“College is a scam,” the finance bros on Twitter will tell you.
The Return on Investment is weak, hustle accounts proclaim.
“It is very weird that we’re convinced that the only way to get educated is through an official institution when we can access information on our own,” popular podcaster Joe Rogan argues, saying that a public library can provide everything a college can.
What’s more, the woke faculty and administrative staff will indoctrinate your kids and beat their faith out of them. They’ll turn your daughters into angry feminists who hate their dads and reject the idea of marriage, and they’ll turn your sons into Hamas sympathizers.
Under such a barrage, the conservative parent is tempted to say, “My kid’s not going to college.”
For many parents and many students, that’s the right decision. College costs a ton of money and years of a young adult’s life. Sometimes that cost is too much to bear, especially if it’s not seen as a financial investment in his or her career.
For instance, a recent Brookings Institution study found that a student who finishes two years at a community college and transfers to the state school to finish a bachelor’s degree ends up coming out behind. He’d be better off entering the workforce or going to trade school after community college.
But ROI isn’t always the right lens through which to consider college. And not every college is full of woke indoctrinators.
Here’s an alternative vision of your child’s post-high school education: It’s a continuation of what you’ve been doing for your child for his or her first 18 years.
Ask any parent of a high school graduate what the work of those first 18 years was for. None of them will say they were trying to train up good workers or maximize lifetime earnings. We raise our kids not to be economically productive, but to be honest, courageous, generous, and prudent.
Good parents don’t merely educate their children. Good parents try to form their sons and daughters into men and women of character.
We don’t merely try to install skills into our children, we try to instill virtues. If you think college cannot do this, you are looking at the wrong colleges.
A good Catholic college, for instance, will be a place where Catholic parents can reasonably hope their child’s faith will deepen, where a young man will make his faith his own. This isn’t true at all Catholic colleges, of course, and it’s not guaranteed at any college. But there are plenty of Catholic colleges that see their purpose as something higher than career prep. You’ll find a dozen of them in the Newman Guide, published by the Cardinal Newman Society.
Of course, plenty of non-Catholic colleges also aim to form men and women of character. Ask around among high-school teachers you trust or parents with older children, and you’ll learn about them.
And even the hard-left colleges can be a good formative experience, if the school also has conservative or religious little platoons where a student can find an oasis of sanity, accountability, and personal mentoring.
If your daughter could go to Princeton, for instance, don’t assume her experience would just be all the worst elements of the Ivy League. She might get connected with the Witherspoon Institute and find mentors who steer her towards the most fruitful classes with the best professors. If your son goes to the University of Florida, he could plug into the Hamilton School. There are analogies at dozens of elite private and public schools around the country.
Another point to consider: While most professors at most colleges are liberals, most liberal professors are not radicals or indoctrinators. Many have the old-fashioned view that they are supposed to educate your child rather than advance social justice and stamp out wrongthink.
THE DEMOCRATS’ ‘GERRYMANDERING BAN’ WAS NO SUCH THING
Finally, consider that college is a great place for your child to make lifelong friends and maybe even find a spouse.
Yes, careers matter. Yes, college is expensive. But you didn’t spend 18 years of your life raising a good employee. You’ve been trying to raise a good person. A good college can continue that work.