therealnicolecortese:

For me, this answer is yes.  I was laid off in the start of June of this year from a job I wasn’t too crazy about to begin with.  So as any 22 year old would do, I enjoyed my summer. I went out, partied, did anything that I couldn’t do during normal waking hours when I had my job. 

Unfortunately, once all of my friends started going back to school, I was stuck sitting at home all day with nothing to do BUT “look for a job.”  Now I was actually enrolled in school as well, but only part time and at night because when I scheduled, I thought I’d still have a full time job to work around. Needless to say, school was not taking up as much of my time as I’d hoped. Of course I had much more time to spend on my studies, but I don’t do that normally, so it wasn’t that big of a difference to my normal life.

Well while I was talking to others on unemployment or knew their way around this system, people kept telling me that unemployment would pay for your schooling. LIGHTBULB! So i researched this tidbit of information. Turns out the “job training” seminar that unemployment supplies is not to better your skills there, they tell you how to go back to school or get the proper training for your field! 

Now, in the good ol’ NJ, as a senior in high school, we had a program called “NJ Stars.” This promised the top 20% of high school seniors would get two years of community college tuition paid for and then “NJ Stars II” would come into play and allow us to continue on to our 4-year degrees at a public NJ school and again, have our tuition fully paid for. I thought THIS IS GREAT! Free schooling! For once, being on the honor roll EVERY year since 3rd grade (that’s when we started getting letter grades and not just checks and minuses) has finally paid off!! 

So, I went to community for the two years, which I hated every minute of, I must say, but at least I had a real 4-year school to look forward to, right? WRONG! While at community college, the state realized, “Hmm, there are too many people we now have to pay schooling for, oops, let’s change this because we have no more money.” Well guess what, I now didn’t have money either. Thanks assholes.

So now the rule was, if you continued to a four year institution, only $6,000 or $7,000 would be offered to help pay per year depending on how much income you had.  Well I’m sorry, but if you have recently looked at ANY 4-year college, you know that this is WELL under what yearly tuition costs. I don’t even know if I could get a meal plan for that much. Again, thanks assholes.

So with no money for school and at least an associate’s degree, I ventured into the full-time job market, hoping that if i could make money first, I wouldn’t be sucked into debt that I would be paying off until I’m 75. This worked for about a year, until here I am, laid off like half of America.  

Now, since unemployment issues “tuition waivers,” I was informed that I can go to school full time, and I’m NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE A JOB! Sounds perfect. Some people view this as cheating the system. I view it as utilizing my resources. I am now between that rock and hard place because:

1. It’s Christmas time and the weekly amount from unemployment isn’t cutting it. 

2. I had about 2 days to apply to transfer to a PUBLIC NJ University because the one I was part time at was private so they won’t pay for my tuition there.

3. I can get school paid for IN FULL (minus textbooks and that stuff, but on NJ Stars, I had to pay for that myself anyway, no big deal). 

4. I can not have a *legal* job if I want school paid for because once I get a job, I lose my unemployment obviously.

5. After that I will be like the rest of my college peers, which is in loads and loads of debt until I’m 75. 

So with all of these things to think about, this has actually DISCOURAGED me from finding a job once I knew that I could get school paid for. My thoughts were, why should I look for a job if I’m not allowed to have one if I go back to school and can get this paid for by our lovely government. That’s right folks, our same government that promised me a full 4-year tuition from any public NJ school back in 2007. Um, hello, do I look stupid? No. Honestly, I’m just cashing in on what I was originally promised when I signed up for this NJ Stars business out of high school.  

My opinion is that college is one of the biggest running scams in America.  If you’re enrolled at any college or university, you are participating in one of the biggest scams in history.  (and yes, I’m including myself in this statement). So if we’re ALL criminals because that’s what scams entail, unknowingly robbing people of their money, I’m just robbing the government back of what’s mine.

Do they not realize that every year when they raise tuition by $100 or $1,000, they are robbing a less fortunate child of their education? And about that, what happened to no child left behind? Well it looks to me like they’re leaving plenty of children behind. Especially a person, like myself, who busted their behind all twelve years of school to be on the honor roll and get an awesome GPA, just to be robbed of my promised education? Why would I work that hard if I knew it was all going to be taken away from me? This is why I love America.