The Coast Of A Dream

The Cost of the Dream

When she was eighteen, the path seemed simple.

Everyone said the same thing: Go to college. Work hard. Get the degree. Everything will work out.

It sounded like a promise. Not a suggestion.

So she followed it.

Four years turned into five. Five turned into seven. By the time she stood at the edge of year eight, she realized something unsettling: the path wasn’t leading somewhere new anymore. It had quietly become a tunnel.

Every semester came with another bill. Tuition. Fees. Books that cost more than groceries. Housing. Parking passes. Lab costs. Technology fees. Student service fees for services she rarely used.

Each charge felt small enough to ignore at the moment. But stacked together year after year, they formed a number she had never truly looked at all at once.

Until one day she did.

She sat at a table with a calculator, scrolling through loan statements and financial aid summaries. Grants here. Scholarships there. Loans everywhere.

The total was staggering.

It was the cost of a house.

Not just a small one either. Enough to have bought land. Enough to start a company. Enough to build something real—something that produced value instead of debt.

Instead, all of that money had gone into classrooms, lecture halls, administrative buildings, parking structures, and an institution that promised opportunity but delivered uncertainty.

She wasn’t alone in realizing this.

Recently, I asked twenty-five juniors and seniors at Cal Poly a simple question.

“Where do you see yourself after this step?”

Not one of them had a clear answer.

Not one.

These weren’t lazy students. They weren’t people who had ignored their studies. They had followed the rules of the system perfectly attended class, passed exams, completed internships, met advisors, checked every box placed in front of them.

And yet when asked what came next, most of them simply shrugged.

Some laughed nervously.

A few admitted something deeper: disappointment.

They had expected an education. Instead, many felt like they had been moved through a process. They expected mentorship and discovery, but what they often experienced was bureaucracy and pressure.

The pressure was constant.

Pressure to maintain grades.
Pressure to compete for internships.
Pressure to justify the cost.
Pressure to prove that the sacrifice would be worth it.

But the pressure doesn’t begin at the university gates. By the time many young adults arrive on campus, they are already exhausted.

It begins in middle school.

Students are placed into rigid schedules and told that every assignment matters for their future. Homework piles up not because it teaches something meaningful, but because the system demands measurable output. Busy work becomes the currency of education.

By high school the pressure multiplies.

Advanced placement classes.
Test scores.
College preparation programs.
Volunteer hours.
Athletics.
Part-time jobs.

Every moment must be accounted for. Every action must become a line on a résumé. The message is subtle but constant: If you stop moving, you fall behind.

Young people rarely have time to discover who they are.

They are taught to perform.

And by the time they reach college, many arrive already carrying anxiety, burnout, and a deep fear of failure.

Universities often promise freedom and discovery. But for many students the reality feels strangely familiar another system of rigid expectations layered on top of uncertainty.

Lecture halls filled with hundreds of students. Professors who may be brilliant researchers but have never been trained to teach. Advisors who are responsible for hundreds of students at once.

Instead of mentorship, students often receive instructions.

Complete this assignment.
Write this paper.
Submit this project.
Take this test.

Week after week.

Semester after semester.

Much of it becomes busy work tasks designed more to measure compliance than to build capability. Hours spent formatting essays, completing discussion boards, memorizing information that will be forgotten immediately after the exam.

Years pass.

Students stay busy, but they don’t always feel guided.

And the cost is not just financial.

The mental health crisis among students is real and growing.

Counseling centers are overwhelmed. Students speak openly about anxiety, depression, loneliness, and the quiet sense that they are running a race they do not understand.

Many are trying to figure out who they are while also navigating social pressure, party culture, relationships, identity questions, financial stress, and the constant awareness that the debt they are accumulating will follow them for decades.

They were never taught how to balance life.

They were taught how to complete assignments.

Some students describe the university system in terms that are uncomfortable to hear but difficult to ignore.

They talk about being locked into schedules.

They talk about living in crowded housing, eating institutional food, navigating bureaucratic systems, and spending most of their time fulfilling requirements designed by people they barely know.

In prison, people are locked into a system with strict rules, limited autonomy, and an environment managed by others.

In universities, students are also locked into a system one they pay to enter where their time, housing, schedules, and future are shaped by an institution that operates on its own rules.

Prisons at least acknowledge they are systems of confinement.

Universities call it opportunity.

Of course, they are not the same thing. Universities can still offer incredible learning, research, and discovery. Many professors care deeply and do extraordinary work.

But when students feel trapped, overwhelmed, and unsupported, the comparison begins to surface in their conversations.

And that should concern us.

Because if millions of young people are emerging from our education systems carrying debt, uncertainty, anxiety, and the sense that their most formative years were spent completing tasks rather than discovering purpose, then something in the structure is failing them.

Education should not feel like survival.

It should feel like preparation for life.

The question society needs to ask is simple:

If we are asking young people to invest eight to ten of the most important years of their lives and often the cost of a house into an education, what are we truly giving them in return?

Right now, too many students are walking away wondering the same thing.