Posted on 05/24/2009 12:42:08 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As Nicole Marshall posed for photos on the eve of her commencement, someone joked, "Smile -- think of all the loans you took out for this!" She says she chose St. Michael's, a Catholic liberal arts college near Lake Champlain in Colchester, Vt., because it offered the biggest aid package, "but I'm still leaving with quite a bit of loans" -- about $20,000.
Her debt is a little lighter than the national average for graduates of private, four-year schools who borrow: nearly $23,800 as of 2007, according to the College Board in New York.
But if there's any time that students and parents can take such costs in stride, it's during the heady rush of commencement, when the campus is fragrant with fresh blossoms and abundant hope. For added inspiration to help them focus on the value of learning, these families heard a commencement speech from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Standing head and shoulders above the others on stage, clad in academic regalia, the former basketball player and superintendent of Chicago's public schools acknowledged the costs:
"With those college loans to pay back, you're probably wondering, 'Just how much is a liberal arts education really worth?' Albert Einstein said the value of a liberal arts education is not to learn facts, but to train your mind to think about things that cannot be learned from textbooks. So now you're probably wondering why you spent all that money on textbooks. The point is not that the facts are useless; it's just that the facts alone don't make you educated. It's how you put those facts together and what you do with them that matters. The real value of a liberal arts education is that it teaches you ... how to analyze a situation and make a choice."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Why does he need to help someone else balance their books when he can hire someone to do HIS books? I don't want him to NEED a "job", but rather build his own businesses, so he will be doing the hiring instead of relying on Career counselor morons and sending resumes out to 500 companies on a panic-driven fishing expedition. I went through that crap, which was one of my big motivators that he and my daughter not have to do so.
Computer Science is clearly what I have in mind as a useful degree, along with MD, JD, Engineering, Biotech, etc. My son will likely pursue computer science himself.
By the way, my son is 10 and is about to take his first Microsoft Certified Pro exam. Wish him luck!
My webpage stuff is out of date although I can do basic stuff. Flash is something I could stand to learn. CAD has been an interest to me for a long while now. School is mostly out probably this year due to medical bills and some other stuff.
Who said I ever derided the value of "education"? I just disparage the kind of education they give out in universities. I have a liberal arts major, and everything I learned about philosophy, history and conservatism I learned AFTER college.
Not everyone looks good in horn rims and a pocket protector...:)
And yes, I am an engineer!
Every child I know who was not urged toward college for most of his life, didn't attend. That includes the kids who want to go, but have had parents telling them all along that they better have the ability to get scholarships because they aren't going to help pay for school. Even if we couldn't have helped our daughter, we would have said we would do whatever it took for her to get through school. It is just too important today to have that piece of paper.
Perhaps your child will beat the odds, but I'm not willing to gamble with the future of my children.
It does take a lot of patience to fill out the FAFSA each year - and it never did us any good - we never qualified for any assistance.
“I have a liberal arts major, and everything I learned about philosophy, history and conservatism I learned AFTER college.”
Then do not project your own collegiate ignorance and lack of initiative onto the entire institution.
I'm a small business owner. After spending 20 years in the Marines, I wanted to work for myself after I retired, so my wife and I started our own company a few years before I called it quits. I can tell you for a fact that one of the primary reasons that I received the start-up capital I needed was because of my education (as well as my wife's education), both directly and indirectly.
The knowledge that I gained while completing my MBA allowed me to put together a compelling business plan for my investors and bankers. Also, I have been told that one of the reasons I was given an opportunity was because I had my MBA and my undergrad from two blue-chip schools. Without my advanced education, it would have been very unlikely that I would have received the investment I needed at terms that were favorable.
The days of easy-come start-up money are long, long over. Bankers and investors will be looking very hard at the CV's and business plans of people that they will risk giving some seed money too. If you're advising your children that higher education is a waste of time, effort and money, you're giving them very, very bad advice.
Good luck to your kid. My bro had to go to the san Diego MS centre to take his.
