terrified that a college education provides students with, as Dr. Sagan suggested, "A functioning bullshit meter." They want college to be for job training only, for if the students learn to think critically, Republicans can not thrive.