Who Else Pawned their iPad?

                College, an institution that is hardly necessary for most people in the first place, should come at a considerably cheaper price (or preferably none at all). We wouldn’t be the first nation to suggest or adopt such a policy, and the benefits would be phenomenal, since more college grads would be hanging their diplomas in their own studies rather than above their parents’ couch, aka their bed. This couch (aka bed, aka dining room) will need to be replaced rather quickly as the new grad finds himself rarely moving from it, since he’ll probably have extreme difficulty finding a job at all (let alone one in his desired field, good job on that Philosophy major) and then even more difficulty saving any of the money he makes, since it has to go right back into paying off loans and debts to the school that devastated his parents’ and his own bank accounts for four years and printed an often-meaningless piece of paper at the end.

Obviously it’s important to get a job that requires a college degree. After all, you’re going to need a job to make all of the money necessary to pay off that college degree you just got. This puts you into an interesting loop of circular reasoning where you need a job to make money to pay off loans that you needed to get an education for a job that you use to make money to pay off loans that you needed to get an education to get a job that you use to pay off loans, etc. It’s the kind of futile struggle that makes you want to hang yourself, except you can’t afford a chair or a rope; besides, you’ve got work tomorrow, and the next day, and forever.

We tend to think of college as a mandatory thing nowadays, looking down at people who choose not to pursue higher education, or simply cannot afford to. I know countless students that turn their noses up at people who attend community colleges rather than a “real” college, when more often than not they’re paying (at least) close to quadruple the tuition for an identical education. People go through years of college undecided (as I did), because their parents insisted they go, despite their not having a clue about what they want to study, often enough sleeping through class (if they attend) or playing Candy Crush on their iPad, assuming they didn't sell it for tuition money (thanks Hood!).

"But you absolutely have to go to college or you’re a total loser!" ...who isn't paying thousands of your parents’ dollars to get an education you could have gotten off Wikipedia? Only, Wikipedia doesn't print diplomas (yet), which is literally all college is necessary for, so keep spending, I guess.

If we could make college a cheaper experience, and emphasize that it is not necessary or even ideal for everyone, we could simultaneously lower the number of students pursuing degrees they aren’t interested in, lower the amount of crippling debt countless American students are living under, and generally make the experience of college into one with considerably less stress and demand. We could stop looking down at people who choose not to pursue “higher education,” because there are plenty of jobs in this country and in this world that neither require nor make use of book-smarts.

I think this video by YouTube user nigahiga sums it all up quite nicely and amusingly: