The new cost of NJ colleges — is it worth it? NO! (Opinion)

We have the current list of state colleges and what they cost here in New Jersey. It's got to be one of the hardest choices parents make with their kids about to graduate high school. This time of year, most of the decisions have been made and some of the checks have already been written or monies borrowed. It's great if your parents can pay for it, but most kids in New Jersey take out college loans that they'll be saddled with for the better part of their early adult life. It will limit them on car purchases, home ownership, travel and a host of things young American adults have enjoyed for the last half century or more.

We have brainwashed two generations of both parents and kids coming out of high school, that if you don't go to college, you don't have a good chance at success. Unless you know you're going to be a doctor, dentist, engineer, research scientist and a handful of other professions, college is not only unnecessary, it could be detrimental. Definitely harmful financially. Also going away to an artificial, "free" utopian idea filled environment, not only doesn't prepare you for life, it may set you up for failure in life.

You study hard, ace your tests and achieve a high grade point average. Life doesn't work that way. The struggles, interactions and actual real life, hands-on learning are eliminated. So when you graduate at 21 or 22, that friend of yours that took courses at a technical school or an apprenticeship at a job he/ she was really interested in, is way ahead of you and probably debt free. They're already a valuable asset to a company or to their customers/ clients, and you have to prove yourself to an employer that expects for more from you than your professors who've filled your head with nonsense ideas about a world they've never really participated in.

The college and university system in our country needs to change, drastically. Eliminate nonsense course credit requirements and streamline the process and cost dramatically. Most learning could be done online from your parents house, where now you're forced to live long after you graduate, because you're saddled with debt. You don't need to live away on some campus far away. You're too immature to handle it and you're too inexperienced to realize the stupid things you're getting into. Take long weekends and go visit your friends away at college and do those stupid things for a day or two, then come back home to reality and build a real career and life close to home.

It's so difficult for parents to NOT send their kids away to a GOOD school. It might even be embarrassing when they run into other parents at the supermarket and they're asked, "What school is Ryan going to?" Nobody want to say the local community college or technical school. It's much more of a testament to what a good student these good parents to say "Rutgers" or "NYU" or "Penn State"! Better tell them kids to get all the free s*** they can with that school name on it, because they'll be paying for it 'til they're in their 40s!

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