This NY Times story about the cost of higher education has been wending its way through the innards of the blogosphere lately and I thought I'd chime in too. What sort of egoism or value system would recommend going into debt to the tune of a $100K to obtain a degree in religious & women's studies? The subject of the article is one such person did in fact make such a choice. And NYU, while not exactly an Ivy League school, is very, very good. But still though, is it a hundred grand worth of debt "good"? I doubt it. The poor girl is never gonna pay this debt off.
The prevailing American Dream ethos tells people: Go to college. Get a dream job. Buy a house. = Life will be good. But as we've seen with other debunked features of the American Dream, this ain't necessarily so. That NYU diploma is now revealed to have come at a really high price for what it is. I wonder what it is she learned there that she couldn't have learned at a far cheaper state college, community college, night school, or just reading on her own? Or was it all, first and foremost, about having that NYU sheepskin on the wall?
This reminds me of the stories I'd hear as a kid about how in some societies the family of a bride would go into ruinous debt to moneylenders in order to impress their village with spectacular wedding celebrations. I thought this was very foolish, ancient custom or not. Now it appears that many worldly and sophisticated Americans who ought to know better are going the same route. I just shake my head.
