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Blowing six months of life and $1,000 gives you lots more options than failing and subsequently sitting on a pile of student loans you have to start paying off with your part-time barista job.
I went to college without thinking about it for half a second, and headed to grad school two years later. I've been an educator since I turned into a grown-up.
If I hadn’t gone to college, I would have become a taxi driver (even though I’m not the best driver...). Seriously: Skills-wise, there’s nothing I can do for a career that doesn’t involve a degree.
But...
Do you know how much college costs? It is beyond ridiculous. People talk about saving to send their kids to school, and I laugh hysterically. Who can do that? You need, conservatively, about $40,000 to send each kid to a four-year school — and that’s based on now, when my oldest child is just 10. The school he wants to go to? MIT. MIT is roughly $50,000 a year.
Not four years. $50,000 for one year.
I’m not saying he shouldn’t follow his dreams. What I am saying is...I just don’t know if it is worth it anymore.
I feel like a traitor saying that, but it is true. Four years of work, plus tuition and fees, means a whole lot of opportunity cost. If your passion and dream job require a degree, then do it. But if you're going just because everyone told you that you should go, or just because you don’t know what else to do with yourself...don't. Don’t go dinking around hoping for some kind of a-ha moment, burning through cash all the while.
So Eliana, you say, what should I do? Share your wisdom with all us readers. Don’t worry, that’s what I’m here for.
Take a class. Just one or two. Not at a big university, far from home. If you don’t know what you want from life, take some baby steps before big money is involved.
I’ve taught part-time at a community college since 2001. No, I’m not young, but I’ve also come to believe in the mission of community colleges. They are the real-life face of higher education. They aren’t lesser or lame like some people might think. Community colleges offer economical options. That might mean doing a full associate degree, then transferring elsewhere for the next two years. It might mean taking a couple classes, failing badly, taking some time off to grow up a bit, then trying again. Blowing six months of life and $1,000 gives you lots more options than failing and subsequently sitting on a pile of student loans you have to start paying off with your part-time barista job.
Maybe you go crazy and don’t even get a degree. What? Can you still be a decent human being? Successful? Happy? Yes. But what you do have to do is get some kind of training. All the research about the job market says the same thing: employers want to hire you ready to get working. They want you to be prepared from day one. Which means your high school diploma might be nice, but it does not make you all that employable.
Again, community colleges can be great here. That first word is important — community. These schools match up their program offerings to the needs of their location. Air conditioning repair is huge in my neck of the woods because it is basically the hottest place on earth — kind of makes sense. Other places might offer top-notch certificate programs in hospitality or petroleum or elder care. It just depends.
The other magical thing about living in 2015 is the Internet. You can get great training in all kinds of fields while sitting in your underwear at home. Coding, digital marketing, healthcare, what have you…the sky really is the limit. You can take classes from MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which you may have heard of. At the end, you can usually pay to take a test and get some kind of certification. More and more, these online programs are teaming up with colleges so you can get credit (for a price) that could be applied to a degree later on.
I know I’m sounding a little bossy, and I apologize. I just want you to know you’ve got choices. That can be overwhelming, and I get it. I just want to be clear that the “traditional university experience” you’ve been sold might not be the way to go, but doing nothing and hoping for the best isn’t going to work, either.
Explore. Try things out on a small scale. Debt is forever — seriously. Student loans don’t go away, even if you declare bankruptcy. Just a little something to keep in the back of your mind.