Posted on 04/05/2011 12:57:24 PM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds
How much should a college education cost? According to the College Board, the average cost of earning a degree at a private, 4-year university is now more than $100,000. If tuition prices continue to rise as quickly as they did during the past decade, a college degree will cost more than $200,000 by the time today’s third-graders are applying. That price tag is enough to cause most parents to break into a sweat.
Is a college degree really worth this cost? Some bright minds think Americans are paying way too much. In fact, Bill Gates--one of the country's most famous college dropouts--thinks it should be closer to zero. He told an audience last summer: “Five years from now, on the web, for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.” ...
Forward thinking elected officials now have the opportunity to expedite the arrival of the free college era, and—in the process—solve a major problem for American families while providing big relief for taxpayers and federal and state budgets.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
That wouldn't be a bad idea if the United States existed in a vacuum, however it does not. The problem with the above is that the market may decide to import more educated workers to fill the void, to create more corporate headquarters in countries with a more educated workforce etc. Unfortunately, this is a subject that absolutely has to considered with international competition heavily weighed.
Unless you are going to college to enter the maths and sciences it is not worth it.
For at least the first two years of college, the community college is your friend. My eldest is a homeschooled 11th-grader taking pre-calc at the local community college (thank you, dual enrollment!) and in so doing gets a college credit transferable to any of North Carolina’s state universities. I will encourage her to work this system to the hilt before finally transferring to NC State or UNC-Chapel Hill (f’rinstance) to get her sheepskin. State is looking like the most likely candidate at this point.
My son was just accepted to Notre Dame last week. $181,000.00 for four years. : (
I think I did the smart thing for my son....who took a few quarters of college and then decided it wasn’t for him.....I paid for the BOND for his construction company....so he could have his own company. He was surprised at his 10th high school reunion to find out he was doing better than his college trained friends....and probably still is...although the company he now works for has gone down to bare bones....taken pay cuts, laid off people....but is hanging on....
This is a plea for distance learning for college, which is in effect, I take it, simply homeschooling for college.
“Is a college degree really worth this cost?”
No.
The problem started when the purpose of college started to be a good job. That’s way divorced from where it should be.
The purpose of college should be self edification and for the advanced training occupations, such as archeology or law. Anything else is school. And even the basis of those should be “on the job” training.
I submit people with advanced degrees are actually in many ways LESS suited to a good job. They’ve been kept out of the natural world too long and learned to give too much deference to elitist fads.
Here’s what I found in college: most kids there didn’t belong and were struggling. They attended college to appease their parents who bought the pitch that ALL kids above the welfare class should attend university. The students were binge drinking on daddy’s credit cards.
Classes were slow and dull due to the high school-level students who were struggling. In addition, high schools inflated grades to increase “self esteem” so that an A average now meant nothing. One school’s C- student was another’s A student... hence the SAT and ACT tests. The entire system is a suckers game.
Parents still believe their children are getting a higher education when in fact college merely trains them to toe the liberal line and preps them for a life of uncritical thinking and servile behavior.
Most graduates must now be re-programmed to actually think and work for a paycheck (unless they go into the growing public sector or stay in school as post grads and professors). Many degrees are meaningless now, except as “papers” of admission into dumbed-down jobs and the entire public sector. Note: Math and Science degrees are the exception.
The thing that drove prices up were government backed loans.
Drop them.
I got an accounting degree by going at night. Two classes a semester(Fall, spring, summer). 18 hours a year. Less than 5 years.
I did it in two because I already had a BSBA.
Guaranteed? If you are just multiplying the first year by four, it WILL increase. Of course, what's another $10-20k?
That is what I tell young people to do nowadays. Find a company that will pay for it. Hospitals, for instance, will often pay for a nursing degree for a competent Nursing Aide.
And I ALWAYS tell them do a community college first, unless mom and dad really are loaded or they have a great scholarship.
But there are careers that require special schools. For instance, vet science. But even that might support your argument, because after two years at a cheaper college, often kids decide their heart’s desire is something totally different.
I started out in art, went to a tech trade, and ended up in the advanced sciences. I guess I’m what you call well rounded. (In more ways than one, but that’s a different subject).
Find law firms where the partners are MI grads. Companies like to hire alums.
Smart move! I’ve always thought that accounting just might be my chosen area. I always enjoyed it in school and also did my fathers books (for his business) when I was in high school. I really loved it!
I just might consider this...
I am with you.
And I think it would work because people (especially those trying to put kids through school) see the system isn’t working. I mean, where is the one place blacks break down for the Democrats? School choice.
The Dems will fight this tooth and nail. The colleges are their power base, filled with elitists who have little true world experience.
My son just graduated with 150 hours of Accounting credit (needed to sit for the CPA exam) and only has $11,000 in debt and had very little in scholarships.
He is finally employed at a major bank in the tax department.
3rd party payers make everything more costly everywhere it’s done.
it divorces the payee from any financial realities.
It’s supply and demand. So long as people are willing to pay that price, and the government makes it possible thru artificially distorted loans, the price will rise accordingly.
Tuition, mortgages, and health care are all expensive precisely because people are willing to go to great lengths to pay staggeringly high prices, and because the government provides incentives for them to do so.
not going to college.College is not a waste today, it is a destruction.
It is the modern equivalent of being captured by early 1800's slave traders and sold into a lifetime of slavery, degradation, illiteracy, broken families and poor health.
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