cost of college investment

This editorial appeared in the Dallas Whoring News today:

A degree worth more than mere dollar signs

Re: "Is college really worth it?" by Mary Jacobs and Sophia Dembling, Sept. 10 Viewpoints.
As a longtime writer who, like Ms. Dembling, is coming late to my bachelor's degree, I was disappointed that she and Ms. Jacobs stumbled over the same fallacy, that a college education is solely a ticket to an upper-class lifestyle. I view this economic reductionist approach as a prime cause of America's decline.
We see the tragic results of America's capitalist mentality in New Orleans. That great city of charm and grace, whose best "product" is its matchless culture, was abandoned long before Hurricane Katrina. Its impoverished, mostly black population was deemed unworthy of good government, law and order, decent schools and infrastructure improvements that could have held back the floodwaters.
Higher education teaches us that to be fully human, we need the seemingly impractical disciplines New Orleans embodies.
No, my degree won't guarantee me a stratospheric salary, but it will help me be a better person, for I will have learned how to help shape humanity's highest ideal, a truly civilized world where people are valued for themselves, not as economic commodities.
I consider this accomplishment to be time and money well spent.

Cynthia B. Astle, senior from Dallas, University of North Texas, Denton

And yes, she is absolutely correct. But she's missing the true point of all of the talk of a college education being an "investment": it distracts you from the fact that the very people who benefitted from low college tuition and high college financial assistance have since decided to make everyone else pay through the nose for it. Check out the rates that college tuition has spiralled upwards; looks alot like medical costs doesnt it? Of all the things the governmnet could finance (relatively cheaply, too) to make this country stronger, school would be the best "investment", but instead we get tax cuts for the rich, an illegal/immoral war in Iraq, and billions of dollars funnelled into Halliburton.
How is that good for anybody but a small few? Are you included in that number? I know I'm not.