Posted on 12/20/2010 8:56:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The cost of college has gotten out of control. $160,000 or more for four years will bankrupt most students and/or parents. I think the point of the article is “Is it worth it?” Bill Gates didn’t have a degree.
When you are told that you need a college education to get a good job. Then you go through all the worthless hoops to get one only to stand in the unemployment line while the highschool drop out has a house and good job. Why not be upset?
Having taught at a university was also disappointing. The students in the department I worked in had trouble getting jobs after graduation because the industry had moved to China. During a department planning retreat, enrollment was brought up. I suggested that it was unethical to promise a job using your degree when we knew there were no jobs out there. The state of denial that I received was distrubing.
Yes. But people also have to find a means of employment. Employment today requires credentials and you can spend your credentialing time getting a high value credential or "getting an education". Understandably many people choose the former over the latter. Unless they're coming into a trust fund after school or their family is loaded.
That's not how it works today. Prerequisites for most middle class jobs require specific college degrees. Even a lot of working class jobs require some professional licensing or certifications. People don't get hired on a wink and a smile today unless you know people.
RE: My son is a new doc. He is 170K in debt with nothing special in outlays other than room board and books. And I paid for his undergrad.
Well, doctors make good money. He should be able to pay it back in say, 5 years with the salary he’ll make.
Many years ago I graduated from a famous school in the kind of town you describe, with classmates of the sort your daughter had. And like her I did not want to go to college. I had already started as a small business while I was a teenager, and it would not do well if I delayed to pursue a college degree. In this case a college degree wouldn’t have been in my best interests. So I ran my business for several years.
Unfortunately after several years a health problem made it impossible for me to pursue the business, so I went to a university for undergraduate and graduate school. Put myself through. It does improve the character to do it yourself, but it was hard—I ended up in the hospital quite a bit.
Nowadays it’s pretty tough to do what I did. My daughter, who is just getting ready to graduate, works like a crazy person and went to the least-expensive state university she could find. Nonetheless, she’s going to have some debts.
Never said you needed a mechanical engineering degree to be a diesel mechanic but you sure aren't going to design diesel engine with a mechanic's greasy hands.
Great response and more parents need to look at a plan like your daughter did.
In state tuition at the Univ of AZ is now running about $600/credit. A 5 credit math class is thus $3000. Pima Community College runs $268 for the same math class.
Of course, the UofA offers more classes, but I have to wonder why they feel the need to charge 10 times as much. Even a correspondence course from the UofA runs about $600/credit, while the cost to the school is almost nothing.
Why pay it, and why do I pay huge taxes to support schools that then charge outrageous prices? The community college I understand, but the 4 year University? Insane.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.