Posted on 09/11/2010 1:05:39 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Across the region and around the country, parents are kissing their college-bound kids -- and potentially up to $200,000 in tuition, room and board -- goodbye.
Especially in the supremely well-educated Washington area, this is expected. It's a rite of passage, part of an orderly progression toward success.
Or is it . . . herd mentality?
Hear this, high achievers: If you crunch the numbers, some experts say, college is a bad investment.
"You've been fooled into thinking there's no other way for my kid to get a job . . . or learn critical thinking or make social connections," hedge fund manager James Altucher says.
Altucher, president of Formula Capital, says he sees people making bad investment decisions all the time -- and one of them is paying for college.
College is overrated, he says: In most cases, what you get out of it is not worth the money, and there are cheaper and better ways to get an education. Altucher says he's not planning to send his two daughters to college.
"My plan is to encourage them to pursue a dream, at least initially," Altucher, 42, says. "Travel or do something creative or start a business. . . . Whether they succeed or fail, it'll be an interesting life experience. They'll meet people, they'll learn the value of money."
Certainly, you'd be forgiven for thinking this argument reeks of elitism. After all, Altucher is an Ivy Leaguer. He's rolling in dough. Easy for him to pooh-pooh the status quo.
But, it turns out, his anti-college ideas stem from personal experience. After his first year at Cornell University, Altucher says his parents lost money and couldn't afford tuition. So he paid his own way, working 60 hours a week delivering pizza and tutoring, on top of his course load.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
State Colleges will have their tuitions go up and some of their stupid majors will be eliminated.
However, you my have seen the New York Times article about a woman with a religion degree from NYU (a private university) and a boat load of debt. There was certainly not s solid business case for that decision. I would also suggest that there is not a good business case for a degree in social work from most private institutions - the debt load for the student is just too great.
Although a bit whiney, Anya Kamenetz did a decent job of profiling this problem in her book, Generation Debt.
You really want to visit your daughter's top three choices and meet some undergraduate students in the Chem E. department. Take a couple to dinner and get them to talk about what worked and what didn't. Ask them to tell you about their job/grad school opportunities and the experiences of their class mates. It will be a great investment.
So out of curiosity, would you consider Nicolaus Otto to be a “real engineer’?
How about Wilbur and Orville Wright?
How about Thomas Edison?
Hmmm...
Inventors.
Many college degrees today aren't woth the paper they're written on.
Unless the skills you are looking for in a grad are: Binge Drinking, Fornication and Protesting.
http://stupac2.blogspot.com/2006/09/top-ten-engineers-of-all-time.html
Engineering: n.
Yes the HOPE scholarship is really nice. In Iowa we can get no merit aid unless my daughter is a 4.0 with a 30+ ACT. Given the deal in state tuition still is (around $8K/yr) I guess I can’t complain, but it would be nice for really good but not great students to have some additional opportunities. I know I have paid a lot in taxes to Iowa over the years (the 9% marginal rate starts at $60K), we have much higher property taxes than Tennessee ($2,600 on a $160,000 house vs. about $1,000 in Tennessee), housing is more expensive than Tennessee (we went from a 2400 sq ft finished to a 1500 sq ft finished and added $20K to our mortgage in 1999), and we have a 7% sales tax.
Another fun thing. If you decide to major in Engineering or Business, you get to pay $2K/yr more if you are a Junior or Senior (you mean it costs more to teach a Junior Engineer versus a Junior Physics major????)
Why can’t you do both (learn a useful skill like engineering) while learning to think in the liberal sense? Such thinking should have been going on throughout your schooling. I would put my experiences in high school Honors English and Debate up against anything that I could learn in college from the liberal arts. Granted I am an engineer, and I never took an English class in college. I did take sophomore and junior level Communications classes as a freshman, and I was far from impressed by the Communications and other liberal arts majors.
The engineers at Purdue viewed our liberal arts classes as opportunities to boost our GPA. My hardest liberal arts class by far in college was my engineering ethics class (an optional course) which was taught by a wonderful liberal professor (two of my best professors have been intellectually honest liberals). My ethics professor still makes me think about whether we should have a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
RE: Truck drivers make 80G
I was referring to a rookie ( I think they start at $28K). If an experienced truck driver makes 80G, how many hours of work is that ?
Any medical insurance ? Vacation ?
I would tend to agree with the author. College is not like earning your bones working in the entry-level, menial jobs first; it generally doesn’t replace the experience you would get from those jobs. Also, college seems to sap some of the entrepreneurial spirit that most kids tend to show when they’re younger, and it is entrepreneurs, not degree-holders (considered solely for that characteristic alone) who start companies and businesses, and create the jobs that the degree-holders take.
Being mindful of the weakness of anecdote as evidence, I would say that, in my experience, one of the more successful of my friends from high school went to college for two years, dropped out, had his parents tell him he could get a job to support himself, or he could sleep on the street, and is now doing much better for himself than many of the degree-holders I know (including myself).
They elite won’t permit anyone w/o a college degree to succeed in the working world. However, anyone w/o a college degree can succeed starting their own successful business enterprise. However it goes, in the world trade scheme of things, Americans are screwed unless we want to compete with the lifestyle in India and China. Pretty grim. World trade has got to go.
The better thing to do is to skip high school and use those 4 years for college.
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Here’s my modest proposal for education reform.
We have been discussing ways to fast track kids through high school to avoid the liberal agenda and other idiocies:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315730/posts?page=84#84
Proposal for the Free Republic High School Diploma.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1316882/posts
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You are 57. Few companies hire anyone past 46.
I must disagree. I have the background which I acquired in the military, but no formal degree. I've had more opportunities than I can shake a stick at, and I'm 52.
It’s a matter of degree. I enjoyed what I did but with the money I made I was able to things I enjoyed more and, more importantly whenever I wanted to do them. One of the best things for me about retirement is the lack of a schedule.
Everyday is the weekend.
If you did not attend a university then where did you learn physics, calculus and probability? Did you have time to work full time and learn these things? Are you telling me you taught yourself those things? If so, my hats of to you bud. Call yourself anything you want. I personally think this story is fishy.
I would have called the police and had your ass arrested.
LOL. I was a math major in college, but that is no excuse.
I was school, school, school! My son wanted the Military, his girlfriend and I haunted him, telling him to go to school first and then the military. Personally, I wanted he to buy some time so he wouldn’t have to serve under Obama. Anyway, he was miserable! Didn’t even make a semester, joined the Army, he is a “grunt” with the 25th ID and loves it!!!
Now it looks like his brother is going the same route. A
I have learned, as long as they are looking to do something that will move them forward in life, I will support it. School immediately after HS isn’t for everyone.
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