College is a form of investment in yourself. Public high school education is not enough if you want to make sense of the world around you. Any college major will equip you with the tools needed to systematically make sense of capitalism and how unsustainable it is for the people.
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It’s a strong take, but I wouldn’t exactly say it’s unpopular, per se. This topic is pretty split.
edit: I say this as a software developer
Ah yeah the physics major really helps you make sense of society better and understand capitalism better.
Nothing against physics majors but there’s just not a lot of finance or social studies in the major
Are you talking about free college? Cuz sending a bunch of teens to get 6 figure debt by 22 with no job opportunities is where all the student debt came from!
I think there’s a slightly different approach more people should consider.
A lot of low-level white collar work is available in pretty much any industry. My uncle job-hopped through such work for seven years before he found one he liked, managing paperwork at a small port.
Two years in, his manager advised him that if he wanted to be considered for a promotion further up in the office, he would need to go to college. And that’s what he did. He took community college online for three years and eventually got the promotion. He lives very comfortably with his wife who works as a teacher and as far as I’ve known he’s never had any financial issues.
“Going to college” has several different meanings these days. Make it work for you.
You had me until you veered off into your personal late stage capitalism theory. Also, you must address the incredible grift that is the current privatized for-profit student loan finance system and why university tuition inflation perpetuates ever bloating internal waste and deteriorating professor/student ratios. But sure you’ll come out a more rounded human, with boatloads of debt which saddles them for decades of underemployment.
Take out a bunch of student loans so you can learn that capitalism is bad.
Disagree. College is just another business. Their priority is making money like any other.
The only worthwhile post secondary are STEM majors; fields where you could kill someone if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Otherwise college is often a waste of time and money.
You can learn things in depth without sitting in a class reading out of the overpriced textbooks they force you to buy.
Besides, very often the first thing employers do is train new hires; the degree is typically irrelevant. It just looks good on paper.
College was fun socially, but aside from that I wish I had every dollar and minute back from the time I spent there as far as what it actually added to my resume.
Whats the point if that certificate doesn’t get you a job though.
You can learn all the same information online if its just knowledge you seek
Grad market for non grads isnt better lmaooooo
I’m all for people going to college, broadening horizons, continuing to learn, etc. However, there’s something to be said for learning a trade and not being in debt. Learning how to build and/or fix things is never a bad decision.
hahahahah op is so optimistic i love it
Not beating the “college is a leftist indoctrination pipeline” allegations
I don’t think you need to go to college to realize how screwed up capitalism is. All one needs is willingness to learn. You have the internet. You have YouTube. Now, you have AI. Do I really need to go to college to find the answers?
Don’t get me wrong, college is great for opening your mind. It’s great for getting prepared and qualified to enter a profession. But if you’re just going to college to “open your mind,” don’t go $50K in debt if you have nothing to show for it. There are cheaper (if not free) alternatives to do that.
Interesting, I think right now this is an unpopular opinion. “Go into a trade, no debt and you can start your own business.” This has become the popular trend. The majority of these businesses fail. (35 percent last more than 10 years). The initial income that comes from a trade, without the student loan debt is obviously appealing, but the opportunity for growth just isn’t the same. Also, most white collar jobs require a college degree as the buy in. Unfortunate for some folks who are qualified through other routes, but it’s much easier to weed out unqualified candidates when you put a “must have BA” qualifier on a job application. There will still be plenty of qualified candidates for that position even without taking into account the skilled folks without the degree.
Just go in for fixing ai robots and machines, and you will be good
If the cost of college wasn’t a major hindrance, I’d agree but it is. Plus it is debt taken on in such a way that there is no way to get out from under it, not even bankruptcy (if you’re in the states). Doing so can handicap you for life. Education, the same education you can receive at a university, can be acquired for free or far less money if a person is motivated to do so.
That said, if in order to get the job you wish to do a degree is mandatory and you are certain of your career path then obviously you have no choice but to earn the degree and pay for the privilege of working in your preferred field.
If you are not certain, though, and put yourself in extreme debt to simply edify yourself with higher education than you have likely set yourself up for serious financial ramifications, long term. College has become a predatory institution, gatekeeping and disenfranchising the students whose parents are unwilling or unable to fund their education.
It is irresponsible at best to assume and push young people to take on that burden knowing that even though the educational experience is worthwhile the financial ramifications will last deacades.
If you went to college and learned how Capitalism is unsustainable for people despite it sustaining people for centuries, then you’re the poster child for how useless college really is.
