Should talented young right wingers give up on the corrupt and incorrigible university system and instead relegate themselves to blue collar vocations? Post the Great Awokening of 2014, this is an evergreen question that pops up every few months on the online social discourse.
Some argue that attending a liberal university is corrosive to the soul and is the root cause of many an apostate. Not to mention the eye popping sums of money (often in the form of loans) that impressionable 18 year olds have to lay down for the privilege of attending our formerly hallowed institutions of learning and wisdom (or vomit inducing bacchanalias, depending on your experience).
Against such a view, ambitious dissident writers like
argue that talented right wingers are missing out on the key vocational and talent development opportunities that working for top tier institutions in the American Empire provide. These opportunities include but aren’t limited to top tier pay (allows for more kids and economic power), observing how the halls of power actually work, increasing work load capacity and the vision necessary to materializing goals, and learning first hand what being elite actually entails and requires. Crucially, in order to even gain the chance to apply for such a role (working at top tech firms, crucial government 3 letter agencies, the best big law firms, etc) will 99.9% of the time require at least one university degree, if not multiple. Plumbers won’t be entering the same buildings, except to clear the pipes.The subtitle of my post already lays out my position, but I do want to offer the normal caveats that I wish to see talented Christians and right wingers (but I repeat myself) at all levels of society. I use a Christian HVAC technician at my house in order to provide financial support to a brother in the faith who does excellent work. My lawn crew is a local family team who fly a F*CK BIDEN flag from their truck and I pay them almost double what local immigrant crews would charge me. Not everyone needs to go or is even intellectually gifted enough to go to university and complete a degree in a difficult subject area. Those who aren’t gifted in this area should absolutely go become electricians, plumbers, handymen, or whatever other vocations that are needed in our economy and become excellent at their craft.
But do we really need a 99th IQ percentile young Christian man who is disagreeable enough to reject the anti-Christian propaganda that he will be subjected to at a reputable institution of higher learning to not go get a quality vocational education? Should he fit PVC pipes together the rest of his life when he has the talent to create a start-up business or infiltrate a top firm for a period in order to learn from the corporate school of hard knocks how to make a business thrive in a hostile world? I often wonder if right wingers consider the second and third order effects of having all our people voluntarily exit any path to power. Do you really want zero right wingers in the military? What about the corporate world? There are a few Christian CEOs left at the top of large companies and they absolutely make an impact on how bearable day to day life is for non-libtard employees at those companies. If we don’t have any of our guys in key institutions, we are exposed to raw power with no institutional levers of pushback available to us. It’s cultural suicide in the manner of the Amish.
Nothing I’ve written above is all that original. Plenty of more articulate writers have given similar opinions. What I have not seen is a pure economic comparison of the benefits of a solid degree can do for someone with the requisite hard and soft skills to make use of that degree. I’ve decided to run a slightly fudged (for privacy/anonymity reasons) cost/benefit analysis of my university degree around 10 years out from graduation.
For starters, here are relevant factors for my background and decision to go to university. I grew up upper middle class in a conservative evangelical Christian household. It was always a given that I would go to university like my parents did. My PSAT, SAT, and ACT scores were 98-99th percentile. I received little to no guidance on what degree to choose, but knew that I was good with math, but not top tier so engineering wouldn’t have been the best choice. I therefore decided to choose a degree that had a moderate level of mathematical difficulty in the vein of economics/accounting/finance. I was relatively unambitious at the time so I decided to go to a top ranked state school in my home state instead of casting my net further to top tier private schools. My parents contributed nothing to my tuition/cost of living expenses at university besides occasionally buying groceries or filling my car up with gas. I started working around the age of 12 to start saving up for university and had a decent amount saved up by my first year (although my first year wiped that amount quickly out). I also worked all throughout university to pay for living expenses (rent, food, gas, etc).
