The only thing interesting about a Highschool diploma is not having one. Tell a potential employer you have a high school diploma, and they will likely not even respond. Tell a potential employer you do not have a high school diploma, and they may chuckle as they say “thanks for coming in.” This paradox is what makes the notion of free college education ludicrous. Free college is nothing but “Education Inflation”. Just as injecting massive amounts of unbacked “money” into an economy decreases currency purchasing power, increasing the number of people with college degrees devalues college education.
Value, at least regarding measures, metrics, and commodities, is based on supply and demand. The rarer and more scarce a product is, the higher its potential cost. The more common and easily obtained a commodity is, the less worth it has, especially concerning monetary value. A free college education is the creation of yet another “high school” diploma. The college degree will mean as little to potential employers as the Highschool diploma, it will count for almost nothing. However, not having a college degree will also certainly count against you.
Colleges will become “second” Highschool. Another emotional holding pattern, further stunting young adults, keeping them effectually children and out of the workforce where they can start earning an income and voting with their dollars. I can see why the Communist directed Neoliberal/Socialists love this idea. They desire the creation of the total Nanny state, where all decisions are made by the State, and its citizens kept docile, not determined, catered too and not challenged, entertained and not engaged, imprisoned by fear of want for trivial needs, not empowered through the confrontation of lacking purpose.
Through this model, adults become nothing more than bigger versions of children, unable to see the value of suffering and struggle to attain something worth having. The “Blue Ribbon” becomes a threat, while the “Participation Ribbon” is celebrated. No one is above the State, other than the State it’s self. Who pays for college? Well, everyone. We all get to pay for the privilege of mediocracy through the threat of violence. And as it is the Government who is so graciously providing the “free” but yet not really free, college education, you can bet the educating itself will go to the lowest bidder, and be far more what to think based indoctrination rather than how to think based education. Why would your government paid government professor teach you anything negative about his or her government?
In China, there is no mention of the student-led demonstrations in Beijing at Tiananmen Square. The below photo cannot be accessed by anyone in China unless they have a special security clearance. An event which sent shockwaves around the world only 30 years ago, memory-holed in the most populous nation on earth. Ah, the wonders of a tyrannical government.
China’s college education isn’t even free, it’s just at a significantly reduced cost to citizens. Just imagine what this country could memory hole with a “free” college education and a bat shit crazy socialist ideological government at the helm.
I shudder to think…
-Kevin Wikse
Might and Magick 