Grad school becomes standard
r ■ i his weekend I have the plea
's sure of voluntarily panicipat
ing in eight hours of unremit
ting hell.
The Medical College Admissions
Test is one of those necessary but
painful segues into a post-graduate
career.
I’m sure most of the seniors at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln can
empathize with what I
will be going through; it
is now standard proce
dure to take these tests
in whatever guise —
LSAT, GRE, GMAT,
etc.
It is not capricious for
me to use the words
“standard procedure”
because going to graduate school has
no longer become a trend but rather
the first step toward the American
dream.
I guess you could say we have
come far. We seem to value education
so much more.
One of my four grandparents went
to college. In those days, a high school
education was considered an asset on
a resume. Both my parents have col
lege degrees. They met in college.
They are both secure in their middle
class jobs.
11 am three hours away from a
bachelor’s degree in biological sci
ences. Officially, I cannot do any
thing with this degree. I cannot teach
on the high-school level or college
level, and there aren’t many jobs for
me to classify trees and insects or be
the next Darwin if I do not further my
education.
I am a waitress. I have been a
waitress for eight years, and I will 1
continue to wait tables until I get into
medical school.
But what of education today? What
docs it mean to be educated? Obvi
ously, to society, it means going to
college for four years.
Or does it?
How many people will walk off
with their diplomas from this univer
sity, or any other, and find the job they
wanted and were trained for? Not
many, considering the number of
people who seriously think about en
tering graduate school as a way to
escape the abysmal job market.
College today means doling out
money you do not have. Your invest
ment at a public institution such as
UNL is — assuming residency —
approximately $1,400 per semester.
Since college is no longer a four
year but usually a five-year endeavor,
that calculates out to be $14,000 for
10 semesters of college to gain a
bachelor’s degree.
I do not have that much money to
my name, and I am lucky there are
such things as scholarships and loans,
as are many others.
The U.S. Dcpartmcijtof Education
in 1989 released statistics saying that
the average college senior owed
$7,157 in school loans. Just to add
another twist, the same department
said that prices at public colleges
jumped 26 percent from 1980 to 1990.
Further, a person with a high school
diploma adds $1,036 to their yearly
income; a college degree adds $ 1,243
to yearly income, a Penn State study
says. A little subtraction tells you that
i college graduate yearly makes $207
wore than a high school graduate.
The government is going to love
students who want the American
dream and can ’ t achieve it unless they
go to school until they arc 30 and then
pay it off until they’re old and gray. '
Now that you’re cognizant of tne
situation and the cost of your college
education, ask yourself, what have
you actually learned in college?
I learned how to lake a lest with a
hangover, how to get a great resume,
where to get cheap prophylactics, how
loplay every drinking game invented.
Am I educated now?
And let’s consider the flip side —
from where and from whom we get
our education. Do you know how
much even tenured professors get
paid? I would not be surprised if their
salaries, compared with other profes
sions requiring a doctorate degree,
was not one of the lowest if not THE
lowest.
Granted, I have had a few profes
sors who deserved minimum wage.
But, to truly educate is to be led to
educate yourself.
To those professors who made me
read Plato, Kincaid, Marx and Barth,
to those who helped me understand
the gravity of Darwin’s contributions
via an exhibit at the zoo, I thank you.
So, hopefully, before our children
have to get a doctorate degrees to
become gas station attendants, we
might want to look at changing our
system.
Whether it be to counteract the
high cost of college, find professors
who are true educators and pay them
properly, or raise the standards to get
into and out of college.
Not only is it administrators’ and
government’s problem for serving us
a substandard education that won’t
get us a job after five years of school
ing, but it is our fault for accepting this
as a fact of life.
Withoul change, people with aver
age intelligence and a desire for a
middle-class life will spend a good
portion of their working years paying
thousands of dollars for an education.
They will spend the rest of their
lives working in a job for which they
have become overqualified and in
herently unhappy with, as well spend
ing a good portion of their income
paying for so-called knowledge with
out any practical training.
Kraisse is a senior pre-med major and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist.
End discrimination, make it legal
Wun inc signing ol the 1991
Civil Rights Act, followed
by the Los Angeles Riots in
April, the issue of race relations sim
mers just beneath the surface of the
presidential election.
The battle for civil rights has de
volved into trench warfare. Liberals
□and self-proclaimed
black leaders clamor for
justice by enacting more
quotas. It is the only
way, they claim, that
blacks can get ahead in
an inherently racist so
Conservatives lake a
more realistic approach,
one which is truly color blind: Merit,
not race, should be the yardstick by
which achievement is rewarded.
