Before I start, I just want to say that these are basic, common sense things that everybody can agree on - with the exception of the goons on the top who are getting rich off of scamming students.
Text books. Text books are the most bullshit scam colleges have. Why do we need a new text book every two or three years? And why does that text book have to cost $200? And WHAT THE HELL is with all that bonus crap like the CD that comes with text books? Only ONCE in my entire life did I have a class that actually required using the CD that came with the text book.
Commercials for colleges. Commercials for bullshit for profit schools like Devry or ITT Tech have been around forever, but recently I’ve seen commercials for “real” schools too. When I saw a commercial for Depaul University on MTV, I immediately decided not to attend that school. Depaul is overpriced enough as it is, and the fact that they spend money on an expensive advertisement is down-right immoral. A commercial on MTV costs a lot of money - that money should go towards scholarships for students. I saw a commercial for COD, the community college I go to, and I felt ashamed.
Financial Aid. Filling out a FAFSA and figuring out how financial aid works is more complicated than a lot of college classes I’ve taken. Why the hell is it so complicated? One thing that the idiots behind the financial aid system need to get rid of is the “Expected Family Contribution” bullshit. The government, for some ignorant reason, believes that if a kid’s parents make a lot of money, then they’re going to use that money to pay for their kid’s education. Well, government goons, just because your parents paid for your education and careers doesn’t mean everyone else is so lucky. There simply should be no expected family contribution. If someone’s parents do pay for their college, then good for them. But it’s ignorant and offensive to assume that just because someone’s parents CAN pay for their education, that they will.
Another problem with student loans is that they’re TOO accessible. If you don’t get enough loans in your financial aid package, you can take out Parent PLUS loans. If that’s not an option, there are hundreds of banks preying on prospective college students offering them thousands of dollars in loans. People taking out excessive loans they couldn’t afford is what caused the housing market crash. It’s just a matter of time before the same thing happens with the higher education market.
But as long as students can take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans, colleges can keep jacking up their prices. If there were less loans available, colleges would be forced to cut their costs down in order to keep a decent number of students.
The quality of education. I took an English class where I had a 5 page writing assignment about men in the nursing field. Double spaced. And this is college! Not only are the assignments dumbed down to high school level, but the professors are often biased. If a professor is a radical feminist who thinks it’s offensive that a man would want to work in a traditionally female career field, such professor has the right to give you a lower grade than you deserve.
Art education is a joke. Go to the Art Institute of Chicago or any other major art museum, and you’re sure to see why. The best works of art were all created at least a century ago. Art teachers put way too much emphasis on being unique. It doesn’t matter if your work is good or if you tried hard, as long as it’s unique. Scribble on a canvas and poke some holes in it and it’s considered a masterpiece. THAT is a problem.
College hippies. College is full of “hippies.” Hippies are upper middle class young white people who’ve had everything handed to them and have been raised to believe that they are always right (because they’re parents don’t believe in punishment - instead they just sit down and talk about it). Hippies believe that if you study business, you’re evil. Hippies claim to be openminded yet passionately oppose things they know nothing about. The word “corporation,” for example, is a four letter word to hippies, yet not a single hippie is able to define what a corporation is. Hippies major in art, women’s studies, and philosophy, because their parents pay for their education. Hippies look at students studying engineering, technology, or medical related fields as boring and too concerned with getting jobs out of college. Hippies proclaim constantly, “I’m a nerd! I’m a nerd!” They have facebook photos of themselves in strange poses wearing nerd glasses, doing ridiculous things like holding chairs over their heads. They spend all this time making facebook pictures yet will be the first to say, “I never use facebook.” True nerds, unlike hippie wanna-be-nerds, actually don’t use facebook.
For further reading on the college hippie trend I suggest the books Stuff White People Like and Trustafarian. Don’t know the authors off the top of my head and been blogging too long to care.
And while the college hippie thing was more or less a rant, the first three are serious issues that need to be changed! This post will most likely be deleted when I take the time to write a more articulate essay on the topic since I kinda did this all in one sitting and am on a caffeine high ATM.
PS if you want a college hippie to REALLY hate you, buy them Starbucks.
PPS thanks to all 18 TUMBLRs who noted last months entry. 18 notes from strangers on something I posted at random means a lot to me <3