>Any college major will equip you with the tools needed to systematically make sense of capitalism and how unsustainable it is for the people.
False.
No. Literally anything you listed for college can be learned for free. That’s a lot better than years of protective youth and debt you can’t discharge.
College was the biggest waste of my time and money ever.
“People should waste money, get into debt, or forego the opportunity to actually gain experience and make money to survive for the chance to waste 4 years of their life learning shit that theyll never use”
If it doesn’t make you more money than if you went into another career, it’s a stupid investment. End of story. You can read or watch Youtube tutorials (which include most of undergrad of many degrees) for enrichment on your own time.
Upvoted.
If a person isn’t cut out for academic or STEM fields, perhaps a trade school would be better than college. The trades pay well, generally, and you can get on with your life.
Also, I doubt the assertion that “Any college major will equip you with the tools needed to systematically make sense of capitalism and how unsustainable it is for the people”.
Likely, a person would need to specialize in economics to even develop an opinion on the sustainability of capitalism, or any other economic system.
Otherwise smart people being trained to think like this makes a strong case against college
Should people seek education beyond a high school diploma? Yes, but traditional college doesn’t have to be the only way to continue education. The biggest problem we have in the world is people who think that they don’t need to continually learn throughout their lives.
How can it be an unpopular opinion when it’s what’s been forced down every generations throat forever? It’s still being brainwashed into children’s heads in school even now.
Everyone wants to shit on college and circlejerk the trades these days. But let me tell you something. I worked in the trades, my dad is a retired tradesman as well. I also spent over a decade as an enlisted soldier. Now I’m a white collar professional. The trades fucking suck. The trades are great…….for someone else, for someone else’s kids. Most guys that work in the trades have destroyed their bodies by the time they are in their forties. My dad had to be draw his pension early for medical retirement. I know welders with extreme chronic neck pain. Shitty jobs that pay well, that unfortunately someone has to do.
All my kids are in college. Not in the trades, not in the military.
Lol spoken like a true a University commie.
“Go to uni and indoctrinate yourself like I did”
Some of us went to college and made a great life for ourselves thanks to capitalism. We do well because we can exchange our skills for money
Not unpopular, this is still a great investment
Your way of toppling capitalism is by making teenagers drink the kool-aid and get into lifelong debt?
that classic “i grew up thinking this way so its the only way, even if im obviously wrong
Proper self study would be superior to a college education if that’s your goal. For both quality and financially
Give me the money to go
I saw a video of a girl crying because her student loan interest is 17 percent and now owes more than she borrowed
I’m 37 and broke. It’s too late now. But good luck everyone else.
Better off becoming a plumber or electrician these days
>Any college major will equip you with the tools needed to systematically make sense of capitalism and how unsustainable it is for the people.
I don’t even know where to start with this sentence.
College still makes sense as much as it did pre covid. But any major, absolutely not
Capitalism also works plenty fine you baby. Go relocate to a county with a different form of govt if you don’t like it
It’s also not that necessary in n some countries. In my country you can easily get a decent paying job without it. My brother barely finished high school. Always managed to talk himself into good jobs and do well
With the money you’ll spend on it, you might as well just get a shitty part time job instead which will be more effective in making you understand capitalism.
And saddle themselves in massive debt with no job at the end? AI will eliminate many careers.
College is unaffordable precisely because everyone is trying to go. If the demand is infinite the price will rise infinitely. Some people need to go to work instead of college.
The people pushing for everyone to go to college are many times attached to the colleges themselves financially. Of course people who work on the college campus want you to keep pumping money into that machine. It feeds them, and they definitely do not want to go to work.
Formal education is not a magic silver bullet that fixes all problems.
I don’t appear to be having any trouble “making sense” of the world around me. All I see is a Commie shill trying to brainwash people into debt because desperate and indebted people are easier to convince.
Lmao you lost me with the last line
OP is clearly a college teacher who needs to make sure they get students.
Umm I already learned and became aware of all that before I even graduated high school…did not need college for any of that. Still don’t, nor do i need the debt that comes with it.
if college were free then this would be a non issue but they insist on you spending thousands over a liberal arts degree
Eh my brothers got 2 degrees and still works retail. And he’s not that intelligent. If anything it screwed him financially.
