Unless your child has to attend college to attain a professional degree such as lawyer or doctor, there is little reason for them to go at all. For any liberal arts degree, a majority of their classes will be taught by determined Marxists feeding them disinformation or worse, and they will leave either you, or worse themselves in a great deal of debt. Business degrees are useless. Far better to have your child start their own business(es) at as early an ege as possible.
My 10-year old son does website design and earns $10-20 per hour. It is over the internet and they have no idea how old he is (I help him with business headaches now while he learns). He works less than 10 hrs per week, saves nearly every penny, and puts away almost $150 per week into a credit union account. By the time he is of college age (assuming his hourly rate does not increase, which it most certainly will as he learns new skills) he should have put away well over $50,000. What does he need a stupid college degree for? He can learn what he wants and live the life he truly desires, all while avoiding the idiots who typically populate our nation’s universities.
My 7-year old daughter sells cookies and brownies at local parades and events for $1-2 each. She buys the ingredients at deep discount, and her cost per 100 is about $7. Do the math. At age 7, she already can tell you about material costs, revenue, profits and rate of return. Not because she is a math wiz, but from spending and making her own money. You can never start them too young.
I wouldn’t be surprised if community colleges and trade schools make a comeback (if not already). Both teach specific skills (plumbing, computer software, IT, carpendry, accounting, nursing, etc.,) that businesses need.
Any of your kids sew clothes for Nike? ;)
No, it is good you are teaching them the value of work and the value of a dollar.
College is a good idea, but Liberal Arts degrees are never a good idea.
I have to disagree so vigourosly, I'm not quite sure where to start. Business degrees are useless? Try getting a job at an accounting, consulting, banking or other financial services firm without a business degree.
Without a college degree you close a virtually infinite number of doors that may lead to very lucrative careers. While a college degree may not make you smarter or make you a better person, it does open allow for possibilities that would otherwise be unavailable to a non-degreed job candidate.
Most companies couldn't really care less what your degree is in, so long as you have one. My advice to someone who wasn't excited about college; study something you enjoy and that comes as naturally as possible - if you find a career in that field, great. If not, at least you have a diploma to put on your CV, and that alone will be worth the effort and expense.
Well, my brother has a computer science degree and holds almost every MS certification known to mankind and from being a bankrupt college major, started close to $75,000 to start. However, I do believe that technical colleges serve the same programs at a faster level, BUT a number of them are fly-by-night colleges which could close at anytime.
He was recently interviewed as an instructor for networking admin for 3 tech colleges and he was aghast that the course outline was like throwing kids with average level tech skills to advanced proficiency.
That's terrific. Who's paying $10-$20/hour for website design? We could use the extra cash ourselves... ;-)
You are correct, there is always a need for someone to change oil down at the local truck stop and to run the tire change service on the highway’s.
“For any liberal arts degree, a majority of their classes will be taught by determined Marxists feeding them disinformation or worse, and they will leave either you, or worse themselves in a great deal of debt.”
And ignoring the liberal arts is a great way to ensure that the Marxists take over everything, and that the voting generation is too stupid to do anything about it. I’ve been teaching college English (literature and composition) for three years now, and can tell you that (a) there are still plenty of humanities teachers still interested in actually teaching the humanities and (b) the ignorance of history, literature, philosophy, and the inability to think critically about anything else, is a far greater threat than Marxism.
I find it rather distressing that among all the conservatives who have responded to this thread so far, not a single one seems to care about the value of education.
What does he need a stupid college degree for?
‘Liberal arts’ degrees, today, are completely useless. They essentially mean “you just took classes for four years and still couldn’t decide on a major, so here’s a diploma anyways!” However, if you’re talking about ‘the humanities’ it depends on what the person wants to do - if they end up working in an office a history degree is useless and having business experience would have been much better, but if they want to become an archaeologist all the business experience in the world won’t help them much and the history degree will suddenly mean everything!
So, I guess there are a couple issues: First of all, not every person is cut out for being an entrepeneur. Second of all, self-employment is not feasible in every career field and especially not the sciences - being self-employed in the computer industry is quite easy, but have you ever heard of a truly self-employed entomologist? That leads to the third issue, which is that while there are business people who don’t have college degrees, who ever heard of a physicist or chemist who only has a high school diploma?
And, last but not least, there is the ‘diploma issue’ with being homeschooled. Something I’ve noticed is that if you’re in college, or have graduated college, people don’t tend to ask you if you have a piece of paper that says you’ve graduated high school, but assume that you’ve graduated. It’s a great way to overcome the ‘high school diploma required’ stipulation on some job applications.