President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

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Teacher chooses OnlyFans site over job

 

As someone who just moved his son into the dorms for his freshman year, the image of the college experience presented in this thread is downright bizarre. I mean, I've walked all over the campus and I have yet to find the "lazy river." And the dorms are "too lavish"? WTF? Some of you may want to visit a campus at some point. I'm just happy when the elevator in his dorm is actually functioning.

It's absolutely the case that a college education costs way too much, and attending without accruing a pile of debt is impossible for the vast majority of people. That needs to be addressed.

But the answer is not paring down the college experience by making it strictly focused on career prep. It's OK to view education as self-improvement. Literature and art have value. Higher education doesn't need to be laser-focused on keeping the economy humming.

 

Over the top housing can also be a parents issue. Google “Dorm Rooms of Mississippi” if you want to be utterly gobsmacked about how spendy some of these families get. I first found it in August 2020 and my jaw hit the floor. My fellow Gen X’ers were likewise aghast.

But that’s them fixing up the bare bones shell the school offers.

 

My freshman dorm (built in the 1950s) resembled a Soviet apartment block.....inside and out.

 

When I went off to school 30+ years ago I took a cab from the train station to the dorm. I told the cabbie which dorm we were going to and he said "Uggh. Place looks like a fuckin' prison."

He was right. It's still there, and it still looks like a fuckin' prison, inside and out. And it was the nicest dorm in the housing system.

 

My freshman dorm had the feel of a prison block: cinder block walls with brick exterior. My sophomore/junior experience was a concrete high rise, but it felt more like a real room. My final year and a half was in a brand new facility that resembled apartments. It actually was very nice. SJSU was trying to entice people to actually live on campus and have it be less of a commuter school. The last 15 years, the school really has invested to make the campus a more comfortable place to study and gather.

I wouldn’t trade much of my collegiate experience. I got plenty of memories that I wasn’t going to get at home.

 

I can only speak for us and the kid, and while she's chosen a career path that will have a lot of uncertainty (BFA in musical theatre), especially right out of college, I've been thrilled so far with the experience she has made for herself by having the guts to move 550 miles away from rural NC and into Brooklyn/NYC for college.

Gratefully, she took care of a big, BIG chunk of cost thanks to her academics and 35 ACT score, which frankly, would've been a nonstarter for her to choose her school otherwise. But her course of study is demanding mentally and physically, includes daily travel and organization, is a lot of hours (a lot), still has some traditional academic courses on top of it and includes mountains of self-starter willingness not only to demonstrate achievement, but just to be prepared daily. She's also become something of a leader of sorts in her class, especially when it comes to navigating the city and planning. The total number for her Class of 2025 musical theatre students started at 36; it's down to 25 for various reasons, among them...this shit is hard.

On top of all of that, and certainly because it's a niche endeavor, her class is made up of kids from all over the country, and is very diverse racially, socially and in preference. (I've joked with her that her two best friends and now roommates HAD to come from families with similar financial backgrounds as us; she couldn't be best friends with some of the rich kids? C'mon kid!). Kids hail from NC, VA, Texas, California, Ohio, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Mass, and more. Most of them live in the same Brooklyn neighborhood now and they get together regularly. (Have a Truly or two, kids.) Hell, they're already something of a troupe. And these seem to be very serious friendships.

Does college cost too much? Yeah, it does. Have the last 2 1/2 years made my kid, who regularly fucked up laundry and mac and cheese at our house growing up, into a living, breathing, independent, socially aware and near-fearless young adult?

Goddam right it has. And some of that is priceless.

 

This is an admittedly limited sample size (as was my original post on the matter), but every picture I've seen of my friends' kids at college has me jealous I'm not going there (well, other than the fact a 50-year-old slumming in the dorms would be weird). They're in downright luxurious surroundings. I'm not demanding they all live in cell blocks like we used to, or that they figure out a way to connect all their electronics to one power strip, or deal with a shitty mattress for a semester b/c even my Mom calling the school didn't get the lazy fucking resident director off her lazy fucking ass to get me a mattress w/o springs sticking out of it.

But it seems like schools are pitching themselves as resorts more than schools, and everyone's going into debt trying to keep up with the Joneses. And I agree paring it down and turning it laser-focused isn't the answer. I just hope the answer appears before my sixth-grader is ready for college. (hope you like junior college, honey!)

 

I've seen plenty of photos of dorm rooms where the parents and kids have gone overboard to make them look nice and more like a home.

Those rooms are still shitty cinderblock boxes.

 

Where my niece goes, they don’t have enough housing for students so even for freshmen (excuse me, first years), housing in a dorm isn’t guaranteed. She’s a sophomore and living in an apartment that’s technically off campus but somehow run through the school’s housing office. Her place is totally like a resort - beautiful pool, amazing amenities and her room is nicer than where I live as a mid-50s person with a good job (that I needed college for, really!). Were there shittier options available to her? I’m sure there were but it seems to be the norm that’s how the kids live. And the price is about the same as what the dorm was.

 

He also killed vampires, so there’s that.

 

Colleges have done a decent job of re-purposing some things.

My son goes to the same college my wife and I did (my wife loves it, I couldn’t care less). Where he is living now was married housing when we were there, and it was not heavily utilized, but they converted them into two-bedroom, furnished apartments with some remodeling, but not a ton. Still feels like a 60s era joint.

Great setup and cheaper than living in an off-campus apartment. He should never look for another joint while he’s in college.

I’ll meet PC halfway on the dorms. My daughter lived in a 1940s era shitbox in her first year. No air conditioning, etc. Felt right to my old ass.

However, every old dorm at both my daughter and my son’s schools are being renovated into much more luxurious spaces. My old dorm is next on the chopping block at my alma mater.

Lazy rivers and all that shit? Probably at schools that need stupid shit like that to attract students, but there’s no question living spaces are getting more posh. I don’t blame colleges so much as the parents my age who demand this type of shit.