And THAT, I think, is precisely why a liberal arts university education should be free and available to everyone, to give more people the chance to think about their education beyond only "how will this pay off for me financially." 9/9

the only people who get to treat school in that exploratory way are the people who can afford to. All this is to say that I deeply hear this complaint of yours, but I really think it surfaces is the way our economic system limits college to this narrow vocational, utilitarian function 8/9

I am a poet and a teacher (neither things I make very much money from), so of COURSE what I think school is for is to widen a person's view of the world: all the incredible rabbit holes of specific things to get interested in. But realistically, 7/9

A two-track system already exists (vocational school vs."college"), but more and more university administrations are insisting we treat college as merely vocational training (and students are too, but I don't blame students for this because university is so fucking expensive in the US) 6/9

I am, I admit, a poet, so, for me, those meaning-of-life things look like the arts and human community that forms around shared experiences: all things that aren't "lucrative" in any kind of career sense, but that ARE the things that save me, over and over, from despair. 5/9

Or college as a place that plants the seeds of things you might, with delight, return to years later (poetry, an interest in astrophysics, art, etc), the things that give meaning to life beyond the basics of survival. 4/9

If more people (though governmental policies and social support systems) had a financial cushion (in other words, if more people didn't have to use most of their conscious brains to worry about how to pay rent and buy food), then more people would also have the luxury of college as discovery, or 3/9

If we lived in a country where we people had enough money to live on (through UBI, or if higher education were free to all, or if rent was meaningfully capped, or or or), then that might relieve this pressure on university to be, essentially, vocational training school 2/9

I think what you're unearthing here is the primary way that the lack of meaningful social safety nets in this country undercuts the utopian vision of education as expAnsive (not expensive, though that's true) rather than vocational 1/9

Yessss to this

Anyway thank you for, as always, pointing out bullshit “reporting” when you see it @michaelhobbes.bsky.social , helps me feel less insane on a daily basis 🫠

phenomenon that lots of researchers are posing about the increase in autism diagnoses. The moral here is that MORE students need access to evaluation and accommodations, bc it’s so prohibitively expensive now!

So of COURSE there will be more documented disabilities at schools where lots of the students are economically privileged bc they have ACCESS to both knowledge of the ed evaluation landscape and the funds to get evaluated! It’s the this-was-always-here-it’s-just-finally-getting-diagnosed-at-scale 2/

That thing about fancy colleges having the highest percentage of students with documented accommodation needs is because it’s SO fucking expensive to get those evaluations done! most normal families either a) don’t KNOW about the landscape of that kind of evaluation and/or b) can’t afford it! 1/

Oof I love this poem, it’s allusive chimes