I am sitting here in the hotel watching Piers Morgan interview Michael Moore. While, contrary to popular belief, I am not really a Michael Moore fan-I do think he has some good points to make about the United States’ abysmal inability to provide the requisite necessities for its citizens: a level playing field, universal access to health care, and a reasonable baseline lifestyle. Morgan is rightfully quizzing him on his stance as an advocate for the middle class when he himself is quite wealthy as a result of his movies.
There is a studio audience, unusual for Piers Morgan, and one of the things that comes up repeatedly and when you read the 99% stories on the tumblr web site is the massive amounts of student debt that plenty of people have accumulated. It always surprises me, that not one of these pundits asking questions-ever asks the obvious question. ” Coming out of school with a lot of debt and can’t find a job? Why didn’t you try to join the military? Either as a way to pay for your college or to pay off your student loans after graduation”. To me it seems like a no-brainer. Or at least something to consider, although I fully acknowledge that it is a harder decision to make in the world of non stop warfare lasting over years and years and years-with a distinct possibility of getting killed in above said war. However at the same time, entering the military always had that obligation. In my time, I was paying back my college education by getting shot off aircraft carriers with the distinct possibility of freezing to death in the North Atlantic, if something went wrong. (The only debt I was accumulating was being wracked up by my ex-wife, but that is quite another story).
I stayed in the Navy-mainly because no corporation in America could offer me the excitement of flying and raising hell with the boys in far away lands, a camaraderie that probably does not exist today. But I had no student debt. I became an Ensign with a clean slate. Had I have not gotten married and instead stayed single-being diligent about saving my money, not only would I have gotten laid a lot more in my 20’s, but I could have left at 4 or 40 years with a nice sum saved.
Now I also recognize that not everyone could go in the military, and if I had my way the military would have a lot more men and a lot less women. However, regardless of that, it seems to me that the question is not being asked and answered: “Why doesn’t the United States have a program of national service, to allow its youth to earn the college education that so many yearn after?” Now the answer comes immediately to mind, ‘Oh no-that’s a draft and we don’t want that!” ( An answer that comes to often from the mouths of currently serving and recently retired naval officers). I take great issue with that sentiment-particularly from those who crow over and over again how much “better leaders” today’s generation is than those of us who served in the “bad old days” and grew up in the wild and wooly 60’s and 70’s.
The simple truth is, I believe, there is a way to have a program of national service-both military and nonmilitary. ( The time to serve would be in favor of military service however). There are areas that could use young volunteers-who could be trained to serve in many areas. In exchange, a requirement for entry into a university or college would be a “satisfaction of national service” commitment letter. Sure it would mean that the average age for college students would be higher-but that might not be such a bad thing. Military service, conservation corps, public safety -there are a fair amount of ways to tackle this problem. And if nothing else-it would also drive home the issue that currently .05% of all Americans live a life drastically different than 99.5% of their counterparts. That-along with student debt-is a huge problem and allows too many politicians to throw away the lives of the .05% with too much ease. ( Take a bow Mr. Rumsfeld…..). Just my .02.
After following your blog for so long i still have no idea how ur ex-wife got you so bad… Divorce settlements? Do you feel that things will be different elsewhere?
Lots of things-but I got really screwed in my divorce.
Skippy,
There are some National Service alternatives around some public and some private. A private one that my mother used to assist with was given by Wal-Mart of all compaines. My mother was a teacher for 33 years, and when she retired, she went back to work at the college she went to, one of those HBCU (Historically Black College and University) back in the south. Keep in mind, when she was entering college in my deep south state, her options were very limited for college for both financial and societal reasons.
What Wal-Mart was doing (back in the 90’s) was that for students who were enrolled in education, they would pay for their college tuition (up to a 4 years). Once they graduated and received a teachers certificate, all they had to do was go teach in a school district in the the “Delta” area of the state for 4 years. After that you were free to do whatever you want. It was a pretty well received program. The school got the money from Wal-mart, people who really couldn’t afford school had a big help in funding, and what is more important, at least they knew they had a job waiting for them when they graduated. Granted, starting salary wasn’t too great working in some of those areas, and it was the high rolling 90’s, but it was a job.
Something similar in the medical field also exists. When I was a recruiter, a few of the medical students we recruited told me about the UHPS, and how if you went there for Med school, after you graduate and get certified, you had to do time in public health clinics in either poor areas or on Indian reservations. Not a bad deal when you think about it. I would do 4 years on an Indian reservation knowing that I didn’t have $200K in med school loans to pay back.
Part of the problem with both of those programs and others is not so much that they offer jobs that don’t pay as much, but that people graduating from schools these days are under the impression that the first job out, they should be hitting $50-60K, and as you had posted in a previous post, their first house should be a victorian fixer-upper with all of the modern appliances, something that is well beyond their paygrade so to speak.
