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 “annoying” 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 “dirtbag leftists” (I don’t know if that term is still in use, I’m not on Twitter and I don’t 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 it’s 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 that’s 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 else’s they at least don’t have a “start-up” 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 I’m returning to get my master’s degree (part-time to be fair but I do into a campus for the night classes) also at a state university I’m still seeing the same thing. A lot of these young people are working, doing education as well as trying to become adult. It’s a lot, and honestly i empathize them. They are playing a rigged game and it sucks so many of them take it so personally, it’s a lot pressure to put on a younger person.
I don’t know why the pop-culture narrative is that everyone who goes to school is a “fail child” 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 “blue hair baristas” 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 “go to college, have fun, make friends, get a good job” but they seem to only care about the last part. It’s not like their a lot of alternative pathways for them to try, it just seems so odd to me
People fucking hate feeling like they’re wrong on an issue. They’d rather be told that everything is OK and that they’re a good person. Obviously making a settler white person uncomfortable is a noble act. I say they as someone well into his forties, any old person shitting on the young can get fucked.
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 students’ 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 naïve or are bitter about their defeat and domestication at the hands of capital.
A mentality of “I’ve got mine” 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 happening… Maybe the media directs a lot of it
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.
Well said.
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.
Dialetic analysis is always good. I don’t want to neglect the history of this sort thing. America really does hate education.
A mentality of “I’ve got mine” and "We could change things for the better, but there is too much to risk and too much to lose.
That’s 100% accurate.
There’s this weird expectation that as you get older you’re supposed to get wiser, however for nearly everybody this is not true and the only archetype of “wise” they have access to is a sort of nihilistic resignation that nothing can fundamentally change and it’s naive to hope otherwise. Sometimes I even feel myself be pressured to slide into this role. I don’t even know where this pressure comes from. But yes people who have been out of college for a while want to think of themselves as capable of providing sage advice to younger people when really their brains have just been broken even more than they were at a younger age. They don’t even have better social skills!
But yes people who have been out of college for a while want to think of themselves as capable of providing sage advice to younger people when really their brains have just been broken even more than they were at a younger age.
I didn’t really think of this one, but it seems sound to me. The kind of “I think myself a genius and untrickable” college educated folks seems to feel you learn once and then you’re done. You self-examine one time and that’s it.
I think a big part of it is that older generations have a tendency to dunk on younger generations. Gen x and boomers liked to shit on the millennials. Now we’re all shitting on the zoomers. It’s really just another wedge to divide the working class lest we unify against the wealthy.
College students are doing some great work. I think a lot of these students were out on the streets for the BLM uprisings because it’s clear to me the organizers are skilled and disciplined.
If you can afford to help, and are close to a college encampment, it might be a good idea to pop in and see if those young radicals need any supplies or food.
My students are zoomers, and they love to shit on gen alpha, despite many of them not even knowing one.
Gen alpha are like, 8 at the oldest
Yep.
I’m not shitting on the zoomers. They’re cool.
go see if you can help
In a land of broke college kids an adult with a running car and a costco membership is basically a demi-god of agricultural fecundity
I wish I could still drive, but my seizures have been acting up lately
Sorry Comrade.
f
College kids are the only people out there rn who give a fuck about human rights.
Exactly dude! That’s why I can’t rock with these people who say “Oh they just rich kids who spend their parent’s money”. I always think “mothafucka the government does nothing but spend your parents money on bombing brown people”
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
The hottest takes get the most attention, and dialing back the heat of your takes means not only do fewer people listen, but also that you face more pissy comments along “I have a hotter take than you and that means you’re trash” lines.
The hottest takes get the most attention,
Very true! I think about that often. These media platforms incentive bad-faith dialogue all the time. It’s really a shame that “effort posts” are often seen as “cringe”, I would extend that to the social/society level in that anything addresses the origin/cause of issues seems to be seen as “unrealistic”
americans don’t need an excuse to hate other americans
It is very easy to be annoyed by college kids. After all, they are young and healthy and have their whole lives ahead of them and the rest of us have already chosen our dreary paths, which we regret.
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/college-is-an-education-in-bullshit
Good article. I am unfamiliar with the author but I’ll check out there work for sure.
His recent book is good, too. He can be a lib sometimes, at least in some of his rhetoric, but he’s a great labor reporter.
saturn_devouring_his_son.jpg
I imagine it’s a survivorship bias combined with most american’s being little Hitler’s.
I know lots of weird communist degree holders who are cool, but they’re weird and usually poor, usually queer leftists and outside the status quo.
I imagine it’s a survivorship bias combined with most american’s being little Hitler’s.
Agreed. The survivorship bias one sounds like it’s on point. I think a lot of the “I got mine” mindset really echos upward and manifests in very strange ways in America.
Probably comes from a bunch of people who need to go touch grass but can’t for one reason or another.
Because they remember how much it sucked and wasnt them to have it bad too