The problem is people think college = going to a university straight out of high school. It’s much more affordable to go to a community college and get your AS. Many of these schools are offering 4y degrees in certain fields as well. There are a ton of jobs where all you need is a degree, any degree, just to get through the filtering process. Grades and the actual institution didn’t matter for 90% of the jobs out there. It’s a check box nothing more. It needs to be treated that way. If you went into 6 figure debt to get some generic degree that’s on you. Imo it’s a good idea to take a few years after high school to work an entry level position in the industry you want to work in. You’ll get a feel for how things actually work, the promotion structure, and might even make a few contacts. You’re also less likely to put all that time and energy into a degree only to enter a field you hate.
In the US, I wouldn’t go “just to go”. College is irrationally expensive, and makes no sense to go without a plan to pay off the debt and not getting in over your head. Knowledge is free mostly after all.
Keyword here is investment
Need money to invest
This is Reddit where a bunch of largely college educated Americans will tell you that going to college is a terrible idea
Found the uni bot account hurting for money lol 😆
College is a poor investment unless you can pay for it outright, or it is payed for you somehow. The exception being STEM or other high value degrees.
The last sentence of the OP is a big reason why college has become worthless. It’s now just a tool of indoctrination.
i don’t need college
Agreed, and while we’re at it, public universities need to be free
No they need to adjust high school so you can actually get a better than minimum wage job once completed. Having high school set up so you learn how to fill out test forms is ridiculous. Bring back real vocational education. Get your state license and diploma at the same time.
I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion.
Couldn’t disagree more. Most people would learn more with a library card than a degree about how the world works and how to frame it. If you aren’t going into a career path your interested in with a clear degree -> job pipeline then I wouldn’t advise anyone to go
College doesn’t do that lol. Maybe you got that out of it but a lot of those kids are skating by just like they did in high school.
College is an absolute waste of time for most of the kids going. It’s a profit based business for the admin and owners to pay people 6 figure incomes to effectively do dick
This reads like someone who had a scholarship or rich parents. Most colleges now without financial aid are around $60k-$100k a year which is absurd.
Only if they’re majoring in something that is guaranteed to get them a good job/career. Otherwise it really is a waste of time and money
This is the sort of thing people who think diplomas and degrees are markers of intelligence say
I agree. But not any college and not every degree. There are a lot of BS schools and degrees.
I went to college and I’m fine with capitalism. I recognize I don’t have the capital to build a $20B semiconductor fab and I’m glad someone else does so I can use my EE degree.
Im all for education but we should teach our kids to shop around first, there is literally no need to just into college right out of highschool, its doing just that that cause many of my generation to go back because they hated their original pick. pick a few career paths and work if not only intern to see if its something you really want before investing all that money into college… or go to a trade school which is probably a better option for the majority of young Americans right now, the market is oversaturated with over qualified millennials who all got 4 year +’s and now have experience too, but way too few millennial tradesmen.
Sending everyone who wants to go to college for free, would benefit every person in the world. But colleges don’t want to lose their billions in profits
Hey I’m from a country where 63.9% of people that graduate secondary school go to college. College is almost free here and we give out grants of up to 4000 euro to help with students’ living costs if they struggle financially. America’s stats are 62.8%. You’d think there’d be a bigger difference but no.
I think going to college is less to do with the financial aspect and the job market and more to do with the societal expectation that surrounds you. People who don’t go to college are protrayed as “wasters” or stupid or lazy. I grew up just assuming I was going to college. At no point was any other option discussed.
But also no there are tons of ways to invest in yourself. Just because you’re paying thousands to get talked at by someone who doesn’t want to be there doesn’t make you smarter than people who go out and do their own reading and research.
While I agree, I think that the system in the US is ruining itself with increasingly making it prohibitively more expensive. Community college in my area is still affordable though.
Nope. My nephew is a straight A student who loves learning and could easily go to college. Instead be is doing a mixed high school work study for a trade and will graduate at 18 and earn more money his first month than I do. I have a BA and MS and spent years paying off those degrees. He will have zero debt, continuing paid training, union benefits, and a pension. He can always continue learning on his own or go to college later if he decides to do so.
Two words: Trade school
Your daddy rich huh
Nah, suck it: degrees are a depreciating value. Learn how to be e.g. a plumber and your life will be chill and worth living.
“ANY college major will equip you with the tools needed to systematically make sense of capitalism and how unsustainable it is for the people”
LMFAOOOO
College is great, if you’re not going into debt for your 20s. Which is pretty much when most activists are actually unfettered enough to be active.
If youre not in a civilised country … Read books instead.
People should make the decisions that are best for them and if that’s not going to college, so be it.
If you start off life with debt for no damn reason, you don’t understand capitalism, or much of anything really.
There is a 0% chance there will be more white collar jobs in the future.
People should still be going to trade school.
