![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/nooses/bRwraZON-image.png)



A real head-scratcher is why people view examples of job postings for $15 an hour and asking that applicants have a Master's Degree as an argument for tuition free public college. It's an argument for the opposite. It's proof that public college is already inflated to the point that it has almost no value. Subsidizing it will just inflate it more.

Money isn't the only metric of cost. Time is a big factor too. If you're living under the impression that the problem with companies wanting people to go through a minimum of six years of college to qualify for a $32 thousand per year job will be offset if people just don't need to pay tuition, you're more high now than I ever got in college. It's costing people time.

But, isn't education a public good? Well, yeah it is. Schooling and education aren't the same thing though. Mark Twain famously said "I never let schooling get in the way of my education." Twain, by the way, never went to college. There's nothing about having a degree that allows people to predict success. I know people with PhDs who make $70k per year. I have a BA and I've easily made that. I don't even know where my degree is. Nobody has asked to see it. There are people who got out of high school and learned how to be an electrician or an HVAC technician who make six figures. Bill Gates is a college drop out. Jeff Bezos has a degree from Princeton; but, he doesn't have an advanced degree.

No, I want to do the opposite. I want to deflate the value of college. If you want to be a doctor or an engineer or a rocket scientist, yeah, probably go to college. You'll probably be able to pay back the loans.

If you're going to study something useless like sociology, gender studies, or Ancient Gypsy Literature, maybe get a job doing something useful and pay for the classes out of your own pocket. That will make college a hell of a lot cheaper for everybody.

What we need to do is stop telling teenagers that they need to spend their formative years in a classroom in order to have some hope of getting a job. College isn't and shouldn't be for everybody. Hell, these days, a lot of people are coming out of college stupider than they were when they came in. I've met people with Master's degrees who don't know the difference between "census" and "consensus."