I’ve read quite a few articles saying that young men are abandoning college. Here’s one of them, but there are others. So I thought I’d put my own thoughts out there on this question: young people, should you go to college?
I’m putting this on my blog because my thoughts might be a bit rough on this topic, but I think there are a lot of influencers out there that are likely to give one kind of advice or another for their own benefit and without regard to the benefits of the young people seeking for advice. Moreover, I’m not sure if anyone will even read this, but here it goes…
First, disclaimer: I went to college and got my PhD. Even if I had known then what I know now, I’d probably go still because my goal at the time was to achieve a high-level understanding of mathematics, which I love. And I’d still go, even though I have a strong dislike modern academic mathematics, and would never want to work there.
So, should you go to college? The most pertinent answer is that in a lot of potential pathways in life, college will help you gain resources in this world you’ll need to survive. That’s not true of all colleges, of all degrees, and of all pathways though. Fluffy degrees or even liberal arts degrees might help less than a STEM degree especially if you’re at the top of your class, of course. But in any case, there are simply lots of pathways in life where a college degree will help you out. I went a little farther than the average degree but I did get a couple high-paying jobs after I graduated, so that’s something.
That being said, I do think the college pathway is somewhat empty. And by empty, I mean that a lot of going to college for a lot of people will be doing things that just don’t have that much real meaning in life. College prepares you mainly to be a cog, and a lot of people just won’t use what they learned after college at all. Academia is all about furthering global capitalism, not about changing anything, and academics have mostly lost their will to do serious good in the world, with a few exceptions of course. Ultimately, when you get down to it, academia is a factory for producing listless machines to make the richest of society richer.
But, if you enjoy learning about complicated topics, it can be interesting and challenging. If you want to get a big job somewhere doing something technical and intellectual, chances are, it can help you, too. If you’re after just any degree for the hell of it because it will help you get hired, then it probably will increase your chances of being hired somewhere.
But, if you’re looking for something worthwhile in life, you also have a good chance of simultaneously being disappointed and disillusioned with a college degree. And if you’re very intelligent, then there’s also a good chance you can find something else to do that has nothing to do with college.
I think I can sum up all these thoughts with this: college is one of the cornerstones of our destructive system of global capitalism. It’s not generally an ethical place, and chances are you’ll be surrounded by a bunch of wayward souls who are probably using AI to get around learning anything. It has sufficient complexity so that you might be able to create an environment for yourself to learn something and possibly become a more educated person, but it’s also often a cesspit of moral listlessness that can be demoralizing as well.
So, should you get that degree? Well, it has a chance of helping you, but even if it does, it’s a very suboptimal solution that you need to guard yourself against. If you can get a good degree that will actually challenge you without making you indebted to the system financially, it will probably be a good thing. But if you can think of some truly viable alternatives and only want to get “just any degree” because it’s the “thing to do”, then it’s worth thinking about those alternatives.
Sorry I couldn’t give a more definite answer, but then again…life ain’t simple. But I will tell you something. If you do go to college and you do get a high-paying job, have a definite plan to leave that career pathway and do something more simple with life, instead of getting stuck for 30 years in the system. In my opinion, having a plan to exit the grind of global capitalism is a far more important thing than deciding on whether to go to college.