A
recent poll from the conservative youth organization Young
America’s Foundation found that over half of
graduating seniors are “nervous” about what their future holds, and
39 percent say they are not optimistic at all that they will be
able to find a job in the first few months after graduation.
As a rising senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, I have (anecdotally) noticed a pattern: Many of the
people who complain about their job prospects are the same ones
that graduate with nothing on their resume other than their major
and their GPA.
There is a myth on campuses that being in possession of a
college degree is the only validation a person needs to be handed a
job. Many college students feel that sitting in classrooms and
listening to lectures for four years will somehow teach them the
skills that are necessary to get ahead professionally. This
misguided sense of entitlement falls right in line with the
increasing demand for political correctness that is sheltering
college students during one of the most crucial developmental
periods in their lives, creating a dangerous disconnect
between their current college experience and the real world
experience that awaits them.
As student
debt, currently tipping the scales at $1 trillion nationally,
continues to pile up and more college graduates move back in
with their parents, a cultural shift in the way we view higher
education is necessary. The college experience should move away
from credential acquisition and pure learning in lecture halls and
libraries towards real world experience, skills acquisition, and
helping students develop interests and passions that transcend the
classroom experience.
Lazlo Bock, the head of H.R. for Google, articulated this
well in an
interview with Thomas L. Friedman
of The New York Times earlier
this year. He told the columnist that “when you look at people
who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are
exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to
find those people.” Far too often, colleges “don’t deliver on what
they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don’t learn the most
useful things for your life. It’s [just] an extended
adolescence.”
Watch “The Case Against College Entitlements” with Rep. Paul
Ryan (R-Wisc.):
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