This is a genuine question.

(Please pardon spelling or grammar mistakes I typed in a meeting at work. A meeting on a Sunday morning. Fuck work)

I know that college students can be “annoying” but I have noticed that everyone seems to hate college students. From conservative college educated business vampires and ghouls, to college educated liberal rainbow/pink/pro-black capitalism types. Even many online progressives (not sure what that term even means anymore) as well college dropout “dirtbag leftists” (I don’t know if that term is still in use, I’m not on Twitter and I don’t even listen to Chapo anymore) say that college is stupid. . Which just so odd because while I agree there is a ton to critique about higher education and academia as a whole it just seems to dismissive and weird to dunk on students for being students.

It seems to me that most people seem to Make a caricature of the college student. Everyone who was college educated (especially liberals) seem to make their college education to be some halcyon golden age but now it’s all fallen apart. Those people seem to believe college is just young adult daycare now but was some rigorous training facility for the leaders of the world in past.

It seems to me at least this is a weird expression of the US hated of youth and youth culture but also a weirdly kinda fetishists it simultaneously. My theory is we collectively dunk on college kids because we hate ourselves and who we have become and see them using their youth to do youth stuff. Exploring and expressing themselves in a way were unable or perhaps unwilling to do in somewhat similar conditions.

But that’s just a baseless theory, I got my degree in STEM not in humanities/social sciences. Real talk venerate the humble humanities and social sciences majors. while their degrees are also used for evil like everyone else’s they at least don’t have a “start-up” they are pitching.

When I got my undergrad in 2017 at state university most of the katz I knew were working +30 hours a week and/or living with mom and dad and still in crippling debt. Now that I’m returning to get my master’s degree (part-time to be fair but I do into a campus for the night classes) also at a state university I’m still seeing the same thing. A lot of these young people are working, doing education as well as trying to become adult. It’s a lot, and honestly i empathize them. They are playing a rigged game and it sucks so many of them take it so personally, it’s a lot pressure to put on a younger person.

I don’t know why the pop-culture narrative is that everyone who goes to school is a “fail child” or some trust fund kid. I met a few in my here and there while at school my first time but was mostly just regular people of all types trying to get a degree, though maybe I was in the minority as I was (and still am) a square.

All that to say why do we hate college kids? Why do we think they are all “blue hair baristas” or whatever other current derogatory pejorative is. It just seems really stupid to me that we dunk on young people for doing what we tell them to do. The whole cultural narrative is “go to college, have fun, make friends, get a good job” but they seem to only care about the last part. It’s not like their a lot of alternative pathways for them to try, it just seems so odd to me