The Anti-College Movement: A Movement of Elitists

God help us if this is the advice we’re giving young adults:

I like to put it this way: You never see a dude pull up in a Ferrari and think, “Oh, I bet he has a college degree!” So, I tell my kids, why would you walk a path that by design does not lead to wealth and prosperity?

That’s Bobby Kittleberger, quoted in the Fox News article Adults who skipped college urge high school grads to follow suit, say rewards are ‘immeasurable’. Any way you read the quote, it’s elitist. One says it with their nose turned up and their eyes cast down, shaming those who drive a Mazda or who enjoy teaching or who do good work for modest pay. This, in a nutshell, is today’s anti-college movement … a movement that 1) defines life by wealth and 2) shames personal choice.

Higher education, of course, needs to be improved, and higher education, of course, isn’t for everyone. But in addressing these ideas, many focus solely on money as if college’s only purpose is to “wealthify” graduates. This is elitism, the idea that college — regardless of who you are or what you want — is a good investment ONLY IF it leaves you financially and materialistically “superior.”

The Shame Game

Consider the article Gen Z is the new threat to the American college experience. In it, Business Insider’s Ayelet Sheffey quotes Gen Zer Sadie Shaw as saying:

It has been amazing for me to not be in debt. I have no student loans, like so many of my friends are in $100,000 in debt and student loans just to get a job that pays $60,000 a year.

Like Kittleberger’s quote, this oozes with economic “shaming.” It’s not enough to simply say “I’m doing well”; there’s the added spite … i.e., her “many” friends (a generalization) are “$100,000 in debt” (an exaggeration) and only making “$60,000 a year” (a guesstimate). These “many friends” — when compared to Shaw — must be poor, unhappy, and foolish (that’s the subtle suggestion). It’s an elitist observation, the same way an elitist…