NJ colleges shockingly setting records for enrollment (Opinion)

The state and the entire country seem to be stuck in the hypnotic trance that has lead us to the worst looming financial crisis in modern history: STUDENT DEBT!

Both Rutgers and Seton Hall, two prestigious institutions of higher whatever, have reportedly set enrollment records with the incoming class of freshmen. With the diminishing returns on meaningless college degrees, and the unimaginable financial hole it puts so many young people into, people still flock in record numbers to enroll in the biggest scam ever perpetrated on this society.

In most cases, they're not getting an education, they're buying credentials. Kids today are told from an early age that if they don't go to college, they won't get a good job and won't have a bright future. So parents feel the pressure and the kids feel the pressure, from their parents, teachers, guidance counselors and their peers to "get into a good school." The rising cost of a college education has outpaced inflation, the cost of food, housing, fuel, etc. Colleges are getting rich at the expense of many of it's students who can't afford it, but with the pressure borrow money they can't comprehend how it will burden them.

Total student loan debt in this country has reached $1.52 TRILLION! The average college student who graduated in 2016 owes over $36,000. Many of the 44 million Americans with student debt more owe a much higher amount. The one loan you cannot default on, even if you declare bankruptcy. It's keeping our young people from buying home, getting married or having children. It's a trap and a scam, but it's one most parents fall into because they don't want to seem like derelict guardians for their promising offspring.

If you were smart, disciplined and fortunate enough to make a decent amount of money in New Jersey you can hopefully foot the bill. But most parents can't. I wish the incoming classes at all of our colleges good luck. They'll need it and so will their parents. It may not happen on the first Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner when come home, but parents will more than likely see a difference, not in what they actually learned, but in how they've been taught to "feel" about the world they brought them into.

I just had a friend tell me this week that his daughter had to take a poetry class as part of her major. The "professor" at one of our esteemed state schools spent the entire class making them discuss how the current President doesn't care about the environment. What ever happened to "There once was a women from Kent?" It's a friggin poetry class! What could possibly rhyme with "sustainable fuel alternatives?!"

Parents, think long and hard the next time you run into one of your kids' friends' parents at the local supermarket or ball field and they ask, "where's Josh going to school next year?" Or when you see all the bragging on social media about where Emma got accepted to! It's either one of two things: A big price to pay and a big burden to put on your kids shoulders to keep up with the crowd and this scam. Think long and hard. They're certainly not doing a lot of that in our universities.

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