Earlier this week, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders posted a tweet that spoke of how he’d much rather prefer to see students being put through college than going to jail. In response to his tweet, Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” and “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” objected to Sanders’ absolutist portrayal of an issue that is quite complicated. Rowe’s point, in response to Sanders, was that there are many ways to find success in life which don’t require a college degree. As a matter of fact, the romanticizing of higher education has taken what should solely stand as a fantastic opportunity and corrupted the minds of the current generation into thinking that the only way to the promised land is to go to a certain school, or achieve a certain degree, or even that, as Rowe states, the path of collegiate education is even the best way for most people to achieve a good life. Having been raised in the shadow of the collegiate system, I’ve seen both the bounty and the famine of what a life around academia can bring, and I’d be lying if I said my view lands totally on Sanders’ (perceived) side or Rowe’s (blatant) side.
From a basic perspective, I require education to be essential. I think the tireless pursuit and search for understanding the human condition, that equipping the workforce of the future across all industries via schooling in their fields is the way in which society functions. I think having a chance to be exposed to the realities of life away from comfort zones are necessary, and that being able to have tangible evidence of achievement is a fulfilling and worthy venture which makes the debts someone puts into their education worth the disparity.
Absolutely none of what I wrote in the last paragraph is achievable only through attendance at a university.
‘Education’ is as much of an industry as it is an essential; the people who go to the schools Sanders mention are attempting to then move into a certain job market, stratified by the same separatist logic that constitutes the university system: ‘you went here, so you deserve to go here to work because people who go here are the most successful/prosperous/people with the best outlook because x, y, z. Now, give me 60k per year for my degree, please, thanks, bye.’ Or, in terms of many jobs which constitute the ‘rat race’ of daily life, ‘now give me your soul/vitality and, in return, I, the employer, shall pay you and also instill a creeping sense of dread that you are a piece in a machine never present enough to be confirmed but never absent in your daily life’. Again, I’ve grown up in privilege because both my parents were degree-holding college-ites who instilled the value of education in me, but here’s a secret:
My mother, father, and my own life -- we were all built by the people Mike Rowe highlights, and continues to only be sustained due to the fact those same people have achieved the same goals of education in a different realm many in academia are afraid to touch. Nobody is ‘better’ for having a college degree, nor are they ‘better’ because they went to certain school. Just because someone can explain the United States impact and attitude towards the ‘Open Door’ Policy instituted in China (and according to my midterm, I, for one, can only do that partially) does not mean they are more valuable than the dignified professionals who take what Rowe calls the ‘alternative path’. In Rowe’s words, “Does he [Sanders] not recognize that comments like his will encourage more kids who are better suited for an alternative path to borrow vast sums of money they’ll never be able to pay back in order to pay for a degree that won’t get them a job?”
Basically, my view is that we’re all essential in our own ways. I have been lucky to know outstanding friends and family members from both ‘paths’, and I care for them all the same. The (justifiably) perceived elitism remarked on by Rowe illustrates how we cannot allow ourselves to be separated by self-projected quasi-superiority – we are all in ‘this’ together, and true education, meaning the lessons of life, should never be exclusive.
