College is alternative medicine to your money problems

Alternative medicine feels good, it feels right - and college feels the same way. Feelings aside, both promise a better future with the integrity of a politician.

After reading a handful of esteemed blogs praising the medicinal benefits of your herbal cocktail, taking that gulp of ginseng tea to wash down a grape-sized multivitamin feels great! You don't really understand the casual connection between your new diet and improved health, but you do it anyway... because it feels great! As far as I know, nobody's died of a ginseng and fish oil overdose, so there's probably little to no harm in introducing this placebo-induced high to your daily routine. The tragic problem with alternative medicine is its ability to distract unhealthy people from seeking out more reliable health solutions.

College distracts people from developing skills with a price tag. After spending 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars, students graduate sicker than when they started. College feels great, but it's filled with empty promises.

College is more insidious than alternative medicine, it makes alternative medicine look like Honest Abe. From the moment you enter the education system, you're told graduating from a prestigious college is the holy grail. Your friends, family, media, and most importantly, old suit-wearing men with graying hair have promised that you need college to make money. Fresh out of high school, you'd be foolish and irrational to consider an alternative to college. While attending college it's even harder to realize how unproductive you are. Every day you walk into class with 20 to 400 other students who never question the economic consequences of their history degree. Also doesn't help that all your professors appear smart, dignified and well-dressed. It's all so frighteningly convincing.  

Ivy League Students Work For Free Too

People think an ivy league degree is a first class ticket to a high salary, but sometimes it won't even get you off the ground. From NY Times The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not

One Ivy League student said she spent an unpaid three-month internship at a magazine packaging and shipping 20 or 40 apparel samples a day back to fashion houses that had provided them for photo shoots.

It gets sadder

...an N.Y.U. student who hoped to work in animation during her unpaid internship said she was instead assigned to the facilities department and ordered to wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu.

Employers don't care about your English Literature major - whether it's from Harvard or Heald - if you can't offer a scarce, valuable skill-set then you're deadweight with high overhead. Employers can't afford training expenses in order to explore your self-proclaimed genius level aptitude. So when college kids come knocking on their doors begging for free work, employers are forced to assign them low-training, low-skilled tasks... like cleaning doorknobs.

Jason Calacanis says college isn't worth $250k

Should You Pay $250k to Go to College? Jason Calacanis says it's not worth it.

College needs a critic

College is a familiar and well-respected institution. That makes it highly susceptible to status quo bias - people's irrational tendency to prefer the current state of affairs even when better alternatives exist.

It's time to put college under the microscope and question the assumptions we've been taking for granted. Welcome to College Critic.