When you go to college you effectively reduce your total work life (assuming you will retire at a set age like 65) so you are not just losing the minimum wage job you could of been working during those years... you are losing several years that you could of been earning maximum salary before you retire.
This leaves off the fact that employers use a college degree as a filter, rather than evidence of any training or accomplishment.
$200K for six years of getting laid, smoking dope, and learning Marxism?
It's a bargain!
Parents largely don’t get it. The merits of college are starting to sound like a medieval myth — like Atlantis or the existence of elves with magic powers. Something everyone believes and nobody examines critically.
Before you devote a hundred grand or two, why not spend a few days hanging around a college? Sit in on a class, follow the kids around, talk to them in the local gin mills and hear how they talk (dirty) and think (not). Observe their teachers, who are often no better.
Then think about whether your kid has the smarts and the sense to get into a trade school instead.
You won’t be sorry.
I agree with the author that there are too many people in college now (many don’t belong there) and some degrees aren’t worth squat. But the stats still show that college graduates do much better of the course of their lifetimes than non grads. Does that mean this is always true? Of course not, but you have to go with the averages. If you want to be an electrician or a plumber, then don’t go to college.
Also, it not always about dollars and cents. Some people might actually like French Lit, whether or not they can get a job with a degree or not. And some women still go to college to get their MRS degree. In the end, its people’s money. They can do with it what they will.
My 24 y.o. son just completed a truck driving course at a tech school. There was a recruiting war to hire him. Every company he applied to offered him a job.
All of his five older siblings went to college. But he took a different course in life and I’m proud of him.
My neighbors nearly went crazy when their youngest son said he didn't want to go to college because he enjoyed being an electrican. Right now he is the only one of their 3 kids who is employed but his parents still have not forgiven him.
But we don't want our bridges designed by trial and error. We want the first one done by an new engineer be based on the education and knowledge. It will be checked and reviewed by senior engineers, but there is insufficient skill from a high school grad to meet today's entry level requirements.
And the same in many other fields. But if you don't enter college with the desire and drive to exit with a employable skill, you will most likely be wasting your time and money.
If the person is getting a college degree in computer science or engineering or other business related area, then the investment of $250,000 is likely warrented.
But a degree is in Mid East Studies, Women’s Studies, or other propaganda, makes little sense.
Propaganda Studies make no sense if the price is only $1. But we have let our university system become Centers For Marxist Thought instead of colleges to give our children the skills to compete in a very competitive world.
Most of the college grads I know have degrees in crap ranging from Russian language, poetry, library “science”, social work, and illustration. They can sting a line of BS together to try to sound smart, like it’s nobodies business.
The one that make real money are the ones that work a trade.
Getting a degree can open doors where they are normally closed. Yet, genius, excellence and livlihood can be found in other area of life.
Tiger Woods was having an off year, I heard. Should he go back to school to obtain some more education?
That’s nice, facile, and rather incomplete analysis:
Did the author ever consider the effect of a student working part-time?
Both daughters of a friend of mine are working and going to school full-time, and at least one of them is making on the order of $20K per year as a carhop at Sonic!
Nor does college have to cost anything remotely like $25K per year.
My daughter is a jr. in high school. She LOVES school and will probably go to an in-state university for Chemical Engineering. We’ve saved a good bit and lost a good bit of it in 2008. We are almost back where we were in Fall of 2008. Most of her friends that graduated last year earned full or almost full scholarships. I think most of their parents bought them new cars upon graduation after earning the scholarships which I find kind of silly because they can’t drive them on campus due to limited parking and jam packed lots so they sit there at school and they drive them home 2-3 times, at least that is the way it has been their first semester and they are all pretty much around 250 miles from home. I imagine she will earn one herself. She was very upset this week that she missed the cut off for the National Merit finals by a few points.
In the 1970’s the California State College tuition was about $50 per quarter. Add a parking fee and books. That makes a year of college well under $2,000. I finished in three years by challenging courses and taking an extra course in the summer. I don’t understand how the costs got so out of hand and why it takes 6 years to get a 4 year degree. And there were no “studies” degrees at that time. It was a simple proposition.
Everyone should go to at least a Junior College to learn a vocation.
And they should only be for majors which lead to employment - no basket weaving, surfing, etc (sarc)