I wish I hadn’t folded to the pressure of my parents and peers to go to college straight out of high school. First few years were a real waste (bacardi 151 can be fun). After dropping out, working for a few years, I returned with self direction, zero loans, and kicked butt with mostly As.
Ladies were/are never a problem. Many fish in the sea. All they can say is no and you already have that. From waitresses to power executives, girls are pretty, girls are nice, take your chances, roll the dice.
I don’t know production figures for the European Union, but it should be considered that the “big four” continental economies (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) are heavily socialized. Only Spain had any semblance of radical economic growth. Under the Obama administration the same thing is likely to happen to the United States, as public spending increases (including state and federal spending we are already at 40%+). This has nothing to do with the lack of education. For all the “human capital” which the United States invests through by spending on higher education it still cannot compete with China in terms of graduated engineers, or with India in terms of graduated computer technicians. It seems as if the country’s attempt to socially engineer the professional working class has failed. Would it not make more sense to allow people to do what they do best by allowing them to operate on an individual scale of profit and loss?
Admittedly Spain was going through a credit boom, but so was the United States, and Spain’s GDP was growing at a faster rate and it did not invest as much in human capital (well, the truth is that there higher education is not as coveted, so although public universities are very, very cheap, people just prefer to not go to school and invest their time in a trade, which will reap them higher benefits over the long run).
I agree. But, just because you want to go to school doesn’t mean that you have the right to make someone else pay for it.
If you are not intelligent enough, or motivated enough, to do whatever you need on your own to get ahead in life then you might not be as intelligent as you think. And, if you think that being a “loser” has anything to do with where you currently work, or what you currently do, then your notion of success is severely skewed.
I’m not a very optimistic person, In fact I’m actually fairly naturally pessimistic. Its bad enough that finding a job is difficult now, but If I couldn’t go to school unless I had worked a full-time job that isn’t available, then I would have given up on life at the age of 18. Maybe being a “loser” doesn’t have anything to do with where I currently work, but it sure is societies view on low-quality jobs. I also knew a lot of people on the job who didn’t want to succeed in life, they wanted to pay for drug money.
There’s a lot of “losers” at College too. I’m in a remedial math class, and a lot of the classmates are immature, never do the homework, and leave the class early. I overheard this stupid girl talking about “getting wasted” this weekend. This is at a Community College where anyone can get in, and societies general view about CC is that its majority are students who aren’t good at school. I go here because I’m not sure where I want to go yet.
Also, nobody has mentioned this yet, so I will. FAFSA does not cover Four-Year University tuition fees completely, while it covers part of it, it generally isn’t enough some of it has to come out of your own pocket or Student Loans.
THe problem with working to achieve a higher education is the jobs available. Not only is it difficult to find one now, but the majority of work under a Bachelors Degree pays minimum wage, and no business’ around here hire you into a full-time position. So you will be wasting your time only earning $40 paychecks a week, and its always a lot less after all the taxes are deducted. Obamacare’s new labour tax sort of bugs me, I am going to be pissed as hell if it passes, which it will since the majority are ignorant liberals.
I agree to an extent of the difference of academic freedom. In Europe, your education branches off after Middle School, you can go to a Trade School or an Academic School. However, it is incorrectly implemented, it is based off of a State standardized test.
The U.S has a huge lack of academic freedom, public schools you either meet the standards or drop out. In Europe, you meet the standards while choosing where to go. In the U.S the Government has determined what is important for you to know. In Europe, the Government trusts the students with vouchers that they will learn what is important to THEM. The U.S tries to make all students the same, and then they have to compete their scores to get any meaning out of life. In Europe, there is a huge diversity of students who can’t get the Education they want.
I am not enjoying my College education at the moment, because I am not taking anything I enjoy due to the stupid Gen. Ed requirements. I wish I could spend that FAFSA money on something i want to learn instead of Public Speaking and a whole English class on Essay Writing.
Ha, so it’s ok for you to profit from taxes, not ok for you to pay them. Man, you crack me up.
