This is really sad, that means that used to all you had to do to be able to support a family was work hard, now if you can't get into college you're basically screwed
If you're out of High School, only an idiot would work more than a year or so at minimum wage. Instead, show some fucking initiative and quit thinking the world owes you something...
Agreed. Minimum wage just means "I would literally pay you less if it weren't illegal" If you work anywhere for dam near any amount of time you no longer make minimum wage. If you do, its because your job is ridiculously easy and you are super replaceable. If you show any initiative at all, its pretty likely you'll get a raise and no longer be making the "minimum". As to the needing a college degree and being so in debt after graduating, 1) There are plenty of jobs that just require a high school diploma, are you likely to be a CEO making millions? No, unless you start your own company, but theres still plenty of room to go up and make a living. 2) Don't get a degree in stupid things. Why get a degree in it if you know it will barely help you get a job, the job won't ever pay for what you spent, you'll have wasted 4+ years not fully working (in which you could have been getting raises and working your way up). Doesnt make any sense.
And 3) there are plenty of colleges that aren't that expensive. You don't have to go to Harvard or Yale or some other expensive private school, go to your local college, find something in state rather than out of state. Try something thats not the 1 or 2 "big" schools in your state since they'll be much cheaper. Unless your degree is from Harvard or MIT, and you are applying to a pretty high end hard to get to job, nobody is going to give a shit what school you went to, they are going to see you got a degree in whatever, and thats that. I know people that had families, kids, full time jobs, and they STILL went to college and paid for it as they went.
4) If you still can't afford it, apply for scholarships. There are thousands of thousands of scholarships out there, offering anything as much as $100 towards books, up to full ride scholarships. It all adds up. I know a local organization that gives out scholarships to the nearby university (contd)
the organization gives out 3 full year scholarships (which you can apply to every year and keep getting) with little to no requirements on them (Its as little as help out the organization for 2-3 days a couple hours a day). And do you know how many applicants they got for them last year? FOUR. FOUR people for 3 full year scholarships. Only four people could get off their lazy butts and even apply for something worth thousands. This is a fairly common problem I've seen from talking with multiple other organizations that do scholarships
You make a good argument. My concern, though, is that universities shouldn't have been allowed to evolve into trade schools. Those already existed; the university is supposed to be a centre of innovation - not a means of producing wage earners and taxpayers. The more we commercialise universities, the less capable they are of focussing on their core purpose, and the less we can expect to thrive intellectually. If people are going to university so that they can get a job, that institution has been appropriated by the capitalist agenda. What was one of our greatest cultural productions has become another cog in the machine.
4) If you still can't afford it, apply for scholarships. There are thousands of thousands of scholarships out there, offering anything as much as $100 towards books, up to full ride scholarships. It all adds up. I know a local organization that gives out scholarships to the nearby university (contd)