by ReverseEngineer » Fri 13 Feb 2009, 03:50:34
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedStateGreen', 'I') can relate to your OP, RE ... my daughter and her fiance want to move back to southern CA so she can spend 80k on art college that they don't have.
At least she's going to get some education here first. Maybe she'll change her mind. And we do have family there.
But I can't help but worry about her.

Back to the topic at hand here, I think this is a fairly significant problem for anyone with kids near graduation age from High School who also fit the typical demographic here on Peak Oil of middle to upper middle class foks who expect to send their kids to College.
As we work our way into the abyss though, should we be encouraging these adolescent/near adults to be heading off to colleges? Even in pursuit of what some would call more "productive" education like maybe an IT degree? Even in the good times people would question the validity of some of the education handed out, one of my cousins got no end of criticism for choosing Sanskrit as her major. "What the heck good is learning a Dead Language going to do you? What kind of job will you get with that?" LOL.
However, for the real Doomers here, even an IT degree doesn't seem like a promising future, and do you really want to fork over $25K/year or more for this when you could spend that money on good preps for your progeny? Far as the kid is concerned, after spending the first 16 years of her life extolling the value of college and how a Good Education would secure her place in society, how do you turn around NOW and say, "Gee honey, before the Monetary System Collapse and Peak Oil this was a good idea, but now you better kiss off that idea and learn to swing a Scythe like the Peak Oil Goddess". This will sell well I am sure. LOL.
Its this juxtaposition of the way things WERE with the way things are GOING TO BE that is so difficult to deal with in the HERE AND NOW. We are in the midst of a transition, and there are of course no guarantees its going to turn out any particular way for SURE, but still you would have to find it difficult to support the choice of say French Romatic Literature as a field of study for the next 4 years.
So do you say anything, or do you just smile weakly and write a check to send your darling daughter to Vassar or Mt Holyoke to study 21st Century Lesbian Ethics? LOL.
Reverse Engineer