There are many wealthy people who also consume drugs, and distribute large amounts of their incomes to that effect. The level of success is generally irrelevant when it comes to drugs. In any case, you bring up a valuable point in regards to unemployment and the current recession? Do you believe that a college education will necessarily allow you to get a higher paying job during a recession? I work at Kmart. One of my coworkers has a bachelors from Berkley in philosophy. A supervisor has a dual bachelors (not sure which university she got it from) in Greek and Latin. One of the new assistant managers is a business graduate from Standford (she might be an assistant manager, but it’s still Kmart and it’s still a worthless pay check). There are two issues to consider:
On the other hand, people who put their intelligence to good use and learned a trade are not going to be as poorly prepared for the future as a college graduate who has a degree in worthless field, or a field that does not really interest him. I have a friend who graduated from UCSD with a degree in economics and has found nothing, because he doesn’t really love economics. Another friend graduated with a joint economics-mathematics major, and he loves financial economics, and he has found partial “success” (in an internship that he likes).
My point is that there is an opportunity cost to going to college. Sometimes going to college is really not worth it. You can find similar or greater success in another field. You are not looking at all the dimensions to the issue.
One thing before I go into this: I like to get wasted, and I get straight As. 
College should be open to those who are willing to pay for it. In a free market, that service would be provided. In a largely regulated market instead it can be offered almost for free (unless you’re Caucasian) and it can graduate a disproportionate amount of people who are still not ready for the real world.
So, paying for your life by robbing a store is OK as long as it’s only paying for 50% of your life’s bills?
That’s why you learn a skill. Intellectual education is not the only way to invest in human capital.
It depends where in Europe. In Spain, you do two years of “instituto” (or high school). At age 17 you can either choose to remain in school or you can leave high school and figure your life out. If you choose to stay in school you do what is called a “bachelors program”, which basically orients you in two fields (science or the arts) and once you do go to a five-year university your major will be in one of the two fields you decided to do your “bachelors program” in. A very large percentage of people in Spain do not go to college, and they are doing just fine and they are not losers. In fact, while in the United States the average university requires higher than a 3.0 GPA, in Spain you can get into a university with a 5/10 or 6/10, which 50% or 60%. That shows the shortage of students that universities have.
I bet the person that that FAFSA money belongs to wishes he or she could have that money back.
Hey, I’ll pay $4 an hour to clean my room. Oh, no, wait. That’s illegal. Sorry!
Where else can I apply my intelligence man!? If I stay out of school, and just have intellectual conversations with people everyone will tell me “Your smart, you should be in College”, and thats what a lot of people have told me.
There is some truth to that but there isn’t a way you can work your way up to an Engineering trade without going to school. I am going for a Biochemistry degree for a job in Materials Science/Chemist. Not to mention, if I wasn’t in school my family relatives and friends parents would harass the shit out of me about being a “loser” and not doing anything with my life. So its a social pressure as well as liking being in a learning institution.
What if someone gets to College and then finds out that it isn’t worth the time? Then they will have wasted all the money for the tuition and books right? The Gen. Ed requirements make a lot of people want to drop out after the first year. FAFSA money is only for working parents with kids, I am on my parents FAFSA money. It is so that parents who have to raise kids, and maintain a job CAN go to school, how else would this be possible? They need to be able to pay to make a living, raising kids, as well as education.
What is this mainstream Liberal delusion that everyone lives in?
Go see a therapist, oh and pay for it yourself.
They need what they need, but they don’t need it from me. They got married, had kids, and bought things. Their choices, their responsibility. Not Mine.
Take care of those you care for. I frankly don’t care for you or your family ergo keep your greedy hands off of my shit.
If I didn’t go to college, I would be vigorously working to start my own computer/electronics business.
Usin mah brain.
I know how you feel. It sucks to be in college and have to many ideas for a business.
