Four Reasons To Not Attend College.

Christopher Seaton
Jul 20, 2017 · 6 min read

Social media’s been asking and answering rather peculiar questions lately.

  1. Why are parents keeping their children from college?
  2. Why are kids getting college offers, but not attending?
  3. Why are political groups, specifically Republicans, opposed to college?

The last question gets an easy, snarky retort from many Democrats: “Well, it’s easier to keep the masses in line when they’re not educated.” It’s nice to be able to resort to snark and insults without clearly thinking.

Unfortunately for many on the left, snark doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. It just keeps one in a bubble. If you think about it long and hard, and really study the world around you, it’s very easy to find strong, bipartisan reasons to not attend college.

  1. Higher Education is now Higher Indoctrination.

At one point, higher education was actually a laudable achievement. Colleges and universities were places where you could walk in the door of a classroom knowing fundamental ideas you held closely would be challenged. You would learn to think critically and examine the world around you.

It’s hard to point to a specific moment in time, but somewhere the focus of college and higher education shifted from teaching to indoctrination. Gone are the days when a professor would dare question a student’s beliefs, or start an open dialogue. Now students are taught what to think, when to think it, and given instructional forms for proper pronoun usage.

Stray from that line and you become everything you were taught in life was bad. If you fall out of step with your local campus indoctrination machine, more commonly referred to as the school’s “Office of Diversity and Inclusion,” you will be a racist, sexist, transohomophobic bigot.

Professors don’t even get to teach their own subjects without some form of suggestion on how to teach. It’s hard at some law schools to teach the fundamentals of sexual assault laws without fear of “triggering” someone or “normalizing” sexual violence.

Imagine how an alleged rapist feels when his attorney meets him for the first time and says “Um, I had to look up what you’re charged with because we never covered it at my school.”

Which leads us to the next reason not to attend college.

2. Colleges aren’t safe for anyone.

The first thing to know when you step foot on a college campus is before you sow your oats, talk to someone you find attractive, or worse yet, attempt to engage in consensual sex, you must obtain that person’s informed consent, signed in triplicate, with a backup copy stored somewhere off campus.

You can thank Catherine Lhamon and Russlyn Ali, two former members of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for this little boondoggle. In 2011, they penned a “Dear Colleague” letter informing schools of their obligations under Title IX of the Educational Amendments act of 1972 to protect students from sexual assault on campus. If they failed to follow OCR’s guidelines in the “Dear Colleague” letter, the potential of losing Federal funding existed.

There’s just one glaring flaw in the “Dear Colleague” letter. Title IX isn’t a law worded to protect students from sexual assault. In fact, there’s not a single word it Title IX involving sexual assault. It’s a law involving sexual discrimination.

How did this law that’s not a law become enforceable and rabidly used on college campuses? Because Catherine Lhamon said so. No lawmaker amended Title IX, and no legislative body crafted the law to extend its provisions to rape and other forms of sexual assault. Lhamon wanted otherwise, and did so “with gratitude” once confirmed to her office.

Now, if someone regrets having a drunken hook-up the next day, it’s a simple matter of contacting the campus Title IX coordinator to start a kangaroo investigation process and hearing with a lower standard of proof than if your alleged rapist actually went through the court system.

Sexual assault isn’t the only concern. If you go to a college campus you are potentially at risk for physical violence. All it takes is one controversial speaker at your campus and there’s a good chance protestors will burn buildings, swing bike locks at you, pepper spray you, and put your professors in a neck brace.

3. The Lunatics Run The Asylum

Three incidents are worth mentioning here, but they all demonstrate the same point. Colleges used to be places where professors taught and students learned. Disrespect your teacher and you’d be shown the door. Continue the behavior and you’ll get kicked out of class, possibly with a failing grade.

Not any more. Now, the students tell the teachers what to do with the blessing of the administration. Submitted for your approval:

  1. Oberlin College. The maelstrom of campus craziness, students actually protested the cafeteria’s food preparation of ethnic dishes, calling it a form of “cultural appropriation.”
  2. The University of Missouri. Following a student’s hunger strike to protest what he saw as systemic racism on campus, Mizzou erupted into a frenzy where professors grabbed cameras from journalists and asked for “muscle” to help.
  3. Evergreen State College. Professor Bret Weinstein publicly refused to participate in a symbolic “Day of Absence” where white people were not welcome on campus. A self described “deeply progressive” biology professor who voted for Bernie Sanders, Weinstein objected to this demonstration with the following rationale:

On a college campus, one’s right to speak — or to be — must never be based on skin color.

For this display of anti-racism, Weinstein was labeled a racist, booted from campus due to lack of security, his wife was threatened, and the campus went on lockdown due to safety threats.

Students called for his resignation. Faculty told Weinstein he had no place defending himself on college campuses. Weinstein’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, according to Evergreen students and staff, put the campus at risk.

And the administration’s done nothing to support Weinstein, a professor who left an Ivy-league education over concerns of racism, to teach at Evergreen. In fact, the head of the college seems to validate the students’ misplaced assertions Weinstein is a racist.

4. Debt!

How much is tuition at your local university? Go ahead, take a look. Four years of that could get you a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

But don’t worry. Even if you don’t land a full ride scholarship to the college of your choice, you can always take out a loan with huge interest rates to cover the rest of your bill. You’ll be able to pay it back, provided you meet a couple of conditions.

(a) Your degree is something people actually have a demand for. This is going to bother a lot of people, but Jeremy Piven’s line in the film PCU about being able to major in Game Boy is now a reality. And there’s just not too many jobs available for people with Gender Studies degrees, no matter how much you’d like to believe otherwise.

(b) You actually find a job that has a demand for your degree. Believe it or not, this is hard on the employer and the employee. With tech companies like Zip Recruiter promising to automate the process and get the right person to the right job, your resume may never see the light of an employer’s desk.

( c ) You get a salary decent enough to pay your student loan debt and the light bill on. Without the money to do both, you run the risk of defaulting on your massive student loans. Suddenly, you’re looking at making that payment or going to the grocery store. People like to eat, so the option of default starts to look really good. Until you realize it tanks your ability to buy a house, get a car, rent, and do a whole host of things people do.

There you go. Four good reasons to find something else to do than attend college. Maybe a trade school will be better for you. Perhaps you can enter the workforce. If you’re one of those folks with a “higher education” reading this and sneering at people who don’t have much of an eye for college, maybe this will help change your perspective.

Somehow, I bet it won’t.

)
Christopher Seaton

Written by

Attorney. Mediator. See http://mediationisdead.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade