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.
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.
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.
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.
Chances are that the person doing the “fun” stuff at a company has a Masters or Doctorate.