Who should go to college?

The genius of the American education system (and yes, you read that correctly) is that it doesn't just give second chances; it gives third and fourth chances as well. This especially pertains to higher education. I don't know of any big or mid-sized country that allows its students so many many opportunities to screw up on as grand a scale as many times as this one does.

Having said that, however, I think it's time we start being a little bit smarter about the whole thing.

For starters, let me address the subsidy issue. Yes, it's important, and I know that no college student pays 100% percent of their own tuition. Even students attending a private university are party subsidized by the government. But the thing is, the government wastes money by the trainload anyway, so I don't think it's the most important issue in this argument.

No, the most important factor here is the way this de facto policy encourages students who don't have the maturity or intelligence for college to waste a large chunk of their youth in what will ultimately be a waste of their time. For the record, I fell into the former category (although mom would say it's really the other one). It doesn't necessarily make me right, but it does give me a personal perspective on this issue.

What's the harm, though? If someone wants to go to college, let them, and if they fail, they move on with their life. In the case of a wasted semester or even two, there's minimal to little harm. But how many people, especially at smaller colleges, keep going back year after year and never get anywhere? That's not life, that's suspended animation. Except in this case, you don't come out of the glass case the same age you were when you went in, when you finally do wake up, you find that years were sucked out of you.

There's this popular conception in TV and movies that college is fun for everybody, and if your a focused student or have someone to pay your bills and give you spending money, it is.

There are, however, thousands upon thousands of students, who despite lacking a firm direction in life or any aptitude at all, are currently enrolled in colleges across the U.S. I'd say the vast majority of these people aren't able to get someone else to pay the tab, so they get loans and work crappy jobs -- crappier than they normally would be because they need something that will work around classes -- to be able to go to college just because parents, counselors, teachers, and others said they should.

The thing is, what are they left with after they flunk out, or finally get wise and give up? They don't have any real job skills, because they took a job at a restaurant or at a grocery store in order to get the flexible hours that they needed to attend classes. They don't have any of the concrete benefits of a college education because anything short of a diploma is as good as never having went. They also don't have as much of their life left, and it's going to take them that much longer to get to where they would have been if they hadn't listened to bad advice.

It would be cruel to deny someone an opportunity to raise them self up, but there comes a time when it's cruel not to tell them they're playing the wrong game.