To a Lesser Degree

Johns sat down in a chair. It wasn’t his chair. He sat there anyway. The chair that was not John’s but sat him was in front of the professor’s desk and that is where Johns sat. He sat there immediately after having been told to do so. Johns was very good at following directions. He was very good at doing what he was told. He was not very good at was recognizing people he had never met or seen before. Such were some of the occurrences of these happenings here.

The tall man is for the right and for the now referred to as the tall man. That is because he was tall. Taller than Johns and his professor at least, He had not removed his jacket when he’d entered the professors office. I am not certain that this fact means anything at all. All the same it is true. Right now the tall man was hunched over the desk Johns sat in front of. He was using one of his two hands to hold a blue pen. His used his other hand to hold a variety of documents. His eyes were squinting. The tall man was not wearing glasses. Had John’s thought to ask the tall man why he was using a blue ball point pen to mark on documents that looked so official he would have been disappointed. The tall man did not know. He only knew that he was told to do so . . . and he, like Johns, was very good at doing what he was told.

Johns did not think to ask the tall man why he used a blue pen. The thought never occurred to him. This was probably because he had so many other things to wonder about. Most importantly why he’d been called into this office. These were to be Johns last few weeks at university. Soon he would graduate. Walk across some stage, take hold of some lambskin, accept some high quality job only suitable for high quality college graduates and embark on the years it would take to pay back the twenty thousand dollars in high quality government loans he had secured over the last seven and a half semesters. But before all that he would have to make it through this meeting and before even that (he hoped) he would find out what all of this was about. From his chair John’s spoke up.

“Professor . . .”

He was interrupted. By the very person he was intending to talk to. “Now Johns . . . there’s no more need to call me that . . . from here on in Deans will do just fine.” Johns was aware that the Professor’s first name was Deans. He had read it on his door at the beginning of every semester when he’d come here for advisement. From his chair
Johns spoke up again.

“Deans . . . I was just wondering . . . just wondering what all this is about.”

“Of course you are.” Deans lifted a finger and scratched a chin. It was his chin. Most everybody has one. Deans had two. “But first I’ve got to ask you something.”

“Ok.”

“Have you give any thought to your future?”

“Well sure . . . of course I have . . . I mean as much as most anybody else has . . . I sent out some resumes . . . got some promising offers . . . you know . . . there’s time for that.”

“Yes I know . . . but what I meant is have you given any thought to your future in education?”

“Yeah . . . I mean I’ll have my bachelors in a few weeks . . . I’ll get a job . . . make some money . . . and maybe in a few years start work on my masters.”

“Good good . . . enthusiasm, that’s what we love to hear.” The tall man had ended his silence as well as his hunching. He extended a hand to Johns. Johns took it. “It’s Schroeders . . . Mr. Schroeders . . .” Schroeders turned to Deans. It was almost a whisper that he gave him. A grim one. “That’s all for right now, I’ll call you when your needed.” Deans navigated around his desk. He exited his office. Schroeders turned back to Johns “I work for a department you’re probably familiar with . . . or at least have heard of . . . the department of education.” Johns had heard of it. He’d heard of it frequently and herd of it often. Still he could not figure on what such a department had to do with
him. “. . . mostly though . . . I’m concerned with logistics and implementation of the president’s ‘College Degrees For Every American’ initiative.” Johns had heard of that as well. He spoke back.

“Oh yes . . . the ‘College Degree For Every American Program’”. He suppressed a smile. Johns was an American . . . he was sure of it . . . and if that wasn’t enough he also had the birth certificate and Vanilla Ice Records to verify it. Johns would also soon have a college degree . . . and so he reasoned it was reasonable to assume that Schroeders was here to hand Johns some money to help with his twenty thousand dollars worth of debt.

Schroeders spoke again “So you’re familiar with the initiative?”

“Yes of course . . . a college degree for every American . . . it’s one of the reasons I voted for this president. Johns had done more than just vote. He’d attended rallies, passed out stickers, he’d even watched fifteen minutes of one of the televised debates. This was his president. A young white southern lawyer turned Senator turned defeater of
the incumbent by speaking most emphatically about two houses in American . . . one for the rich, one for the poor . . . and how he was going to make it so that there was only one house in America . . . “Yeah that and the two houses thing really did it for me.” One for the poor.

“Yes the president sure liked to talk about two different houses in America . . . which in itself is a somewhat ponderous thing as he owns no less than five . . . and each one of them is capable of housing seven or eight families of four. But never mind that. That’s neither here nor there.” The tall man looked over the paperwork for a moment more and then returned with all of his attentions to Johns. “What is here and there is this initiative and what it has to do with you.” Johns continued to smile “Now I’ve been looking over your . . . umm . . . ohh . . . I’ll just call it your dossier for now . . . that’s a word that will do . . . and it seems you’re a very bright and hard working young man.” Johns’ smile roadened. “You’ve maintained a 3.5 for you entire career here and a coarse load that speaks for itself . . . so come your graduation I think well have no trouble in deducting three semesters or roughly 45 hours from your degree.

