Steve,

I really didn't want that image. It was all well and good until you brought up the donkey.:P

On that note, to defend myself:

Yes, yesterday, I vented. Loudly.

I understand your points in re undergrad education being to open up opportunities...But those opportunities aren't opening. At all.

And, to be blunt...20-40 years ago, when (I'm guessing), most of those speaking here were actually of traditional college age, maybe you could reasonably speak of a college's purpose being to "educate" in some broad sense.

I don't remember any time in the past 10 years in which that was any more than lip-service.

Yes, I'm a bit more...embittered because of my disabilities. I grant that. College was supposed to be the great, if not equalizer, then at least it was supposed to give me a fighting chance to compete on remotely the same playing field.

I know damn well I'm not entitled to anything, thanks. It's actually insulting to hear someone say that, because I didn't slack off during college. I didn't have a social life; I didn't go to a single party at all during my time in college. Insofar as I could focus, I was focused to near-obsession on grades. Exactly, I thought, like I was supposed to be.

Yes, I screwed up. Repeatedly. I haven't denied that in this thread, notice.

But I'm not just hearing this from me, I'm hearing the same general complaint from my peers: That going to college screwed us over.

For most of my peers, our working lives haven't even begun. To begin them, most had to take out loans nearly equal to what Steve's generation (guessing at your age, you're about 55-60, Steve?) would have had to take out to buy their first home.

You get equity in a house, at least; not really in a degree. Degree is more like a car, in my estimation - it loses value as soon as you get it.

So, yeah. There are a lot of us who are bitter, disaffected, and grumpy.

Because it's the rare 18-19 year old who goes to college completely because they want to - in a large part, it's because our parents (your generation, speaking broadly) expected it, demanded it of us. Because we were led to believe that it'd be the essential key to becoming independent - not that it'd be the only thing required, but that it'd be an essential component. Not just for a few years, not as a fad...But for our entire lives. Yeah, in case someone forgot, we've had the life-or-death necessity of college preached to us since almost as soon as we could talk.

So we did. We went. To a greater or lesser extent, depending on the person, we worked. Because at the end of all of this, we expected a payoff. That if nothing else, we'd at least get a chance to prove ourselves.

That hasn't happened, and now we're deemed spoiled brats for pointing out the contradiction between what we were led to expect and what the reality has turned out to be?

Norfolk,

...Universal conscription would not work. Not only do you have to deal with the substantial problem of what to do with those (like me) who, through no fault of our own, will never be physically qualified for military service (unless you'd like to say that not only am I lazy and spoiled, but that retinopathy of prematurity and cerebral palsy are my fault?), but you have to deal with the, ahem, complete and total hypocrisy of the fact that the generation that burned their draft cards now wants to have the younger generations get drafted.

And that's just to start.