Since the Great Recession of 2008, the survey data for young people considering college is clear. Most students aren’t worried about “finding themselves” or pursuing their passions anymore. Today, going to college is a means to an end—getting a good job. Unfortunately, for most of these students, the outcome is not meeting their expectations. Unlike […]

Whoops! That was a typo. I was trying to say, “Don’t go to college without a PURPOSE.” The conventional wisdom is, “Follow in our [parents’] footsteps, do it like we did it. Just take the next logical step, go to college, and you’ll be exposed to a lot of different experiences and new ideas. You […]

Going to college is a risky business. Only one in three who matriculate, manage to graduate, and get a well-paying professional job. I have written ad nauseum about managing student loan debt. (See notes.) However, I’ve read a couple articles recently on the subject that, I think, justifies visiting the topic again. “College ruined my […]

By the time Herbert Hoover had become president, education in the US was considered to be compulsory. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and mandatory K–12 education, essentially, became the law of the land. For all practical purposes, that was the world I grew up in, and […]

I am getting a lot of questions regarding my opinion of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposals on forgiving student loans and making college free. Eliminating Student Loan Debt I believe that the nation’s student loan crisis originates with entitled teenagers and financially illiterate parents. Public policy shouldn’t reward bad behavior. However, let’s set that concern aside. […]

In November my blog post was about pathways that led to a well-paying job that didn’t run through an expensive college or university. I’m going to expand on that. Contrary to what a whole bunch of parents and students have been led to believe, a college degree is not necessary in order to get a […]

Fifty years ago there weren’t any “worthless” degrees. For example, I graduated with a BA in Philosophy, answered a newspaper ad on a whim, and, lo and behold, was launched into a successful career in Information Technology. (I had never seen a computer.) College in America no longer works the way it used to: The […]

Colleges and universities are churning out 1,900,000 bachelor’s degrees every year. College grads are a-dime-a-dozen. Forty-three percent of those who graduate (around 800,000) end up in jobs that don’t require a college degree. This varies widely by major. Liberal Arts majors end up underemployed upon graduation fifty-four percent of the time. That’s not a good […]

Making a success out of college has become really difficult. I was a first-gen student sixty years ago. I made every mistake in the book. However, the world was a lot simpler then, and I managed to stagger through it all. When I think about what it would be like to be a first-gen student […]

Only ten percent of the jobs in the US pay $30-$40 per hour. I don’t believe many parents start out with the question, “How can my little Johnny make $35/hour.” They just assume that sending their kid to college will put him on the road to financial prosperity. They couldn’t be more wrong. To get […]