Response to The Detroit News Article "College degrees sadly becoming too 'soft' to matter"

Okay it's around 11:00 pm. I spent the entire day telling myself I would be asleep by now so I could wake up earlier in the morning, but I still have a crap ton of energy. So I' going to put said energy into responding a recent Detroit News article.

My initial reaction was to be grossly offended. It seemed to me to be another one of the myriad of news articles about how my generation pales in comparison to the last. Most of the newspaper articles of that sort seem to have more of a rational to them, but this one just seemed to say. "In my day college meant something." And I thought I shook my old man fist. (For those who are reading this and none of my other stuff it's a running gag.)

I hate those types of articles. I will not deny that my generation is in a precarious position, but quite a bit of that is due to factors beyond our control. It is not only that the economy is down, but that it is changing. The very nature of work is in flux. The previous generation made covenants with its employers. "We will stick with you and you will stick with us." For us there is no such expectation in either direction. We must look out for ourselves, and that is not the only change. There is not a road map for us to deal with it. We all must simply feel it out, another article for another day.

After pondering the article more, my temper cooled. I have said similar things on occasion. Am I being hypocritical? Yes, but I am only human. I will admit some time is wasted in college, but to say that the majority or even a large portion of degrees are completely useless is a bit extreme. Furthermore, the second half of the article is so annoyingly hyperbolic that even though I partially agree that some of the individual classes that students in college are required to take in college to graduate are wastes of time, I cannot agree that the university experience is so intellectually and economically insignificant that it risks causing a second holocaust and/or the collapse of the republic. Unless the whole thing was ironic and I just didn't catch it. (You can't see it, but I have a raised eyebrow right now.)

Note: Graduated from Michigan State University in December 2010 with a degree in Journalism.