the appropriate response to “these baby boomers are taking university courses for $10 per credit” is “everyone deserves that,” not “they do not deserve that”
also just because your parents are rich baby boomers doesn’t mean all baby boomers are wealthy and they were your age at a time when it was much less common to get an education past high school, so yeah its actually good that they have access to this opportunity if they want it! y’all are deliberately obtuse sometimes!
Oh, good. Thank you for this. I keep seeing Those Posts, and as a person who works in academia and works with non-trad students and the like, it was really grinding my gears.
A lot of folks who come back to school later in life are doing it for enrichment. As costs of higher ed have skyrocketed, folks who used to take the odd college class for self-improvement and out of pure interest could no longer do so.
My music courses as an undergrad (at a community college, so it was cheaper to start with) were full of senior citizens who just…had gone their whole lives always wanting to learn to sing or play an instrument and never could because they, you know, had a 40+/week job and kids to raise and stuff. They weren’t capitalizing on anyone else’s educational experience. They weren’t even degree-seeking, most of the time. They just needed to get out of the house and wanted to make some of their neglected dreams come true in their twilight years.
Even if a baby boomer student IS degree-seeking (that is, plans to attend an entire compliment of classes following a degree-program’s curricula), please consider what that MEANS. Why is a senior citizen actively seeking a college education at this time in their life? If not for enrichment (as explained above), it’s likely so they can go back to work in a time when college degrees have become (distressingly!) mandatory to earn a living wage. I AM sorry that students feel that this is unfair–frankly, it is!–but I’m definitely of the opinion that “I, too, deserve affordable college!” is a better response to this then “fucking baby boomers don’t deserve this!”. You have no IDEA what individual folks taking advantage of this boon are doing or HOW they are doing.
Old people aren’t the natural enemy, guys. I know a lot of them are fucking us over on the daily, but generational generalizations and blind hatred and anger continue to help literally no one, ever.