[chii]

So the teens are rebellious when convenient to label them as such, and sheeps when convenient otherwise?

They are adults choosing their life's course. They are not children. They have responsibility to think for themselves, and to accept the consequences of their choices.

college debt is crushing because they chose to have it. They could've gotten into apprenticeships instead, or a community college which costs less.

There are opportunities in high school to discover whether studying higher education is for them. The parents also have a role to play here - paying for extracirricular activities to test out or discover their child's talents and interests (which, of course, is only affordable for the wealthier parents - a form of inequality of opportunity, and have nothing to do with blinding going to college at any cost).

So no, i do not agree that the "children" are not to blame.

[recursivedoubts]

Would it be ok with you if i didn't take teenage rebelliousness seriously as well? And, in fact, if I considered it another strong piece of evidence that teenagers are in no position maturity-wise to predict large scale social trends a decade out?

[Symbiote]

Many of them are presumably 17 when they make this decision. Minors.

[chii]

and yet at that age, they would be tried and convicted as adults if they committed a felony.

so, i dont agree that just because they're 17 that they're not capable of making decisions that require planning, gathering information and rational thought. It's just that a lot of them aren't doing it, and play the victim when the inevitable results aren't desirable.

They cannot point to their parent's generation and say "i did what they did, why don't i get the same outcomes".

[Ekaros]

I think most school systems have failed to teach how to do research and critical thinking. Information has been around now what decades... Just go on google and search your degree. Read some horror stories and some success stories and evaluate them for yourself... Form a worldview...

That is where entire school system should take people. Give them tools to make at least someway reasoned decisions. If they love something, they can do it, but know that there might not be greatest financial rewards involved.