I think you can sort kids into a couple of categories, which have dramatically different needs.
Kids with a lot of agency who know college is optional- hearing it again is neither helpful nor harmful.
Kids with lots of potential agency but are still locked onto the academic tracks- hearing that college is optional and has trade-offs is very helpful.
Kids who don’t yet have the kind of agency that would let them create their own superior counterfactual, and for whom college isn’t a financial albatross- danger zone. Can push kids onto the “track” of no-college, which they are not prepared to steer themselves. College Sucks is enough of a meme that I’ve met high schoolers for whom the freeing statement would have been “you’re allowed to go to college”.
Kids for whom college would be a financial albatross- hearing that college is optional is helpful.
Overall I feel like college is the wrong unit for debate. All of the alternatives Ben mentions are good, but none require you to foreswear college- you could do in a gap year or college break, or as a hobby during high school, college, or early career. Getting people thinking about what they could do, and how college trades offs with those plans, seems much more valuable.
To rephrase more constructively: @Ben Pace I’d love to hear you talk about the things you did that were more valuable than college. If interview-style would help I volunteer for a dialogue.
solved: i think you mean it as this wikipedia article describes:
The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden (most often associated with guilt or shame) that feels like a curse.
Correct. I basically meant people who can only attend college with a lot of debt, and won’t obviously have a career that makes it an easy burden, but didn’t want to go on a time-consuming tangent about the conditionals.
I think you can sort kids into a couple of categories, which have dramatically different needs.
Kids with a lot of agency who know college is optional- hearing it again is neither helpful nor harmful.
Kids with lots of potential agency but are still locked onto the academic tracks- hearing that college is optional and has trade-offs is very helpful.
Kids who don’t yet have the kind of agency that would let them create their own superior counterfactual, and for whom college isn’t a financial albatross- danger zone. Can push kids onto the “track” of no-college, which they are not prepared to steer themselves. College Sucks is enough of a meme that I’ve met high schoolers for whom the freeing statement would have been “you’re allowed to go to college”.
Kids for whom college would be a financial albatross- hearing that college is optional is helpful.
Overall I feel like college is the wrong unit for debate. All of the alternatives Ben mentions are good, but none require you to foreswear college- you could do in a gap year or college break, or as a hobby during high school, college, or early career. Getting people thinking about what they could do, and how college trades offs with those plans, seems much more valuable.
To rephrase more constructively: @Ben Pace I’d love to hear you talk about the things you did that were more valuable than college. If interview-style would help I volunteer for a dialogue.
Very helpful breakdown!
Perhaps a better debate for Saul and I would’ve been for us to debate between Saul going to college and a specific alternative plan for Saul.
what do you mean by “financial albatross”?
solved: i think you mean it as this wikipedia article describes:
Correct. I basically meant people who can only attend college with a lot of debt, and won’t obviously have a career that makes it an easy burden, but didn’t want to go on a time-consuming tangent about the conditionals.