She does not sound like 4-year college material to me.
Really? Wow. One C and she shouldn't go to college?
Well...to me, the point is that she stayed after school for weeks getting help with trigonometry, and she still got a C. What do the input and outcome say about her mathematical aptitude?
If trig is really too hard for her and math isn't her subject, she's basically shut out of engineering, economics, accounting, the sciences, and anything else using a lot of math. This leaves the humanities or the relatively easy majors like business and journalism. Either way, the job prospects aren't great and her debt burden may be very high.
I don't know if she's college material or not, but based on the very limited amount of information in the article, it bothers me that she and the adults around her are so focused on a BA as her best or only option.
Why should everyone go to college? Why do we assume that if students want to maximize their chances of being productive adults in good jobs, they should go to college? This outlook is insulting to plumbers, aircraft mechanics, and others. It also creates an arms race and cripples too many young people with too much student loan debt (which could ultimately be a disaster for our economy, which in turn is presumably why the debt can't be discharged after bankruptcy or death). I fear that we're creating a new hidden underclass by telling too many kids that college will land them in great high-paying jobs if they just work hard. I'd like to see real proof of this (and no, statistics about college graduates earning more aren't enough. How do 10-30 years of loan repayments change the equation? What about the lost years of earning? What about happiness and earnings of mediocre marketing managers versus really good plumbers? Etc.).
I also don't like the fact that questioning the go-to-college assumption is borderline taboo. Saying "maybe someone shouldn't go to college" isn't a way of insulting that person. It's just a way of saying "maybe there are options that would suit you better and won't land you in debt that you can't repay."
Of course, admitting that college isn't for everyone is also an admission that cognitive ability matters, and maybe that's what really strikes a nerve. I don't know.
