Back in late September and early October, we had a couple of rainy and gloomy weeks. The temperature was in the 50s, but that didn’t mean much once rivers fell on you and 20 mph winds were constantly in your face. As I looked around campus on those days, I was proud to see so many other students toughing it out like I was. After all, we were all there to learn, and we knew it would only get worse once December came.

Or so I thought.

On one of those muggy Tuesdays, I was sitting in class when my professor announced he was going to read us an e-mail he had received from one of our fellow classmates. “I just want to give you a perspective on some of the things I have to deal with,” he told us. So he read us the e-mail, which explained that the student hadn’t been in class for “a while” due to the “less than desirable weather.” The student wanted to know if he or she could e-mail the professor the paper due that Thursday.

If that student had been in class any day in the previous two weeks, he or she would have known that the due date for the paper was moved to the next Tuesday, five days after the original deadline.

“I just want you all to understand why I get so frustrated when people don’t do their work and take school seriously,” our professor told us. “Going to college is a privilege. There are people all over the country and all over the world who would do anything for the opportunity to get a higher education, and they don’t get to, while people like this take it for granted and throw it away.”

After pondering the student’s absurdity for a brief time, I shrugged the incident off and got on with my life. But now, months later, I find myself relating stories I hear and people I meet to that situation and realizing there is something very wrong with the way college works.

A lot of people currently going to college should not be in college. More and more kids are being brainwashed through elementary and high school into believing if you don’t go to college, you’ll be a miserable failure and won’t be able to support yourself. Because of this, we have students who only go because they think it’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re done with high school and want the so-called “college experience.” The truth is, there is no “supposed-to-do.” Going to college really only makes sense for very specific professions, but we’re told you have to go to college for just about any career. For example, I wouldn’t want a doctor who didn’t go through medical school. But if I was looking for someone to fix my computer, I’d sooner hire somebody with a good reputation who had been doing it for four years than someone who went to college for four years only learning the theory and attending various classes that have nothing to do with computers.

It’s true that college gives the opportunity to get potentially higher-paying jobs, but this fact is being pushed by the schools themselves. This doesn’t make it any less true; it just shows that they’re working under their own agendas. It’s also true that eating pork can be good for you, but that doesn’t mean pork ads are paid for simply to provide the public with good nutritional information. They’re trying to sell a product, just like colleges are. Yes, I said product. A college diploma: The most expensive piece of paper you’ll ever pay for.

But the problem isn’t just with the students who don’t realize that college isn’t for them. An even bigger factor is how easy our system makes it for kids like that to attend college. Even the ISU admissions page says the only real entry-level requirements are four years of high school English, three years of math, three years of science, and two years of social studies. Basically, an average of three high school courses a year for four years makes you eligible to attend Iowa State University. But after all, they wouldn’t want to make it too hard for you to give them your money, would they?

Of course, that’s assuming your tuition is actually paid for with your money, which is rarely the case. It’s usually paid for by some combination of loans, grants and scholarships. You know those instant-cash, early-payday businesses you’ve been warned never to go to because they drown you in interest rates? Well, forget what you know and get some good old student loans. They’ll give you money so you can live the enchanting college lifestyle of expensive booze and ramen noodles. Sure, you’ll have to pay it back someday, but not until you’re done with college and earning so much that the amount on your bill will look like pocket change. Everybody makes that much money after graduating college, right?

So while loans drive students deep into debt without bias, at least grants and scholarships are free and somewhat selective. However, both of these are bad in their own ways.

Grants may be given to people with legitimate financial need, but they don’t follow up and make sure it’s being used for the right reasons. It could very well be a waste of money that could have gone to someone who would actually use it well.

Scholarships are better about this, because they often relate financial need to ambition and work ethic through essays and detailed applications, but I can’t have faith in the scholarship system as long as minority scholarships exist. I don’t understand how people can speak against racism yet be all right with financial handouts limited to a certain race, as though the right to go to college is inherently determined by race. I’ve been waiting for a scholarship limited to people of a certain shoe size for years, but that still hasn’t happened. I’ve even been waiting for a generic-white-guy scholarship, but that hasn’t happened either. If it did, someone would probably throw a fit over it being racist.

I’m not saying people who can’t afford college simply shouldn’t go. I think it’s great that there are ways in which people who need financial help can get it; I just wish someone would bother to make sure those who get it deserve it and will use it for the right reasons. Going to college should never be viewed as the norm. It’s much more than that and should only be encouraged to those who actually need it for their careers and will take it seriously. If we continue to view college education the way we do, then everybody will go to college. It won’t be something special anymore, and everyone will be drowning in debt and education they don’t need.

– Thomas Hummer is a junior in English from Ames.