My dad told me in my teens that he found university students were as slack as high school students. I didn’t fully believe him, but I found exactly the same when I went to community college. Post-secondary “education” is mostly a bunch of slacker teens whose parents or teachers pushed them into it and they typically finish as slack, stupid and incompetent as when they started. Imagine you are hiring for a skilled position and someone applies with 80% exam score. That means he is going to screw up about 20% of everything he does.
I write for my own blog, which gets a not-too-decent amount of viewers every day (on days that I link spam a lot I might get several hundred, but usually it’s around 80 per day), and I plan to start writing for some type of publication (where I would write for free, but at least I get experience). It’s an intellectual outlet I have, despite the fact that I work at Kmart and I go to Community College. I will be transferring to SDSU this coming summer to complete my bachelors in economics and political science. I will not be accepting any government money. There are private scholarships you can apply for by showing off your intellect. There were at least three essay contests in November for money. I wrote for one, and I doubt I will win it (I didn’t even proofread; I wrote it three months before its due date and completely forgot about it until the day it was due). You can individually petition to businesses for grants and scholarships.
There are ways of collecting the money to go to college that do not require theft.
If you can’t afford it, who are they to harass you about it? Besides, as aforementioned there are ways you can afford it. You can use your intellect to set up a business, et cetera. I think the problem is that you see the easy way out, and you are unwilling to think of alternative routes. Admittedly, one of the biggest problems is the expense of going to college, but that is only a result of the State. It is an unfortunate reality that we have to live with.
There are other outlets in life than just higher education. The majority of higher education students probably do not end up using their own human capital to its fullest potential because they are coerced into inefficient avenues.
Are you only not accepting Government money because its “immoral”? I don’t think its unlibertarian to accept things like FAFSA or Pell Grants, to have an easy way out. Its just how the system is right now, as general rule, if you want to get through life you HAVE to use the establishment to your advantage, but you don’t have to submit to it.
It would be dishonest of me to say yes. I don’t need the money. I have multiple other ways of gathering the revenue to pay for university:
I don’t believe that this is the case. I don’t believe that just because I legally can that I should. If the government made it OK to steal from a man’s pocket for a day, would you still think it moral for you to do so? Of course, nobody is innocent of using government money. The fact is that I am transferring into a state school, and it is inevitable that the government will pay for part of the tuition (that’s why tuition remains relatively cheap). But, I try to keep my voluntary theft to a minimum.
Additionally, while Unions are unlibertarian, I am in one just so I an keep my damn job. I will be ****ed without it, and it seems like you can get fired when you aren’t expecting it. My last job at the Nursing Home as a dietary aide, I was fired for being incompetent. I was pretty sure I always worked well, I wasn’t being lazy as far as I know. One day they called me up, and snook up on me, told me a few of the Dishes from the previous night had some dirt spots on them. Then, I was fired for being incompetent. As of this, I don’t just employers anymore for a stable job.
I really don’t understand Nursing Homes, my friend’s mom was an RNA nurse for 10 years, and got fired from that same place.
Probably due to something else… My mom quit working at a nursing home because there was a lot of shady stuff going on. Like she was pressured to put beds underneath air conditioners so people would get sick and die. Not kidding about this.
They probably had some other reason to fire you 
You don’t HAVE to obtain stolen money from anyone in order to survive. I worked for minimum wage and paid for 2 years of community college by myself and now I am about to take out student loans to complete 2 more years at a university. If you really feel you need to go to college, then take out loans and pay for it yourself later, you have no right to obtain it for free.
Says who? The Government makes most thigns accepted.
Then you are not a libertarian, libertarians are not in favor forcing people to give you something that you have not earned. Let alone that this is something that you could easily obtain with student loans.
If the government did not offer FAFSA and instead citizens would be allowed to hold onto that money that otherwise would have gone to the government to fund FAFSA everyone would be a little bit richer, allowing them to save a little bit more for college. Also funding for private scholarships would increase because citizens would have more money to donate. I think the best way to fund a collage education is through private scholarships and financial aid offered by the college or university, not through tax payer dollars. Less money will be wasted through needless work that federal government preforms.