A perfect example of the breakdown of the educational system is the decision of what makes the cut – what gets taught. Art is not important. Music is not important. English, Math, Social Studies – these are important. What scared me the most as a kid was that most of my teachers (I did have some incredible ones, but they were always the exception to the rule), were so ingrained in or beaten down by the system that they were literally incapable of teaching.

I always considered college as a way to add insult to injury. Not only will you NOT learn anything, you’ll have to pay for the privilege of being treated by some sort of ungrateful idiot, too. Again, this is in general. I have had some fantastic professors, but always the minority, and always fighting against the very system that employs them.

By fourteen, I had grown cynical and suspicious of the education system. Having uncovered inconsistencies and downright untruths being printed in school textbooks, my faith was not restored by the either uncaring or incompetent teachers employing the books. When counselors at my high school came in to ask us what we wanted to do with their lives, I was disturbed at the number of kids who responded with, “get accepted to x university.”

Yale and Harvard are the end all be all of life achievements? Did they really feel that way? No, they just figured that was what these people wanted to hear. My answer, “be happy,” was so unusual and bizarre, the counselor actually pulled me aside and asked me if I would meet with her to talk. Really?

When I dropped out of high school, my mother panicked. In my time out of school, I got the GED, learned web design, and did door to door canvassing for an public interest group. I enrolled in community college when I was eighteen. I had some fabulous professors at community college, but I was well aware of the major problems facing that system – many tenured professors were useless, uncaring, uninterested and miserable people. Adjunct professors were regularly reminded of how expendable and unimportant they were by the administration.

However, I graduated with an associates degree and no debt. I was accepted into a University to complete a bachelor of arts degree. I’m still in debt, even though I’m one of the few in my class who was hired before graduation – for my skills as a web designer, not for anything I learned in school.

Yes, my diploma is a piece of paper I can wave around, telling people that I did this, and it means something. But what does it mean? That I spent $10,000 for a piece of paper? In my book, that’s not an achievement. That means I got suckered badly. But I’m one of the lucky ones. At least my diploma only cost me ten grand. It could have cost me ten times that.

My expensive right of passage allowed me to see just how fundamentally flawed this system is. While it’s vindicating when people like Mark Taylor write articles about this for the New York Times, I wonder where they were ten years ago. People have been criticizing the sytem for over thirty years, but news papers bought the higher education farce hook line and sinker. But that’s because higher ed is big business.

Think about it – why did my high school, one of the best in the country, work so hard to get its kids into Yale and Harvard? Why was it such a disappointment when my class graduated with only one or two kids getting into those schools? Why was that the emphasis? Why did my Honors English class teach me how to take standardized tests?

Because college acceptance is a BFD for high schools. If your kids score high on standardized tests (including the SATs) and get accepted into the Ivies, that means your district is going to be rolling in dough. More people will want to live in your district, which means higher taxes for residents, and more cash flow.

Everyone had a slice of the bullshit pie. And I’m incredibly, incredibly bitter, not just because I knew it was a steaming pile of cow pucky and I grabbed a spoon anyway, but because it’s true – without that $10,000 piece of paper, I would not be employed where I am now. I could and would be employed somewhere else – I do know that, but that piece of paper is what opens the door.

The sad irony is that employers are realizing that that paper has nothing to do with what kind of workers they get. Poorly prepared for real life, for real work. But is that a reflection on the poor education being provided by these institutions, or a collective realization that the diploma does not signal the end of the bullshit train? There are still many miles to go on bullshit road.