Reflections on College Education

By Theo Haddad Staff Writer

ike many of you, I recently had to sign financial aid loans to help subsidize my education at Trinity. Two unrelated issues struck me as significant while doing this: First, by the time I got out of college I would be bound to a financial debt that exceeded $17,000. Second, college tuition prices have soared to a phenomenal $28,000 per academic year. If you divide that figure over two semesters (24 weeks of academics), you come out with a sum that totals $1167 a week.

I hope there are others out there who find these figures awesome, if not shocking. If you break it down further, one figures your parents pay $167 a day- not bad for a modest hotel room, but expensive for a shitty dorm room. Yet despite the exorbitant prices of college education, it astounds me to see so many Trinity kids shrug off these figures like they mean nothing.

Education at Trinity is a transaction.

We pay: X($28,000)---------->receive Y (an education)

What continues to bewilder me is that for most people who proceed through the hallowed (hollow) walls of Trinity, this equation looks more like this:

Pay: $28,000----------> Get: high, a full year hangover, a handful of bad grades, and an unscrupulous amount of forgettable hookups.

At over a thousand dollars a week, I fail to see what the point of going to college to do these things is. Why not stay at home and do them for cheaper? Even better, spend the money on other things. Possibilities include:

• Investing it in a mutual fund. (They're making 20% interest these days, and with some savvy investing you could be a millionaire by the time you're 25.
• Buy a shit load of cocaine, sell it to random kids at your hometown high school, or even at Trinity. Make another shit load of money.
• Go to Foxwoods Resort and Casino (or let me go). Bet it all on a couple of numbers at the roulette table and see how far you get.
• Buy a Ferrari. You can get the lower end models for under $100,000, and you could have it all paid off over the course of four years.
• Buy a small uninhabited island in the South Pacific and live there with a cult of dedicated followers who think you're the shit.
• Give it away to some charity that will actually use the money for helping people in need.

Education at Trinity is an (expensive) privilege. It is not something to be taken lightly. And for its price, we owe it (at the very least), to our parents who have to foot a rather extravagant bill. Presumably our college educations will prepare us for the road ahead, our lives which will begin, somewhere down the road. I'm afraid I could not disagree with this philosophy more. Life begins here and now, not when you graduate, or when you buy enough clothing to look like the people on "Friends."

Education is something that is just as accessible inside the classroom as outside of it. The truly educated never graduate. Realize these truths now, and life will open herself like a flower before you. Fail to realize these truths, and she will swallow you, digest you, and then shit you out. Choose one, and be happy with your choice. There is no in between.