The New Indentured Servitude

Indentured servitude was a way for people to come to the Americas without having the money to do it. The idea was that you would be brought across the Atlantic, and after your voyage you would work for the person that brought you until you paid back the debt. It was a way for people with little means to seek new opportunities.

Sound familiar?

Our system of higher education is indentured servitude. The idea is that you journey through school for four years (though in many cases it’s way more than that), and after your journey you work for the person that brought you until you pay back the debt. It is a way for people with little means to seek new opportunities.

Except when it’s not.

For most jobs, college is totally unnecessary. Before our bloated system of higher education, people learned trades. It was very possible to learn a trade and earn middle-class income. Even today, the notion that college is necessary to lead a decent life is simply not true.

The fact is most jobs, even office jobs, are skill jobs where well over half of what you learn in college is totally useless to you. Most people would be better off going to a trade school, where they would learn what they need to know to actually do their job, and they would be done faster, thus paying less.

This isn’t an idea totally out of left field. Colleges are actually becoming glorified trade schools with jacked up price tags. From my four years in college I would be willing to venture that the number one complaint I heard from classmates was, “Will I ever use this at a job?”

Students aren’t the only ones with complaints. I’ve heard professors complain, both candidly and in lectures, that the new college student doesn’t care to push the limits of their understanding, instead only caring about learning what’s necessary to get them through a job interview.

Simply put, the concept of college has changed dramatically from what it originally was: a place for people who wanted to learn to go learn. This changing dynamic is changing the way colleges operate and the way professors teach.

Our labor system has become one where you take out loans, mostly from the government, to go to school for four years and learn a trade. You then work for the rest of your life to pay back your debt to the government. It’s just like the old system of indentured servitude, except with compound interest you can only hope to pay your debt back instead of leaving it to your kids. That’s right: even if you die they don’t go away.

Without even thinking, a kid coming out of high school will take out a huge amount of loans to go to school, because their entire life they have been sold this cockamamy idea that if they don’t, they will be nothing. Just like that, without even thinking, they are indentured servants for the rest of their life.