Around 20 years ago, almost everyone would have laughed at that question — of course you should go to college, unless you want a life of drudgery and poverty! College was assumed to be the path to success.
Today, many people question the value of a college degree. It has not only become extremely expensive, it no longer betokens much useful knowledge, and (at most schools anyway), it subjects the student to a great deal of toxic philosophy that can only get in the way of a happy life. A new book entitled Don’t Go to College by Michael Robillard and Timothy Gordon makes that case, and I review it in today’s Martin Center article.
Did the authors even try college, you might wonder. Oh, yes — both earned their BA degrees and then piled up three advanced degrees each. Moreover, they taught at the college level. They know what they’re talking about and loathe what has become of higher education in America.
Robillard and Gordon come out swinging. Here’s the book’s opening: “The average American college hopeful would be better off drilling a hole in his head than attending a present-day university. He’d learn about as much, wouldn’t be financially crippled with student debt, and would likely avoid acquiring a variety of sexually transmitted diseases. And if a drill to the head sounds like self-harm, what do you think four to six years of safe spaces, trigger warnings, grievance studies, and neo-Marxist indoctrination amounts to, if not an expensively acquired ritual lobotomy?”
Rather than helping young people to mature and become productive citizens, college today often retards maturity and leaves students mentally scarred with the host of gripes and grievances that so many faculty members want to impart.
Robillard and Gordon suggest that students find non-college training programs that will provide them with useful skills and not saddle them with a pile of debt.
Don’t Go to College makes a strong case and will help to further deflate the huge higher-education bubble.