Joe College and Jane: Get back to campus

Ninety-eight percent of American parents a decade ago thought it was a good idea for their children to go to college.

Just 10 years later, that percentage has dropped to half, a new survey shows.

Since the early 2010s, the number of students on college and university campuses in our country has dropped by 2.5 million people.

Some of that is demographics.

But that's akin to losing the city of Los Angeles from the shady groves of academe in the United States.

And it's a pity.

College can be for getting ahead. Certainly my young Glendale friend graduating from Stanford next year in computer science and already enrolled in the graduate program in the same desirable discipline — that's a get-ahead move. But I am not here to argue for the obvious reasons to go to college.

I'm here to argue for being an English major. For joining a fraternity, if that's your thing. For writing poems, bad or good. For playing on an intramural basketball team — hey, they've got a 6-foot-and-under league.

Whether you hold down a job and go to Cal State Fullerton or L.A. or Northridge at night or head back East to some idyllic Swarthmore or Bard, go to college, kids. Send your kids to college, parents.

The four years of college in America form the most beautiful transition into adulthood ever created by a culture. You get out of the familial nest, but you're not thrown right into the gray-suited career before you get to know the world, or yourself. Your head is unformed at 18 when we go off to school; if it's not exactly fully formed at 21 when you leave campus, it's screwed on a lot tighter.

I know that a lot of the parental reluctance is based on the fact that most professors and the institutions they serve are culturally and politically liberal. So what? Many insurance agents and money managers I know are culturally and politically conservative. Doesn't mean they don't give such as me excellent service. Their chosen professions require a proper conservatism, and thank God for that. Don't give your 401(k) to a Trotskyite to manage, I always say.

OK, I've never said that. But it's the kind of proposition you'd throw out late in the lounge on the floor of your freshman dormitory after your third beer in what newspaper columns always call a bull session although I don't think anyone ever involved in one calls it that.

It's just free time for free expression the likes of which a kid can never get at home. It's going to bed when you want to and facing the music if there's an early class, but that's your call. It's learning time management, `cause Mom's not there asking if you've done your homework. Sometimes you won't have done your homework. Sometimes you'll fail, because profs are kinda sick like that, for a bunch of libs. They'll work you like you've never been worked.

After you've got your bearings, kid, take classes in things you're really bad at. Don't just stick to your comfort zone. I took Acting 1A, Drawing 1A and a carpentry class building sets for massive student productions. I was just terrible at all of them. Though I never missed a minute of class, my art prof called me out into the hallway halfway through the quarter and said he was worried about my grade. “Wait — I'm taking this class pass-fail!” I told him. “I'm not getting worse than a C-, am I?” I was not. He was so kind to look out for my GPA and graduate school prospects.

Hone your craft. Find your art. Mess about like you'll never mess about again. And if you lean right, you know what you can say to your commie profs? “I disagree. You want to talk about it?”

And they do. That's what they get paid for, to be in college forever. The lucky stiffs.