Rhythms and Rhymes
Auburn, AL
September 15, 2022
Mark Twain said that while history doesn’t repeat, it often rhymes. Today the stanza and meter brought back memories.
My younger son is a senior in high school. He’s taken his tests, compiled his grades, and is applying to college. Our elder son went thru the same process three years (and another world) ago.
At the time, he wanted to be a pilot. He’d been taking lessons, flown solo, and was on approach to receive his private license. He was accepted to pilot programs at two schools, and decided to attend one. But the hysterical reaction to covid changed his plans.
Planes were grounded, passengers weren’t flying, and furloughs were rampant. The airline industry…where I’d worked for a decade…is cyclical, volatile, and subject to severe disruption from outside shocks.
As with 9/11, the covid panic was one of them. Only worse. At the time, the response was so extreme it seemed existential.
Planes were thought to be petri dishes. Business was conducted remotely, and would continue to be. “Public health experts” convinced people they should be petrified to leave their own homes, or fear close proximity to another person if they did.
But even if planes returned to the air, piloting them would remain a niche profession. They did, and it is. Flights resumed, and the pilot surplus became a crew shortage. For various reasons, pilots once again are in demand, and riding a hiring wave.
But their options remain limited whenever the tide goes out. And it will, perhaps sooner than we expect. Falling economies and rising prices could restrain demand, and the replacement of covid absurdity with climate insanity seems designed to make people stay put.
Recognizing these fluctuations and trends, our older son switched schools, adopted a new major, and enrolled at Auburn. He’s been there since, and couldn’t be happier.
And why not? It’s a good university in a lovely town with nice people. And across the street, like an oasis of sanity of desert of delusions, is the Mises Institute!
This week, three years after my first-born visited Auburn, our second son toured the campus. Like his brother, he loved it. But he’s not certain this is where he’ll go.
His home state still tugs his heart. He’ll visit his parents’ Alma Mater in a couple weeks, and its rival in Athens later next month. Whichever accepts him is probably where he’ll go. If both do, he’ll decide whether to humbly enjoy the honor of attending Georgia Tech…or to settle for going to UGA. If not, he’ll come here.
Or should he do something different? Revisiting this process revives broader questions, particularly after the last few years. Why, when, and for what is college necessary? And for whom?
I’ve long maintained that far too many people go to college. In the last couple generations, it’s morphed from a somewhat valuable pursuit of worthwhile knowledge into a debt-fueled racket pushing regime propaganda. And as quality declined, heaps of wealth shifted from hapless families to accredited institutions of agitprop floating high on a fake money sea.
When I graduated high school, a university degree was touted as an essential requirement for a professional career. But it wasn’t considered a prerequisite for happiness or the only ticket to success.
High schools still had vocational curricula teaching the practical skills so many now lack. Upon graduating, kids could be an apprentice or get right to work. They didn’t need to waste four years and several hundred thousand dollars procuring a piece of paper that would do them no good.
To be an engineer, scientist, doctor, or lawyer, college knowledge is probably necessary. Most other occupations are best learned by getting to work and doing the job (and perhaps supplementing it with targeted courses as careers progress), as was typically done before college became common.
Particularly in an age of easy access to virtual classes and online books, expertise in business, sales, marketing, economics, history, language, philosophy, and literature can be attained (and often more critically and effectively) thru experience and education acquired without a college degree.
But as with so many connected industries wanting to corral their customers, the college-industrial complex partnered with corporations and the State to convince Americans they must purchase its products. As with “home ownership” propaganda from the finance and real estate lobbies, education promoters led many to believe that “society” benefits as more people bought their services, no matter how useless (or harmful) the subject matter may be.
These efforts transformed higher education from refined intellectual pursuits into the functional equivalent of thirteenth grade. As with auto insurance, covid “vaccines”, or “preferred pronouns”, everyone is expected to have a college degree.
By positioning their product as a “public good”, universities obtained government-backed “support” for students who otherwise couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t attend.
State-sponsored loans allowed universities to flourish as attendance rose and tuition soared. The financial industry prospered as back-stopped lending proliferated. Corporations enjoyed tax-sponsored training for a farm system of potential employees. And politicians basked in the misbegotten belief that they’d improved the world as they feathered their nests.
Meanwhile, students compiled unsustainable debt while conned into thinking degrees with the word “studies” at the end would be worth the exorbitant expense. As they’ve painfully learned, most are as valuable as a lumberjack in the Sahara. And the institutions selling the axes became breeding grounds and propaganda mills for sinister ideas that saturate society like gin on an olive.
Now, the tab is due. And the hangover too. The education balloon seems poised to pop as the broader debt bubble begins to burst.
To score political points as the air comes out, the Biden Administration unilaterally and (for anyone who still cares) unconstitutionally waived student debt meeting certain criteria. Morally hazardous and economically idiotic, it was an outrageous stunt and a transparent ploy. And, from their short-term perspective, probably a smart one.
But it’s neither surprising nor unprecedented. It comes from the high time-preference fiat system into which American “democracy” inevitably degenerated.
Throughout this century the government has “bailed-out” banks and billionaires while pouring taxpayer money into pockets of the medical, military, and education complexes…with regulatory agencies and foreign governments often acting as convenient laundromats for corrupted money.
After years being soaked, students can be forgiven for finally wanting to clean up. But State ”generosity” is a well that’s poisoned (and that may soon dry up). Those who approach shouldn’t drink too deeply.
We neither expect (nor desire) any drops to trickle our way. Like tourists in Mexico, we’ll consume only what comes from our own cup as we seek the school that best suits our son. We may be there right now. We’ll see.
But despite the official fraud, chicanery, and shenanigans, I love being on a college campus…particularly relatively normal ones like this. Here a pervasive peace pierces the rush of the world. Bells toll the top of the hour. Smiling students stroll diagonal paths across verdant quads. Under shady trees, quiet coeds rest open books on crossed legs. In cafés along surrounding streets, classmates gather around laptops as recurring refills alleviate inadequate sleep, and power tired minds thru a long afternoon.
And, of course, it is Autumn in the South. Around the stadium sprout tailgate tents, to host hours of festivities for Saturday’s game. College Street is alive with alumni, who for several days will quadruple the population of this lovely town. But we won’t be among them. We need to get back.
We ducked into Toomer’s, grabbed a lemonade, and prepared to depart. As we returned to our car, a refreshing breeze brushed the most fragile leaves from indifferent limbs.
As the first Fall foliage reached barren ground, we recalled that these stoic oaks have seen it all. Leaves, like students, come and go. Cycles persist as nature endures. Bull follows bear; boom precedes bust. Prosperity breeds complacency, which corrodes the culture. Calamity spurs resourcefulness that nourishes renewal. And whether they go to college or not, our kids grow up…and go away.
The pattern’s not always comforting, but it’s familiar. And it might not repeat. But it always rhymes.
JD