The best way to go to college is go to community to get all elective, etc out of the way. Then go to a 4 year institution after getting your associates and get your bachelors. The cost is a 4th of what you’d pay, and most of the time the 4 year college want to run the clock out on electives anyway. So even if you can afford it you should do this
Public colleges should be funded by our taxes. We are investing in our future. We are playing the long game by staying globally competitive.
It should never have been privatized and subsequently forced generations into student debt.
I had to show half the people I knew in college basic life skills like “doing laundry” and “budgeting”, but sure they were definitely smarter and more well equipped for life just because they went to college.
The best decision I ever made was not going to college. I’m not saying the path I took is for everyone, some people SHOULD go to college but I’m pretty well off and I have no debt and I am content with that.
Sounds like you need to take finance 101 there buster
I think community colleges should offer a “variety pack” semester of classes which has intro level classes to a number of different career options. I think it would give young adults a better sense of what they might want to drop money on towards a career instead of getting halfway through a program only to realize they’re not interested or just not thriving.
I don’t think you really get how investments work if you think that an investment that you yourself are admitting is not going to give the return of “easier to get a job” is a good investment.
Also: college is only going to give you anti-capitalism tools if you have the right major. One in biomedical engineering will not do that. Animal sciences will not do that. Whatever my coworker is taking to be a game warden absolutely will not do that.
The point of college is to show you can commit to something for four years without your parents and see it through. It shows you probably wont flake after a week. It’s not the only option, as there are trade schools, but if you don’t want to work manual labor you should go to college
You should go to college if you can afford to or if you have a clear plan to graduate on time with a useful degree. Otherwise, you should get into a trade job ASAP.
Ok. Give me $250,000 for free and I’ll go
Right cause it makes sense to put yourself in debt
As someone who went to multiple colleges, god no. If you need a school to define your political stance for you, it is not a well informed stance at all.
So your plan is to throw everyone into debt and despair in hopes for a communist revolution?
The push against college is precisely because politicians don’t want citizens to understand and make sense of the world and systems around them.
Education is its own reward. Don’t stop obtaining it. Don’t mortgage your future for it.
What a non-sequitor at the end. You think everyone who goes to college emerges as a communist? What a great pitch: “you need to go to college so that you can get brainwashed into my ideology.”
tbh you can learn how fucked up capitalism is without going to college, too. and I think we should figure out how to make the non-college people understand it too.
This sounds like an opener to a persuasive essay assignment given to middle schoolers. Lmao
Unregulated capitalism is unsustainable, regulated capitalism is the best humans can currently work with.
Oh boy… I’ll start with this, you’re right that there are certainly people who could gain perspective and a better understand of how the world works by attending college. There are also some people who are so naturally intelligent, that they will always have a better understanding of how the world works than their college educated peers. I’m 27, so I have to reference the ACT here, not the SAT.. Someone who scored a 32 on their ACT, but never attended college, is likely always going to be higher performing than someone who got a 25 on their ACT, but went and got a communications degree. My personal opinion is that college education is almost like a vetting process (unless you’re studying something quite niche.) Are you willing to take philosophy, sales, and biology, even though your main goal is to work in finance. You are?? Oh perfect, we love someone who is willing to jump through hoops, you’ll be a great corporate shill!
Is getting into 6-figure debt yourself before you are 25 really the best way to learn how unsustainable capitalism is?
Knowing how unsustainable a system is won’t put food on my table today
Uh. So you want me to spend $50k so that I can learn about how unsustainable capitalism is?… Obviously all that schooling didn’t help your critical thinking…
You start off talking about college in general and then talk about capitalism and sustainability? Not every degree will have you read Marx, Foucault and Mark Fisher lol. Wasn’t touched on in my chemistry degree.
Ya lemme go out to the money tree i got my in back yard and just do that all willy nilly.
>Any college major will equip you with the tools needed to systematically make sense of capitalism and how unsustainable it is for the people.
Looks like you are talking about an indoctrination instead of an education. Good thing my didn’t do that. If that is what you are expecting college to give you, then you are going to the wrong college.
….if all you’re after is education for its’ own sake, you can get that with a library card for free.
At least start off in community college.
College is where I got the chance to experience most of the things that helped me decide what I was meant to do.
The US academic system with privatized loans is literally one of the worst capitalist grifts ever to exist. So what you’re basically asking is people to fleece themselves in order to learn they are getting fleeced?
Get outta here with that nonsense.
I had factories pay for me to go to school. It took a little longer to get degrees, but it was free and I got paid more after I was done.