I am college educated, as are most of my friends. And most of my friends agree with this statement.

But I whole-heartedly disagree. Honestly, I think this is such an insidious thing to say.

Because it's basically a claim that college educated people are better citizens - without having any way to prove it.

I feel like I am a very educated and thoughtful person. But I don't think ANY of that necessarily had to be learned in college.

I learn from life, my jobs, my relationships, and my avid consumption of media. Four years of that were spent in college, and certainly, some of what I've learned happened during those four years.

But my college years were by no means my most useful years for learning, nor was there anything I learned in college that I couldn't have learned somewhere else, or that was particularly more valuable than knowledge I might have picked up elsewhere, had I spent those four years differently.

It's really just such a mean thing for me to assume that my college experience gives me some intangible knowledge over that of my non-college-educated peers.

Knowledge and wisdom aren't really a question of having gone to college, but of having done a lot of things, talked to a lot of people, consumed a lot of media, and thought really hard about all of it. And you simply don't need college for any of that. And the last piece - the thinking - is really just down to the individual's personality.

So my opinion is, higher ed can be useful if you need to learn a specific thing. But for most people, it's a waste.

There is a time to teach our children basic life skills - and that is from kindergarten through 12th grade.