The College Scam is Like Tulip Bulb Scam!

Parents are fools to pay huge tuition fees to prestigious universities who provide a degree but little education to their students. They should learn the lesson of the tulip mania.

In early 1637 in the Netherlands, ordinary tulip bulbs (that bloom for about a week in the spring!) sold for more than 10 times the annual salary of a skilled worker! A few years earlier, Muslims had introduced tulips to Europe and the unique flower increased in value until a single tulip could be traded for a large estate! Everyone seemed to be caught up in the mania. Not only those of political clout, rich families, and those of noble birth but also farmers, sailors, clothes-washers, chimney-sweeps, and servants were caught up, proving there are fools in every strata of society.

Usually tulips never traded hands; only contracts (now known as futures) and foolish people sold everything to purchase a tulip contract. Then the price began to quickly slide as the first in were the first out (with the cash) and the last out were left holding a wilted tulip. The expensive flower was finally worth an ordinary onion! The bubble had burst causing pain, pathos, panic, and pandemonium.

“Tulip mania” is now often used to refer to anytime the present value of something varies greatly from the actual worth. We see that today in college education.

Even top-rated schools with billion dollar endowments and expensive buildings sell courses to gullible students that would embarrass school founders: “Sex and Death”; “Feminism Studies”; “Frisbee Throwing”; “Afro-centrist Studies”; “Black Lavender: A Study of Black, Gay, and Lesbian Plays and Dramatic Construction in the American Theater”; “Bodies Politic: Queer Theory and Literature of the Body”; and “Feminist Biblical Interpretation”!

But it gets “worser and worser.” Your student can choose to study “The Politics and Aesthetics Of Black Queer Formations” at Princeton University; “Lesbian Lives” at DePaul University; “Prostitution and Social Control: Governing Loose Women” at Oberlin College; “Mad Dogs, Vampires and Zombie Ants: Behavior Mediating Infections” at Vassar College; “Possessive Investment In Whiteness” at Stanford University; “How To Win A Beauty Pageant” at Oberlin College; “Politics of Obesity” at University of California at Santa Cruz; and “The Survival of the Whitest: Two Centuries of Racism And Evolutionary Theory” at Brown University. Hurry before these classes fill up. They’re much more fun than trigonometry, biology, accounting, and History of Western Civilization.

Duke University has announced that it will raise student fees so it can pay for sex change costs up to $50,000 for any student! Why would any sane person send a child to such a school? Oh, yes, I believe they have a basketball team!

A Tennessee school has done worse! A lesbian bondage expert who wants to show students “how to turn up the heat on our own sex drives” and a campus-wide condom scavenger hunt are among the activities planned for the University of Tennessee’s first-ever “Sex Week”– an event paid for in part by student fees. Hundreds of thousands of Baptist taxes are funding that week!

Shockingly, there are numerous Christians who are thrilled to have their children enroll in such schools! I would be embarrassed and I sure would never pay tuition.

I’m not anti-education in the least; after all I have a doctorate in education and a Ph.D. All my children are college graduates, some with advanced degrees. I have lectured at five colleges and have financially supported three or four colleges over the past few years. I have long-time friends who are professors and college presidents.

However, serious mistakes are being made by parents in my opinion. Not every student needs to go to college. Not every student needs a liberal arts degree. Too often parents push their children into college only to frustrate them and hinder them from what they really want to do with their lives. Of course, every Christian should be willing to serve Christ in a full-time capacity and get the training that is needed; but everyone does not have that calling. We have a grandson who is doing very well in construction work (and actively serving in a great church) and attended college for a couple of years. We are very proud of him. (I’d better say that since he will be wealthy by the time I have to pay for a nursing home.)

Every city needs more and better plumbers, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, builders, etc., and some of those occupations are producing more income than dentistry, engineering, and other white collar positions. That may be part of the problem: many parents want their children to “move up” in status to white collar positions–fact is, they see a college degree as a white collar union card. In casual conversations with their friends, they want to say, “My son, the doctor,” or “My daughter, the lawyer.” Such bragging rights are not worth paying up to $50,000 per year tuition!

It has been commonly thought that the most expensive thing other than going to college is not going to college. The college graduate usually made at least one million dollars more during a lifetime than non-college graduates. That is not true now because of the outrageous cost of college plus the advancement in income for businessmen, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc.

Moreover, children don’t need to go to expensive, prestigious schools. Parents have been “sold a bill of goods” about higher education. They should not be impressed with a school’s standing or even accreditation! Of course, some professions require an accredited degree. Accreditation is one of the most over-sold, unnecessary things since Hadacol, a patent medicine in the 1950s. It produced a big kick–main ingredient was alcohol–that promised to cure almost anything, even grow hair on a billiard ball and green leaves on a ball bat.

Accreditation, like Hadacol, might not hurt a student but it won’t do him much good either.
It makes no more sense to pay $200,000 for a four-year degree than it does to pay the same for a tulip!

Copyright 2013, Don Boys, Ph.D.

Muslim Invasion

The Fuse is Burning!

by Don Boys, Ph.D.

Muslin Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! is an interesting, informative, and for the politically correct and infuriating read. Islam, Muslims, immigration, Jihad, Sharia, and the war against our civilization, culture, and creed is a present reality. Gutless public officials are selling us short either by complicity with the enemy or due to a doctrinaire commitment to idiotic tolerance ideology. Whatever the case, citizens must stand up against the invasion now before it is to late. The author suggests that the fuse is burning and the results will end in a complete upheaval of America and every free nation, unless we act now. Forget the lame stream media. Forget Obama. Common sense mandates, our very survival demands that we act NOW to keep America from going off the cliff; This book promises to be a life changing read.

Purchase Now from Amazon