Why College: Parents?

Sometimes I wonder if the real reason for the college boom is not to educate us, but to help our parents let us go.

That is in part how I have always seen the college experience. We go from high school to college to a career, all prepped and ready for life. The upswing in college attendance statistics––helped greatly by the mass numbers of minorities who now have access to education––resulted in a flood of the educated elite. Unlike the days of the recent past, when any schmuck newly de-smocked and capped entered the work force, our generation has to look for a job. We are so many, the jobs are courting us no longer. Thus the much-joked college grad who is still flipping burgers three years down the line to pay the premium on his school loans is a sad reality.

None of this seems fair. And of course it is not.

Well, actually, it is entirely fair, since who said the graduate had to get a gold-studded job his first year out? Or even his fifth? He deserves it? Yes, that rushed research paper written the night before it was due entirely proves that theory.

The only way these Millennials will ever get "our fair share" or chance among our elders or even our peers is if we reduce the surplus population (of the educated elite). Of course reducing any population is frowned upon. Of course the elite don't like that either. And of course the educated might notice it eventually, after it has hit the history books––but then who wrote those history books? We are at an impasse, and the only choice is to move forward and to eat our McDonald's future with as much mustard and onion as it has on it.

An earlier, broad demographic model used to be "birth, tall-enough, work, marriage, death." Then, "birth, you-can-read-and-cipher, work, marriage, death"––this assumes a school-level of about fourth grade; sometimes, children attended to the eighth (golly). In the past century, the average sequence was "birth, high school, work, marriage, death." Now society is experiencing what is called "credential creep." Upper-level positions that once required only a Bachelor's degree require a Master's and sometimes a doctoral degree. As the pond floods with fishies, survival of the fittest rules out, and only the flashiest fishy will win.

But why is there such a high college attendance today? We could look back to WWI and WWII and see how the economy has changed in the world since then. Culture, with the Beat generation and the Civil Rights movement, has shifted and allowed new opportunities to those who did not have them before. The GI Bill and other government actions provided funding to students with financial needs, where before college was a more private endeavor under a smaller, federal government. The 20th century was concerned with encouraging mobility through education. 

In comparison to where we started, we have come a long way in a century. The parents of most Millennials were most likely alive from JFK's era onward. They have seen their wild days. They have watched, perhaps, moon landings for the first time and been enthralled, inspired, or terrified. They experienced the shift from scratchy analog to the iPhone within half the span of a normal lifetime. So what do they do, when they become the pillars of society?

Parents are not necessarily thinking about the "future of the human race" when they send their children to college. Hopefully, they want them to be safe, keep warm, err toward the Freshman Fifteen than to lose thirty pounds because they are too busy to eat well. In effect, parents would prefer college to be a place from which they can ascertain all is well––aka, to the "home life standards."

A previous model of life was "birth, work, marriage, death." We have been delaying the marriage phase in our culture over the last few years, though each individual can still be independent of his parents from graduation until then. 

What if college, to parents, is like a safety blanket? What if college is their way of saying don't grow up yet?