An 18-Year-Old Can’t Get a $1k Business Loan, But They Will Force Them into $100K Student Loan Debt

The current education system is broken

Photo by Michael Marsh on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about writing this article for a long time. I hesitated because it seems every time I write something disparaging about the college system in the United States, people get up in arms. A few months ago, I wrote an essay called “I Didn’t Get My Master’s Degree, And I Could Care Less,” highlighting a broken system that is geared towards creating workers who won’t make a fuss because they are so far in debt to the government that they dare not lose their jobs, and people emailed me saying I was wrong and only upset because I was jealous of college graduates.

That is not it at all. The current college system keeps you in college for four years at least, the first few learning prerequisites that have no bearing on your future job, that they make you take so they can inflate the bill you owe them when you are all done. Why else would an English Major need to learn calculus?

Why wouldn’t you just go to school to learn only what applies to the job you plan on having? And why won’t the government give a business student a loan to start a business for experience, but will keep them in college learning sociology and charge them thousands to learn it?

And it’s obvious that this world needs fewer stockbrokers and lawyers and more humanitarians, artists, and creators. Why won’t the government give them loans and let them learn by doing, instead of making them pay through the nose to prestigious universities?

Why have we made it so important that people have letters after their names and documents to hang on the wall that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get? Can we not think of better ways for people to learn skills and gain experience? The bottom line is that most people who graduate college are woefully unprepared to work in the jobs they have majored in and need years of experience anyway to become even passable employees, why couldn’t they have just learned everything on the job instead of racking up student loan debt?

And finally, why, if most of the other developed countries of the world can offer their young people free college, does America have to…