No matter how bad Rumsfeld was, McNamara was worse. I think they called him the “Whiz Kid.” As they said about him often, he knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing. He cut cost by eliminating wide, narrow and half size boots…the root cause of my foot problems that still linger even after two surgeries to correct the problems related to wearing too tight of boots for years. He also authoured the 500,000 plan for Vietnam. Something about pacification. I stayed in the army because…well like you, I liked what I was doing. No one on the outside would pay me to jump out of airplanes and travel all over the world while doing it. Too bad about your wife getting 45% of your retirement; you just got caught by a good law that is executed badly. In my early years of service, I remember lots of officers dumping their wives for young women leaving the ex in poverty. Not so much for NCOs. Let’s go back to the draft! I served in both eras and there were good leaders in both. They still need to find the good ones and develop their leadership abilities. The army used to do this well, but I’m not so sure of it these days as I do notice lots of leadership shortcomings in my travels in military communities. Oh well, I enjoy reading your stuff so keep it up.
“Sure it would mean that the average age for college students would be higher-but that might not be such a bad thing.”
Yeah, it would make all of the drinking on college campuses legal!
Without a doubt, my 2 years in the National Guard and eventual 2 year ROTC scholarship were the only way I would have gotten through college and a commission. And the extra semester and summer school I had to do cost me a $3500 loan (in 1979-1980). But I was able to pay it off by the time my first tour in Germany ended.
My younger brother, who graduated from college in 1988, had an easier time since my folks were a lot better off by the time he went off to school.
I have long advocated national service with an education tie in.
Look what the country, and the world, got back in return for the investment in the GI Bill after WW 2.
or my beloved Peace Corps..though they have disappointed me in the lackluster, maybe even criminal, way they handled sexual assaults on their female volunteers.
The benefit, I think, in something akin to the Peace Corps concept, is the immersion one gets in the language and culture of a foreign country and that knowledge/experience can only be a good thing given the sometimes xenophobic nature of the American electorate.
There certainly were some ‘bad” in Korea, more than i care to count, BUT its all part of the process of acquiring wisdom.
I have thought for some time that if we had a draft, perhaps we would not be in a state of perpetual war. That does presuppose that we had a significantly smaller Army and a Navy commensurate with doing what it is supposed to do…
Also, I wonder why these protesters don’t protest the cost of education. It is up 8% over last year…
“Also, I wonder why these protesters don’t protest the cost of education. It is up 8% over last year…”
The next bubble to burst will be the education bubble. The government made it easy to get school loans for students, and the schools saw inturn that since more and more students were getting money, they may as well raise their tuition. They inflated the price a college education just to get more money.
Just like in the housing bubble, people are no longer being able to get the easy money for college loans, and people who did receive those loans are now faced with paying them back, all the while it is hard for them to get a job. Colleges are now stuck with the inflated tuition costs, and state bugets are not being able to give more money to them due to their own financial crisis. So what do they do, push for easier restrictions on student visas so that they can bring foreign students in and have them pay the higher out of state tuition costs (for those state supported schools).
But, the “millenials” as this generation of protestors is called are not focused on that.
The real question to these students that have accumulated massive amounts of debt is, “why did you get a degree in ( fill in the blank)? The news stories and interviews never ask why did you get a useless degree that has no business practicality.
Cy,
That generalization about a useless degree is a stereotype and lacking in a factual basis. Even engineers are getting shafted-not to mention that the country still needs teachers and architects and other professions. Companies are not hiring now-in many areas.
And, at least from my Navy experience, all the technical training in the world did not take the place of the writing skills I learned at the hands of someone with one of those “useless degrees”. Perhaps the cost of college tuitions should be reigned in and controlled.
Skippy, I did not stereotype anyone in my comment. Watch those news stories and note that they do not ask that question when they should. I have read some magazine stories that list the degrees of some of these whiners, Art History, Music Therapy, English Lit. Now that is fine if you want to persue these degrees, but it’s funny how they are now standing in a protest with 5 and 6 figure debt and complaining about not having a job.
Price controls should be placed on our schools of higher learning?
Cy-Kick
Once again there was an opportunity there for you to grasp the obvious and you missed it.
English Lit majors…teach English. (Kind of like the way Skippy implied one of them taught him to write? Me too!)
Music Therapy isn’t Armoma Therapy. It is a serious treatment which helps to reach autistic children and teach them. It is also being used to help some veterans with TBI from IEDs.
The problem is not what these folks studied in most cases. The problem is society has lost its soul and no longer values the arts.
As Skippy likes to point out….its All Galt All The Time.
Buck,
The problem being that it is not a valued skill. So you teach the unteachable the unknowable and we agree to pay you $27k/year. Shut up already. You blew it by not going for the high end and the stroke for a 6 figure salary for a job that ‘commands’ value. School marms were not high rollers but back then they knew it too. Neither, if you look closely were the stick ball players or rounders. Somehow in one generation one gained 9 figure salaries but the other remained static in the low 5. Some sort of disenfranchisement launched by capricious no good dirty rotten scoundrels out to screw a dame out of her hard earned money.