With that in mind, let’s crunch the numbers. I achieved my degree in 4 years thanks to having almost a full year of credits entering my freshman year (AP classes). I lived on campus for a part of my time at school, but lived in cheap (nothing over $200/month) housing the rest of the time. For four years of school, not including other living expenses that I paid through my fast food job, I paid the university around $43,692.09. Some of that was loans and some was cash that I saved up through working summer jobs and internship. Keep in mind this was around 10-15 years ago and I received next to nothing in scholarship funds (around $1,500 if I remember correctly).
I had a pretty good GPA, but nothing spectacular. Despite that, I managed to land an internship at a large corporation due to my excellent interviewing skills. I killed it at that job and even convinced them to let me be their first ever 100% remote intern during my last year at university (I trailblazed the WFH phenomenon!) after they couldn’t find someone good enough to replace me when I was due to head back to school that fall. Entering my senior year, I landed 3 job offers from large corporates that almost everyone would recognize the name of. I accepted one and the same state I grew up in that paid less than my top offer but was in an industry that I wanted to work in. That leads us to the next part of calculating whether my degree was worth it from a pure economic point of view.
I’ve been working in the corporate world for around a decade now. In that time, I’ve had setbacks and successes, changed companies at least once, and more than earned back what I spent for my degree. I landed an expatriate assignment in Europe which paid me handsomely for being away from the US for a number of years. I’ve been considered top talent at all three corporations I have worked at and have not faced (yet, thank God) any hostility for my religious beliefs. I don’t have exact total compensation numbers for each year that I’ve worked, but I compiled the numbers as best as I could.
In the time that I’ve been out of school working, I’ve earned somewhere between 45-50x back (nominal) on what I paid in tuition and fees for four years of university. And that is at the beginning of my career where I admittedly haven’t been as ambitious as I am now. In those 10 years, I’ve also gotten married, had three kids (with one on the way), and traveled quite a bit, both personally and for work. My corporate jobs have allowed my wife to comfortably stay home with the kids while I work, I’ve received multi-month paternity leaves with each kid, and generally been able to build a nice life for myself and my family. I’m beginning to see much higher compensation roles open up and that 45-50x number should continue to go way up over the next decades, ceteris paribus. My degree has opened doors to unique opportunities (such as moonlighting as a CFO for a startup the last couple of years) and will continue to open doors.
Admittedly, this analysis that I’ve done is only on the pure economic benefits of a useful college degree combined with a good job market and the talent to take advantage of it. Life is more than pure economics, but it’s heartening to see right wingers come to the realization that winning a (culture) war takes materials, including wealth. Living a righteous life takes wealth (to a degree). We should be encouraging our young men to earn as much money as ethically as possible. Large families take money. Great educations take money. Beautiful church buildings and civic buildings take money. Entrepreneurship is a great way to earn that money, but not everyone is suited to go that route. Plus, right wing entrepreneurs will need like-minded, talented workers to staff their businesses with. I want to be one of those workers and know plenty of other guys who did the university training necessary to also contribute to such a business.
Granted, I went to university over 10 years ago. Perhaps the costs have climbed way up since then (so have salaries for starting jobs for in-demand fields). There are other benefits to going to university such as finding an intelligent spouse, laying the groundwork for a lifelong network, and landing low paid but high power positions in certain key areas. My advice to anyone going to university is to go with a mercenary attitude. My anthropology professor insulted the Genesis creation narrative during a class. I vowed then and there that the university I attended will never see a dime from me apart from tuition and fees. I’ve kept that promise. There are other areas on the front that need my hard earned funds. I was able to go and roll my eyes at any anti-Christian or anti-right wing propaganda. I went for a marketable degree. I have nothing against liberal arts degrees, but would recommend seekers of such degrees to go to a Christian liberal arts college like New Saint Andrews instead of an expensive state school that will provide a subpar education.
I don’t like blanket recommendations in life and I won’t make one here. However, if you are reasonably talented, reasonably able to withstand anti-right wing propaganda, and reasonably ambition, I’d hate for you to pass up on a profitable decision based on a Twitter profile of someone who is merely trying to rack up views. Go study and go earn a great living.
“For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” Luke 16:8