The House: Why You Should Hold All the Cards When It Comes to Your Education

Photo: Warner Bros. Ent.

The average student is leaving college with more than $30,000 in student loan debt. I personally attended a private school for my undergraduate and masters degrees, so after watching the 2017 movie “The House,” I was faced with my own mini-PTSD.

Normally Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell are my kind of humor. Throw in Jason Mantzoukas, and it’s a no brainer. But after a lazy Sunday afternoon viewing, I was reliving all the mistakes I made as a young twenty-something and wanted to shake some sense into each character on screen.

Do we really live in a world where the only way we can afford college is to face crippling debt or break the law?

For those of you who missed the film, there’s a sloppily thrown together plotline that relied on one frustrating aspect of modern culture: college students are “too young” be part of the decisions that impact their financial lives.

In the film, Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell can’t afford to send their daughter, Alex, to her dream college. We’re given a shoddy explanation of how Alex loses a full-ride scholarship because of a corrupt and greedy city councilman, played by Nick Kroll. This leaves Poehler and Ferrell with no way of paying for Alex’s education. In an effort to make quick cash, they team up with Jason Mantzoukas to open an illegal gambling ring in their middle-class neighborhood. Hijinks ensue.

In short, the film is an hour and a half of the perpetual indulgence of the “adult child” paradox our society has so readily adopted.

At no point in the movie did the parents discuss the cost of school with their daughter, and in fact, Poehler’s character even goes so far as to flat out lie to Alex about their ability to pay the tuition in full for no reason other than not wanting to have to tell her “no.”

Frankly, I was a little insulted. As young adults, are we too naïve to participate in the financial aspect of higher education?

Let’s take a step back and evaluate this situation. Is there any solution to covering the cost of school that these three adults could have come up with other than starting an illegal gambling business?

In the film Alex is going to an expensive private college, receiving no form of financial aid or assistance. She may have been better suited to evaluate her options and do what most people do for any other large purchase – shop around for the best value.

Alternatively, Alex could have taken time off to earn the money. (Can someone explain to me why there is shame in assisting in covering the cost of one’s own education?)

Of course, this would rob us of seeing Poehler and Ferrell engage in wild antics, but I’d be willing to sacrifice that to see a new generation of students encouraged to leave higher education with stability, confidence, and knowledge rather than being constantly on the lookout for a free meal.

Or perhaps the writers of the film just wanted to save the educational lesson for the film’s sequel, when Alex decides to forego a job and instead face the ever-increasing cost of graduate school…