Who says that Sending You Kid to College is a Bad Deal?

There is a lot of talk now about how bad a deal it is going to college incurring debt,, wasting four or six years going to classes when you could be out in the work force, all just to secure that barista job with benefits. Besides thinking that a lot of this talk originates from corporate American wanting to secure a permanent, and cheap, work force, and a too powerful GOP which seems intent on making education an upper 10% privilege, I also wonder about the equation of education as a zero sum equation. The emphasis on equating education’s only value in monetary form is counter to my own experience, where an education has provided me invaluable cultural, social, and historical context to a lifetime of activity.

Or, as the Greeks might have said, the quest for the “whole man” (or woman, which the Greeks would have not said) necessitates balance. Mental, spiritual, emotional and physical all in equilibrium. This I think should be the true goal of education.

On a more pragmatic level, having encouraged my daughter to gain a Jesuit inspired education (as I had in college), and watching her decide on her own to go off to London and gain a Masters in Creative Writing, I have had the pleasure in her giving our novel (On the Rocks) an editorial look see. Not only does she have an educated eye as an editor, she brings to the effort the perspective of a younger audience, a generational view which if our endeavors are to have any economic payoffs, is essential.

We’ll be including these edits in the next few weeks so feel free to check us out in the future.

So in the end I am benefiting from sending her off to the cloistered halls of academia. This is a tangible result stemming from her gaining a formal education.

And the debt is in her name!