Un-College is not a personal mission. It’s a place to learn about options, both as a teen or as a parent of one. I share my personal story not because it in any way drove me to consider promoting alternatives to traditional college, but because with years of reflection, I realize I could’ve used an “un-college” alternative myself.
When I was a teenager, I loved to cook. I have no idea where the passion came from; not from any family connection. But I found myself watching endless PBS cooking shows; I likely wasn’t the target demo. Due to family circumstances, from the time I could cook, my parents were gone from the home often and I was left with the option of frozen dinners or making something myself. I chose the latter. Not long after I learned that girls love a man who can cook. That sealed the deal. I thought my future was in the kitchen.
I imagined myself taking a technical career path after high school. Becoming trained in cooking, working my way up from low level jobs in restaurants, perhaps attending more prominent cooking schools, working under famous chefs, until one day making my own mark. If you’ve seen modern TV cooking shows, you see these people all the time now.
Coming from a set of parents of immigrant families (if you’re familiar), the concept of going to college was sacrosanct. Very little about what would take place there was ever discussed; merely, you’re expected to go. And then as now, your parents are not alone in this cajoling. School counselors, peers, relatives — they all push for college after high school. It’s not some insidious conspiracy. They too are rock sure it’s the plan to get ahead. Whatever that means.
I folded to the pressures, ditched my plans for cooking, and attended a four-year college out of state. I am not complaining about that experience; I feel blessed for the opportunity and experience. I made lifelong friends. I met people from all over the world. I learned more than any amateur should know about ancient pottery. But I never felt quite at home. It wasn’t the college, it was me.
The point of un-college isn’t to point out why college, especially a traditional four-year college, is a bad idea. For many people, it’s amazing, it’s inspiring, it’s absolutely the right choice. But when you look at how fast college has grown as an option for high school grads, even from three decades ago when I attend, you have to stop and think, what’s going on here? 70% of high school grads attend some type of college; 30% attend a four-year program. Is college this universally amazing thing that is now available to everybody OR is some or much of this growth attributable to business interests.
When I attended college, tuition prices were rising annual at almost precisely the inflation rate. Meaning, the real price was not going up from year to year. In the past 30 years, the cost of college starting diverting much higher than inflation, 2-3 times so, such that the full cost of college has become one of fasting price growing commodities in the market. Imagine that — the price of a good triples and more and more people “buy” it.
There are very few places where you see such indifference to price. One of those is in the medication markets. Medication is one of those necessity items you have to pay for — so you moan and groan about the rising cost, but you always buy it. College is now the same. But is it a necessity like medicine?
I started with passion and I spun around to price. That’s because I want both teens and their parents to engage in the un-college information. And having been both in my life, I understand that the teen and the parent may not have the same interests in exploring un-college. Trust me, teens, your parents are seeing that there is 1.41 TRILLION dollars in unpaid student loan debt in this country and they are holding their chests.
There is a College Industrial Complex in the United States and other nations. Sorry for more numbers, but the college and universities market in the U.S. is worth over $500 billion a year. As you may guessed, it’s rising; up more than $100 billion in the past eight years alone. These staggering dollar figures aren’t mean to impugn or suggest everybody in the college business is a mindless moneymaking vulture. That’s fun to picture, but not true. However, it is very true that monster businesses can act quite monstrously, even when not intending to do so. Like spiraling their prices and placing inordinate debt on America’s college graduates.