This is a genuine question.
(Please pardon spelling or grammar mistakes I typed in a meeting at work. A meeting on a Sunday morning. Fuck work)
I know that college students can be āannoyingā but I have noticed that everyone seems to hate college students. From conservative college educated business vampires and ghouls, to college educated liberal rainbow/pink/pro-black capitalism types. Even many online progressives (not sure what that term even means anymore) as well college dropout ādirtbag leftistsā (I donāt know if that term is still in use, Iām not on Twitter and I donāt even listen to Chapo anymore) say that college is stupid. . Which just so odd because while I agree there is a ton to critique about higher education and academia as a whole it just seems to dismissive and weird to dunk on students for being students.
It seems to me that most people seem to Make a caricature of the college student. Everyone who was college educated (especially liberals) seem to make their college education to be some halcyon golden age but now itās all fallen apart. Those people seem to believe college is just young adult daycare now but was some rigorous training facility for the leaders of the world in past.
It seems to me at least this is a weird expression of the US hated of youth and youth culture but also a weirdly kinda fetishists it simultaneously. My theory is we collectively dunk on college kids because we hate ourselves and who we have become and see them using their youth to do youth stuff. Exploring and expressing themselves in a way were unable or perhaps unwilling to do in somewhat similar conditions.
But thatās just a baseless theory, I got my degree in STEM not in humanities/social sciences. Real talk venerate the humble humanities and social sciences majors. while their degrees are also used for evil like everyone elseās they at least donāt have a āstart-upā they are pitching.
When I got my undergrad in 2017 at state university most of the katz I knew were working +30 hours a week and/or living with mom and dad and still in crippling debt. Now that Iām returning to get my masterās degree (part-time to be fair but I do into a campus for the night classes) also at a state university Iām still seeing the same thing. A lot of these young people are working, doing education as well as trying to become adult. Itās a lot, and honestly i empathize them. They are playing a rigged game and it sucks so many of them take it so personally, itās a lot pressure to put on a younger person.
I donāt know why the pop-culture narrative is that everyone who goes to school is a āfail childā or some trust fund kid. I met a few in my here and there while at school my first time but was mostly just regular people of all types trying to get a degree, though maybe I was in the minority as I was (and still am) a square.
All that to say why do we hate college kids? Why do we think they are all āblue hair baristasā or whatever other current derogatory pejorative is. It just seems really stupid to me that we dunk on young people for doing what we tell them to do. The whole cultural narrative is āgo to college, have fun, make friends, get a good jobā but they seem to only care about the last part. Itās not like their a lot of alternative pathways for them to try, it just seems so odd to me
Resentment of the young and their optimism, I guess. Envy of having the freedom to express principles - including freedom from entrenched poverty, debt, and responsibilities within that moment of their lives - and malleability of youth to adapt careers, overcome setbacks easily, and readjust their lives from the blowback of having principles.
It is not a coincidence that Reagan in California and the neoliberal project went on to undermine and strip higher education of government financial support and turn them into vocational centers and degree mills. Binding the future leaders of the country to debt makes for compliant workers and docile minds who will not upset the status quo.
I also suspect that since college studentsā lives have not been tempered or defeated by the demands of life, of working, of being berated and humiliated as such, their elders resent their courage as naĆÆve or are bitter about their defeat and domestication at the hands of capital.
A mentality of āIāve got mineā and "We could change things for the better, but there is too much to risk and too much to lose. And the state always wins. "
Yeah this is it, your will gets crushed after about a decade of office work, which is kind of shameful so you end up projecting it into anyone still optimistic enough to do self improvement or activism or whatever is happeningā¦ Maybe the media directs a lot of it
Well said.
Dialetic analysis is always good. I donāt want to neglect the history of this sort thing. America really does hate education.
Thatās 100% accurate.