“That’s 45 hours of student loans I won’t have to payback right.”

“No . . . you’ll still be responsible for paying back the full amount of the loans plus any interest that may or may not apply . . . what I mean by taking 45 hours from you is that we will be taking 45 hours away from you . . . they will be gone . . . you will no longer have them . . . they will no longer appear on your college record.”

“I don’t understand?”

“Hmm . . .” Schroeders scratched his chin. He only had one. “I thought you said you were familiar with the ‘College Degree For Every American Initiative’.”

“I am . . . it promises to give a college degree to every American.”

“Exactly . . . but how do you think we are going to go about making sure that every American will get one?”

Johns recalled what he thought was the party rhetoric “By paying the tuition of every student who wants to attend college”

“Sure . . . but what about all the people that don’t want to attend college. Did you ever stop to think about them? Doesn’t seem very fair that they should get left out. And what about students who might not have that easy of a time with the work? What about them? Have you ever stopped to think that maybe not everybody is as lucky as you are?”
Johns considered this. He had considered it before and he was considering it now. He didn’t say anything about it. “Have you ever stopped to think that even if we were to pay for everybody’s college tuition there would still be people out there not smart enough, not committed enough or in general not having enough interest to perform the tasks
necessary to procure a degree. And that’s just not very fair way to go about this business and certainly could never live up to the high minded ambitions of an initiative so wonderfully named as this one. And so we’ve come up with a new solution. We’ve come up with a new way to give an education to those who are otherwise unable, incapable, or unwilling to get one of their own.”

“And what exactly is that solution?”

“We give them yours.”

“Mine?”

“Well . . . not really yours. If you think about it . . . the education is really ours.”

“Yours? How do you figure?” Stammered Johns . . . getting excited to the slight. “I worked for it . . . I studied . . . I went to the classes . . . I . . .”

“Yes . . . you did all that . . . you did all that and more I’m sure . . . but there is one thing you’ve forgotten . . . one tiny little incidental you didn’t do.”

“And what’s that?”

“Pay for it. We did. Every last dime. But never mind this business of who owns the education. How can you really own something like an education? Really I expected a less bourgeoisie attitude from a guy that has spent as long at college as you have.”

“Because I . . . I . . . I do.” Another thing Johns wasn’t very good at was
explaining himself.

“Come on Johns . . . I’d hoped you’d do a little better than that . . . I’m a very busy man . . . I’ve got a lot of work to do and I hope that it doesn’t include reassessing the value of *ahem* your education that we’ve invested so much in harvesting from you.” A silence happened for a few moments. Schroeders continued at the same time as ending it. “Well I guess that my work here is done. A grateful government thanks you for your contribution.” Schroeders left Johns with his stupor. John’s stupor did not leave him for a very long time. When it had Johns noticed that Deans had returned and appeared to be removing personal items from his desk.

“Professor . . .”

Deans stopped his actions long enough to hold up a hand and speak. “Like I said . . . there’s no more need for that. It seems that the ‘College Degree For Every American’ program affects some of us more retro-actively than others . . . I’m barely a second year undergrad now. But you . . . you’re a young man. If you work hard you could probably
still get a bachelors by the time your 26 or 27.”

“Great . . . just great. What about you? What will you do? Will you ever be a professor again?”

“Me . . . no . . . I’m to old for that now . . . and besides there is also a cap on how much education one person can own. As you’ve probably gathered it’s just not fair that some people should have so much when others are forced to have so little.”

“Well if there’s a cap on how much education a single person can own then where will our professors come from?”

“Did I say a cap on how much education a single person can own? I meant to say there is a cap on how much a person can earn . . . or rather how much a single person can retain after they’ve earned it.”

“And the professors?”

“My guess is they’ll probably be someone who’s never before set a foot in a college classroom.”

Johns stupor returned. “So . . . you never did tell me what you’re going to do.”

“Copier machine repair . . . my brother-in-laws in the business and is reasonably sure he can get me a job. It’s interesting stuff really . . . and there have been a great many advancements in the field over the last few years. . . not that I’d be able to tell you from experience or anything being so new to the field and all.”

“Great advances huh?” a rather despondent Johns muttered.

“Yes many great advances . . . for example did you know that most copy machines made these days are so good that it’s impossible to tell the difference between the reproductions and the originals . . .” Johns nodded in amazement. “It’s true . . . that’s why it’s so likely in this day and age for people to have to use blue pens when filling out important documents. Otherwise no one would ever be the wiser as to which was the master.”

“No, I wasn’t aware of that.”