With parents and grandparents that epitomize the American dream, we Gen Zers are doomed to follow the templated life designed to make them proud. What that looks like for most of us is graduating high school and immediately attending college in the fall. Not only that, but knowing what school we’re going to as early as junior year. And of course, it can’t just be any college—it’s got to be an Ivy League.

Ivy League colleges. Synonymous for better-than-everyone-else-and-more-expensive-than-you-could-possibly-afford-so-don't-even-bother-trying. You can find that phrase on their official admissions websites. Ivy Leagues are the best of the best, the cream of the crop, the holy grail, the pick-of-the-litter, the S-tier schools. We’re talking Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown—you get the gist. When high school graduation rolls around, if you don't announce your acceptance to one of those, you can expect disappointment from at least one of your family members.

Does that sound fair to you?

We high school kids worked our butts off to stay afloat in our highly academically competitive generation, which should be cause for praise on its own by the way, and with acceptance rates lower than ten percent, it’s ridiculous to expect us to reach that standard. Our success is not defined by an acceptance into a learning institution with a fancy title and shallowly prestigious reputation.

College is meant to be a tool to help us advance ourselves and our society, and by getting wrapped up in the rankings of what makes one college better or worse than another, we lose sight of the whole point. Often times students don’t even get a better education at an Ivy League school anyway. The professors don’t care about their students and the competitive climate encourages working for grades rather than learning. It’s a shame for anyone to feel like a disgrace for attending a state school, community college, trade school, or no school at all. That does not equal failure.

To solve this problem and get the U.S. properly realigned with the real purpose of college, the government should agree to simply ban all Ivy League schools.

I think it's fair for me to humbly say that this is a genius plan. If there are no prestigious schools to cast shame and judgment down on the rest of us, there will be no more suffering around the topic of college. Students can once again enjoy high school and look forward to futures that are not driven by a lifelong attempt to be good enough. College will be put into its place once again. We all know that if something is bad, the best solution is to get rid of it. This is just cancel culture. But for college.

Once we get the presidents of these colleges to agree, which they will undoubtedly do for the moral good of the United States, the money they have circulating in their institutions can be redistributed to lower tuition costs of other, normal colleges, which will make all students extremely happy. It’s a no brainer.

We are the next generation of leaders of this great country, and as such we deserve to do whatever it takes to ensure a great quality of life. Because with that comes great quality of our work and therefore great quality of our country. For patriotism, for mental health, for financial stability, it’s time to disband Ivy Leagues.