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 ...
“I have never heard of a manager in my field without at least a 4 yr, engineering degree.”
Well now you have.
The HOPE scholarship will cover all tuition and some of the required fees. It does not provide anything to cover room and board, so my parents paid about $20,000 for my bachelor's degree.
If your daughter is interested in BME, in-state at Tech really can't be beat. Johns Hopkins and Duke rank higher (#1 and #2, respectively), but unless they're offering financial aid to the point where it's as cheap or cheaper than Tech, not worth it IMO.
Well if we put out a proposal and one if out leads or manager didn't have a 4 year degree in Engineering we would be laughed out of business.
Indeed.
Aboslutely and totally wrong. Ever hear of skilled trades?
I didn’t have the college option so I joined the military(USN) in 1974.
After serving my enlistment of 4 years, I got an entry level position with my county water agency.
After working there for the last 31 years I’m now a pariah because I jumped on the best option for my small family because I’m a union member that was forced upon me.
I will soon retire with approx. 66% of my base pay and that makes me a mooch!
Well, thanks, but I was saving what I REALLY think for another time. That one wasn’t even much of a warm-up.....for me. ;)
If you want an education, go to the best schools and sit in classes without enrolling. (It is FREE.) Or hire the best professors for personal tutoring, which is far more productive and far cheaper than classes.
I also do electrical engineering for my own business and like you, I do not possess an EE. I’ve also been employed as an engineer by engineering firms. I have a well documented work history which helps me overcome any doubts about the lack of degree. I would suspect our situation is fairly rare.
What should matter is experience and accomplishments in actual doing. The goal of a business is to make money. Not building a paper hierarchy tribute to formal education.
At 19 I got a job at a large well known (at least at the time) Sunnyvale telecommunications equipment company as an engineering technician. It was hard to get through the door. I got through the door through a connection with a consulting engineer friend working on a project at the time there. Within a year I was promoted to associate engineer. Within three years I was promoted to senior design engineer. This was a $150+ million a year company. After a couple of years of that I quit and became a consultant and started an engineering for hire business designing both satellite based and other communications equipment for much larger companies. I also wrote a linear circuit analysis program for the PC back in the mid 80's that we sold. It was one of the first, if not first, to use the PC's 8087 numeric coprocessor at the time. The 8087 code was written in assembly for optimum performance. After doing that successfully for about six years I and my business partner started manufacturing our own hardware products because that was where we felt the money was to be made. I've been doing that for 15+ years now. I hold one patent and have another highly complex patent application going through the process. Both are in the wireless communications field. I rarely pursue patents as most cleaver ideas as best kept as a trade secret away from your competitors buried in an FPGA or something similar. There are at least 20,000 high performance satellite modems on the planet that are my design. They are in use all over the world. You can say I’m not a “real engineer” if you like, but none of the professionals I’ve dealt with over the last 20 some odd years would say that. From MIT doctorates in electrical engineering on down.
It is rare.
But so are really good engineers.
I do know other engineers without degrees that are very successful.
The people who love it do it.
And congratulations on being another one!
That’s great, but out clients require the ‘degree’. World is a strange place, no question.
You obviously have no idea how a business works.
To generate 40 billable hours a week, one would have to work perhaps 60 hours or more.
Someone has to do the billing, etc.
Most estimates are free, and that takes time and fuel.
And unless one works out of his house, there is the cost of owning/leasing the office/shop.
Better throw in the cost of someone to answer the phone, if you want to be taken seriously as a business.
Advertising, Yellow Pages? Not cheap.
How about the cost of a truck, tools, insurance, etc. All of this comes out of the imaginary $160,000/yr you quote.
It usually takes 5 years as an apprentice to become eligible to take the test necessary to obtain an electrical contractor license. You start the 1st year at a low wage, and receive raises every 6 months. After 10,000 hours, you are considered a “journeyman,” and make $18/hr Dallas to $40.15/hr Chicago.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Electrician_Journeyman/Hourly_Rate/by_City
Not sure about the “has more orders than he can fill” part.
Electricians/contractors are not immune to the sluggish economy.
Most unions have workers “on the books” or laid off at this time. The Cleveland area is very slow at this time.
But if your main point is that a person can make a very good living without formal college training, then I agree with you.
My story is similar to your own. I work in industrial automation; things like motion control, PLC and HMI programming, control panel design, power distribution.....
I’ve seen very many others find an opportunity to perform this type of work without a degree and I consider myself blessed to be able.
I’ve seen = I’ve NOT seen
I would say that the company I work for does take advantage of their on hand talent...I do get paid well...but I just will not get the title...which is fine by me.
Am 2 months away from my 57th birthday. I have always had a high paying job and rose to the top wherever I was. Then was laid off from Wells Fargo in Dec 2008. I have not been hired anywhere since. No 4 year degree means no job in these times anyway. I am thanking God because my son is a freshman at Hillsdale College this year. He will need at least a 4 year degree to compete. That may not be enough.
You are 57. Few companies hire anyone past 46.
just to be eligible to take the exams necessary to enter the professor. CPAs come to mind.
We have in many ways returned to medieval guilds.
Most professional certifications wont even travel from state to state without complicated paperwork.
“The bubble hasn’t burst yet but is about to. There are way too many law school graduates who can’t find any jobs right now.”
So, how do you short education?? Serious question. What goes down in value (or up) when the number of college students reduces by 25%.
Well apparently government took over student loans just in time to reap the losses...
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