LewRockwell President Biden is tub-thumping for Congress to create new federal handouts to make college free for the vast majority of students. But as Ryan McMaken and other commentators on mises.org have pointed out, college is vastly overpriced and overrated nowadays.
My view on college stems from my experience as a two-time dropout. I was frightfully bored in high school and had mediocre grades. Almost immediately after my compulsory schooling ended, my long-lost love of reading revived. A month before I began attending Virginia Tech, a kindly neighbor gave me the University of Chicago Great Books list, which became my road map to the best writings of Western civilization. Reading authors such as Montaigne, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Emerson, and John Stuart Mill awoke portions of my mind that I never knew existed. I was unaware that I was loitering in mental neutral until those classics jolted my mind into a higher gear.
Early in my first quarter at college, I aspired to getting all As. But, after a few hooey-laden tests, I recognized that professors were demanding something different than what I was seeking. Many of the textbooks felt like heavy blankets smothering my mind. I was confounded to see most fellow students never venture beyond the books professors assigned them. They acted as if a secret zoning mandate permitted using only government-approved building materials for their own minds…
