Colleges and Snobbery

I am somewhat belated in posting this, although I composed most of these thoughts nearly two weeks ago. This article is a nice response to the bizarre and pandering remarks about snobbishness that have been made recently. My dearest college friends are all over the map, politically speaking, and to suggest that college makes students less religious seems like a real slap in the face to those earnest undergraduates who give themselves over to exploring their faiths for the first time in their lives. I have a serious problem with the fact that there are would-be students who are unable to afford whatever post-secondary education or training they would like to have, and I have a serious problem with the assumption that someone in academia is necessarily smarter or more worthy in some way than anyone else. It bothers me that, rather than changing anyone's political beliefs, post-secondary education all too often seems to reinforce socioeconomic status in ways that made me feel both hopeless and guilty as a high schooler who'd always enjoyed a degree of privilege. I seriously considered not going to college because of these concerns, but I also have a serious problem with the apparently widespread myth that college professors do little work for astronomical pay: Most of us work long hours with relatively little pay, but with a lot of concern for our students.