It’s a choice between equality of
results vs. equality of opportunity.
However, is long as black leaders
like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Charles
Rangcll, Spike Lee and Maxinc “Bum,
Baby, Burn” Waters alternately ma
nipulate white guilt and threaten more
L. A. riots i f the Establ i shment docsn ’ t
fork over more money, the issue will
remain mired where it is.
Into this fray steps Derrick Bell, a
professor of law at Harvard and emi
nent civil rights lawyer. He is of the
liberal bent. He also is black.
His latest book is titled “Faces at
the Bottom of the Well: The Perma
nence of Racism.” The cover story for
the September American Bar Asso
ciation Journal features his book, and
an interview, over his most provoca
tive idea:
Legalize discrimination, and li
cense it.
Bell proposes — as a thought ex
periment to challenge our notions of
current law, and I present it in the
same vein — a fictional piece of
legislation called the Racial Prefer
ence Licensing Act.
Under the act, all owners of public
facilities and dwellings could apply to
the federal government for the right to
exclude persons on the basis of race or
color. The license granted would be
expensive, but not unaffordable. A
tax of 3 percent would be levied dn
income derived from products sold to
the preferred race.
Revenue from the licenses and taxes
would be paid inloan “equality fund.”
The fund would be used to underwrite
and subsidize black-owned businesses,
offer loans to black homebuyers and
provide scholarships.
Those holding a license would be
required to prominently display a sign
declaring the fact that it discrim inaled
against a certain race. If a business or
apartment complex did not display
such a sign, but discriminated any
way, they could be sued for $ 10,000,
plus attorney’s fees.
To those of the politically correct,
liberal mindset, this sounds like her
esy. But what Bell is doing has paral
lels in environmental law, where the
government licenses a certain amount
of pollution by factories.
Goovcr the limit, and you’re fined.
Or take the fad to legalize drugs.
Advocates of legalization claim that
having the government or the free
market control the drug trade will
eliminate the worst excesses — like
organized crime’s involvement.
It will bring the problem into the
public eye, without fear of punish
ment. The visibility will lead to a
more rational solution, even accep
tance, of drug use.
Bell’s approach, though set forth
half-seriously, has its merits. Bell
contends that current civil rights laws
arc based on a law-enforcement model.'
Namely, that punishment of a law
breaker sets an example for the com
munity and deters the undesirable
conduct.
With discrimination, however,
because those of the same race as the1
lawbreaker, be he white, black, yel
low, red , brown, green or purple, iden
tify with him and not with the victim.
Any resulting litigation intensifies the
problem rather than solving it.
Coercing correct behavior is al
ways a difficult task, no matter how
lofty the goal.
S' In that sense,civil rights laws “mir
ror the old segregation laws in that
they perm it discrimination,” Bell said
in an interview. “And yet they arc
worse than those laws because they
providca kind of surface legitimacy.”
Using the marketplace to solve
discrimination, Bell hits people where
they live — their pocketbooks. As
Chief Justice John Marshall said in
McCullough vs. Maryland: “The
power to tax is the power to destroy.”
It’s an opportunity as well. If soci
ety is pally as racist as Jackson,
Rangell, Lee and Waters claim it is,
then think of the money to be made for
aiding black businesses, homeowners
and students.
By forcing people to ‘fess up pub
licly to harboring some racist senti
ments, licensing may do more to end
racism than the current laws.
Making racists wear a freely cho
sen scarlet letter might diminish the
sympathy that they now enjoy from
the vast, silent masses.
Further, outside of a few places
deep in Mississippi or Alabama, no
one really enjoys proclaiming him
self a racist or being called one. Even
David Duke, in his successive bids for
senator, governor and president, de
nied charges of racism.
Bell’s primary purpose in making
the proposal is to move the civil rights
debate, indeed the entire discussion
of racial issues, beyond where it is
today. It is to make liberals realize
that they arc just as guilty of stereo
typing and race-baiting as they claim
conservatives arc.
It’s time to realize that there is no
black agenda, just as there is no while
agenda. There is only an American
agenda, promoting maximum oppor
tunity for excellence and achieve
ment for all, regardless of race, color
or creed.
Kepfldd Is a graduate student In history,
an alumnus of UNL’s College of Law and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist.
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