Community college appreciation
Los Medanos College is an outstanding community college that students need to take some time to realize how lucky they are to be attending. I used to be one of those students who shamefully admitted that LMC wasn’t a great choice and wished I had skipped to a 4-year university. I hated how I had to go to community college and how I was wasting time. Truthfully, I am glad I attended LMC because of all the opportunities and realities I had went through. I had my heart set on doing something I never even really took the time to think about. People would question me about what career I was going to pursue. I had the idea of joining the medical field, but after graduating with my associates and taking some time off to think, I realized that’s not what I had in mind. I came back after taking a semester off and took some great classes to explore and realized what I truly loved versus what I didn’t love. LMC has given me a much better understanding of my direction in life. I have now come to my senses and I realize that after all this time spent here, I am honestly glad I didn’t skip to a 4-year college. I decided to take my time choosing what I wanted to do in life. I am always overhearing students trying to get out of community college as fast as they can so they don’t get stuck there. Honestly, what’s the rush if you don’t know what you want to do in life? I never understood why people would rush to leave community college, especially when they didn’t know what direction that they wanted to go in afterwards. I want to pass this message along to my fellow students at LMC and hope that they realize what a great school Los Medanos College is after all.
JS
Apr 23, 2016 at 9:05 pm
Here is a commencement speech that was never delivered at a 4-year university. It was too controversial. But it should have been delivered. It will prove your decision to go to community college was a correct one. It goes like this:
You who are about to receive a diploma from this university should also receive an apology from this university. And a refund of a large portion of your tuition you have paid.
You have been cheated, bilked, propagandized and badly educated. Your tuition has been much too costly, for which you can blame the federal government. And the avarice of the university.
Washington has produced a bubble in higher education just the way it produced the bubble in housing. Some government planners decided that too few people owned homes. So the planners decided to force an increase in home ownership. They lowered lending standards for people seeking a mortgage. This produced a glut of sub-prime loans. And sub-prime borrowers. And then a crash.
Next, some government geniuses decided that there were too few college students. So government made student loans and other tuition subsidies easier to get. Of course, colleges and universities responded by increasing tuition to capture these government subsidies. Which is why the cost of college has been rising 4 times faster than the rate of inflation.
The cost of college has increased faster than the cost of healthcare. There is now in excess of $1 TRILLION in student loan debt. There is more student loan debt than credit card debt. More than auto loan debt.
Most of you will graduate with debt. In effect, you will be graduating with a mortgage but with no house.
And what did you get for all of this expense? A sub-prime education.
Today’s students study many fewer hours a week than students a generation ago. But they are getting higher grades. This too is a result of government creating perverse incentives. The Government money gives colleges and universities a powerful incentive to admit more and more students. Inevitably this means more and more students who are marginally qualified — or unqualified, Many of these will pay tuition for a few semesters and then leave school with debt but no degree. Others will plod along, paying tuition, piling up debt, and eventually getting a degree, but not in four years.
Those of you who major in gender studies, or women’s studies, or ethnicity studies, or cinema deconstruction, or any other of today’s fads, I have this advice:
When you take off your cap and gown at graduation, do not look for a job. Instead go straight to the unemployment office. This university did not equip you to add value to the American economy.
Soon, this university ‘s office in charge of alumni giving, will contact you and ask you for money. Your response should be, “Are you kidding?” Instead of sending money to this university, just send a schedule of your student loan repayments. If this campus is like most campuses, you have been living in a community of enforced conformity. When you leave and enter the real world, you are in for a shock.
If this is a typical campus, it has a speech code. It has forbidden and punished speech that did not conform to fashionable political pieties.
If this is a typical campus, you have been taught that you have a special entitlement — that you are entitled to pass through life without hearing any speech that annoys, depresses, confuses, offends, or otherwise distresses you.
If this campus is like other campuses, it has a “free speech zone” – a small , isolated inconvenient space where students are allowed to exercise First Amendment rights. But guess what? Off campus, out in reality, nobody recognizes this entitlement. You will find that the US Constitution makes the rest of America – all of it –a free speech zone.
This school has restricted free speech in order to protect your tender sensitivities and to protect your feelings from being hurt. When you leave this campus, you will have to “un-learn” the silliness that you have been taught here. The idea that you deserve to be treated as a frail flower.
So graduates, you have been saddled with debt and bad ideas. Good luck. You’re going to need it.
That would be a commencement address worth hearing.. But a university sensible enough to invite such a speaker, would be a university that does not need to hear such an address.
(Hat tip to George Will)