Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

I knew a teacher in a rural town. She had to raise funds just to buy books, paper, pencils, or anything else for the students to use. The whole operation was on donation.

Society gives up on the kids, the kids give up on society.

run for president , for you I will vote

> It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep.

The more college is shown to be failing the job market, the more I hear this argument.

Are people who don't go to college less enriched individuals?

Lately, academics seem to be shifting their value proposition to the instillation of this undetectable unmeasurable X-factor. We can't see it, we can't prove that it exists, but it's there, and its value is absolutely incalculable. How convenient for the sales pitch is this.

And I don't blame them. As knowledge and skills become accessible to everyone, that's the last defense they'll be left with. What else are they going to say? Our institution is completely out of touch with the job market and the economic realities of our nation, and this was all a complete waste of time?

Also, a lot of arguments in favor of college make the mistake of comparing it to nothing, and I think this argument is guilty of that.

I'll admit that college compares favorably to doing nothing, but people who skip college aren't just sitting alone in a room staring at a white wall while you're in your lectures. They have 1 year of life experiences for every 1 year of yours. Whatever it means to be an enriched individual, people who don't go to college can be just as enriched.

They can go live on their own too. They can take on responsibility, take on challenging work, have relationships, and most of them do. College was your path there and it worked well for you, and that's great. But I also agree with you that it's not ideal for everybody (or even for most people).

A friend of mine chose the college we went to specifically because she was told about all the need-based financial aid that's available to students like her.

You know, the kind that grew up learning to pick the mold off the bread and how awful government cheese was.

Imagine her surprise when there's no such thing as a free ride, and there wasn't actually so much available. Also, if you think there's enough "elite" universities around for America's poor (rural or otherwise) you're mistaken.

The real bottom line is, there's not much elite universities have to offer the rural life. Sure, there's certainly some places and jobs where it would help. For most people, and most jobs though, it's overkill.

[Edit] To clarify, if you've grown up in poverty or even lower-middle class in a central midwestern state, the travel costs of going to a uni on the coast is simply prohibitive. Add on top of that things that your peers will partake in (summer in the Hamptons or whatever) that you'll never be able to identify with. You'll always be on the outside, no matter what. Unless every high school graduate in the rural parts of the country decides to move to a big city, there's a whole lot more that a local technical school has to offer someone in that position.

This comes at, I think, a critical point for me. In short, I spent four years at a community college (completing my associate degree in CS and exhausting almost all the courses I found interesting i.e. Mysticism, Writing Short Fiction, etc), and now in the fall I'm planning to attend San Francisco State University for CS. A few old high school friends, who attend Berkeley (one just graduated and is starting work in finance in SF in the summer, the other is a junior studying for med school), tell me I ought to stay another year at community college and apply to better, top-tier schools in the fall. Their argument? While college, as you mentioned, has become just a pursuit for "paper credentials for a specialized position you want", they insist that the school you graduate from plays a crucial role and there is numerous benefits which out-do the benefits of attending a low-tier school. So here's a cliche question: What do you think I should do? It seems the obvious answer, given what you said and what other commenters have said, is just finish the degree, it doesn't matter what school you attend. I suppose I'm just trying to get a bit of perspective. If it helps any, here's a brief background: first-generation student, immigrant from Mexico, parents combined make roughly 31k in a house of 6 (I have three sisters), and we live in California.

Truthfully, I would just like to get my degree already and start hacking away (also: helping my parents financially, etc). I obviously do hack away now, but courses and part-time work usually take up most of my time, that I can't give attention to all the interesting and fascinating things out there to learn, build, etc, i.e. I have a spreadsheet of links to new technologies, blog posts, etc, that I would like to learn and build stuff with. So here's my plan: hack away this summer -> attend school in the fall -> study, work part-time, etc -> summer internship -> study, work part-time, etc, -> graduate -> summer internship -> entry-level job somewhere hopefully.