Well that's his problem isn't it? He has decades to try, fail, succeed, fail, succeed, and get used to the process. It's the world's second oldest profession--entrepreneur.
It's an awful lot of money to spend in order to become the most popular waiter at "Pizza Hut".
We do NOT urge our son not to go to college. We urge him to live in the real world...a world where wealth is made and jobs created by people who start their own businesses. Our son wants to go to Yale, and wants to pay for it himself--in cash. Can he do it? I've no idea. But having made over $9,000 for himself since he was 6, baking cookies, selling spiced cider and mini-cakes at holiday festivals, selling candy, caring for special needs children--has given him great confidence in his own abilities. Something I never had at his age.
At least I picked up a secondary skill fixing PCs and stuff as I figured my old profession in television was dying a slow death and no advancement of any kind unless you were a big lib. I like video production work but SC is hardly a mecca for it. Every once in a great while I score a small freelance video or photo gig.
Now that the crowd I work for has finally gotten moved into their new facility I will supposedly be doing the stuff I was originally hired for. The current space simply wasn't set up for a lot of things. A lot of delays were due to dealing the local authorities as far as permits and such.
It will do for the time being. I have to hang on until early 2011. By then some nagging problems and concerns should be gone. That is assuming we have a functioning economy and civilization by then. If we don't then it won't matter.
You are missing the point. We don't teach our children to avoid college, we teach them to learn skills so they won't NEED college to make a buck. Without the pressures of future finances hanging over him, he can enjoy his studies and let his learning be guided by his passions, not by what his counselors tell him the marketplace demands.
I guess if that is your attitude about your children then I have nothing more to say to you.
Ha. And I’ve also been told my social skills are far too advanced. ;>)
My child will almost certainly go to college. that is not the point. He won't NEED it to make his fortune. He can use it to expand his mind, meetup with others and learn about history, culture, language, politics. I am amazed by the hostility of so many to our methods.
I am teaching them to follow their own passions to the bank. And frankly, my son at 10 knows all he needs to know already. He visited my office the other day, and while he was wandering around, he managed to snag a job updating the MySpace and Facebook pages of 4 people who work in the marketing agency next door! I had no clue about his idea. He thought of it by himself. They will pay him $100 each a month to do it. A 10 year old. He told me he will "net" $20 per hour.
I understand what you mean. I've been there. Startup capital, investment, good resumes. I've started and sold 3 companies, and folded 2 others. I've seen people with Harvard MBA's wreck a company and my father's childhood friend with a H.S. degree make $400 million selling napkins and straws to McDonald, and singlehandedly funding the largest solar panel startup in the world. A room full of Ivy League "geniuses" managed to wreck Lehman, Bear, and the entire economy. A whole different room full of Ivy League "geniuses" are wrecking the dollar as we speak.
It's the man, not the school, that makes the life.
I guess if that is your attitude about your children then I have nothing more to say to you.
In what way? I should be there to hold his hand his whole life? Or teach him the entrepreneurial skills he needs so he won't need a dime from me the rest of his life? It is indeed HIS problem. As Jimi Hendrix said, "I'm the one who's got to die when it's time for me to die". I am putting my kids though childhood business school now, so they can do whatever they want with their future, with confidence.
So then he'll have to adapt to the changing marketplace. That's what entrepreneurs do. Of course he has to learn new software every year. All IT folks do, or fall behind.
Perhaps your child will beat the odds, but I'm not willing to gamble with the future of my children.
I don't even know what that means. The "odds" of what? To me the odds are, if my son goes to school, racks up $30,000 in debt, takes 20 years to pay it off, works in a job until he's 50 and then gets laid off, then the "odds" are he will be screwed as a 50 year old with a specific set of obsolete skills that no one wants to hire. there are millions of folks in that situation today. I have a brother-in-law who is 59 in such a pickle. I don't want to "gamble" that my son will somehow make it as a cog in some other bigwig's wheel. No thanks.
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