So one pretty-faced Duke coed bravely revealed her work as a porn star to meet the demands of high tuition. She even went as far as saying her parents support their daughter in this job pick. And a friendly bunch of the "View" hostesses were "open-minded" enough to entertain their auditorium with inviting and interviewing the brave and cute Ms. Belle Knox. Please don't misunderstand me at this point. I don't want any misconception here. Personally, I am very sympathetic to Ms. Knox. Firstly, in her interview she shared that she enjoys sex and loves watching porn. Hypocrisy aside, let's be honest - a lot of people do. Who is going to challenge me on the notion that sexuality is an integral part of a human nature? How to express it is everyone's call. That's why our democratic societies are becoming more and more LGBT friendly. Secondly, she experienced minimum-wage jobs and found them "more degrading than doing porn". As a young adult, she does what she thinks is right to support herself - and to pay for her education, a very steep price as it is. And last but not least: later on, after acquiring a law degree, she has an intention to help the sex workers. This is commendable from any angle although the porn star work itself apparently wouldn't be approved by too many. Ms. Knox - which is her professional name - received some violent threats. Her complaints to the police were met with "disrespect to her welfare and safety". Now this, and not her selection of work, is really atrocious. Outraged feminists labeled Ms. Knox a troubled girl and blame our culture of "degrading". Some took this as an opportunity to talk about ever rising college cost.
We may discuss ad nauseum various reactions to Ms. Knox's way of making money for the noble purpose of acquiring high education. But the real problem here is much deeper. I see it as two-sided, and these sides are very much interrelated. Let me explain. On the one hand, there is an extremely easy access to college loans. Practically everyone can get them without too much efforts. Colleges and universities eagerly assist their applicants and students to acquire some. They jump out of their skin to deliver this seemingly well-intended help. Of course they do, as money goes directly to their huge coffers, while our young people, fresh out of college, are getting hit with enormous monthly bills. Millions of young and not so young college grads are inescapably stuck with tremendous payments for practically half of their professional lives. Someone will opine that the educational loans, costly as they are, nevertheless provide an opportunity to get an education and hopefully a high-paying job in the future. Right here we have a problem. Why to do it at such an appalling cost to a person desiring a college degree? Why our government, rather than spending billions on helping other countries - one of too many examples is giving this billion dollars in loan guarantees to Ukraine - won't rather invest in our own future by taking up some of these college cost killing our families?
And here we come to the second part of the problem. Does our government, and by extension all of us as taxpayers, need to help young people paying for every major they've chosen? Do we as a country require legions of specialists in so many fields energetically manufactured non-stop by our college system?
Many remember a recent President Obama's apology to an art history professor regarding his comments about the job prospects for history majors. In my humble opinion as a citizen, apology was not necessary. This time the President was right in his remarks. Together, let's take a look at the jobs most demanded by our economy. According to the Forbes and based on the study by CareerBuilder and Economic Modeling Specialists Intl., the top jobs for 2014, requiring college education, are financial analyst, software developer, physical therapist and petroleum engineer. I refer you back to this study, it mentions 12 jobs in total.
And since we started this piece with Duke student, let's take a close look at the majors offered by the esteemed institution. There are about 50 of those and here are some of them in alphabetical order: African and African American Studies, Art History, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Canadian Studies, Dance, English, Evolutionary Anthropology, French and Francophone Studies, Religion, Romance Studies, Russian Language and Culture etc. Being of humanitarian nature myself and at the risk of enraging lots of folks, how many aforementioned majors would provide their holders with great odds of finding a real employment? How many new immigrants from all over the world do we have to invite to this country in order to fill high demand jobs? How many our own American kids, disoriented by our cash-hungry but not exactly helpful educational system, are taking these majors and subsequently forking over $1000 a month for 15 years to repay their loans while working any available second job to meet their end?
In all fairness to Duke, they do offer lots of majors leading to high demand jobs in engineering, computer science and human health. But do we as a country have to make college loans equally easy accessible in these fields of high demand and in liberal arts? What are we trying to do? Benefit our kids and respectively the future of all of us or benefit the educational and banking system?
I am not providing any practical solutions worked out to any level of details. I am just saying that by encouraging kids to take majors leading to a high demand jobs will bring real tangible benefits to our country, including it's people and it's infrastructure. We need to provide these kids with highly subsidized loans and pay at least for a significant part of their educational costs. And for the guys and girls who want to stay in the fields of liberal arts, getting loans needs to be much tougher. Do you want to major in Marsian studies? Be my guest and pay yourself for it. As a side benefit, this measure may even lower the college cost.
Rephrasing JFK, let's ask ourselves: do we want to do what is good for our lending system and educational guild, or do we want to do what is good for our kids and our country?
