My DH and I are lately discussing the pros and cons of going to college.

At this point my feeling is that, although there are some few kids who really turn the world on it's ear by inventing something or writing a novel, etc., without the need for starting or finishing college, most kids are not going to fall into this category (timing, drive, smarts, etc.)


Our ds12 wants to be a video game designer and we are supporting that, however I think a b.a./b.s. in computer science or math or even art will make him much more employable in general terms. Not to mention where he'll be at 25 if he suddenly realizes he wants to get a masters; without even a b.a. it would probably seem insurmountable.

Mainly I think he's just gonna get sick of explaining during job interviews why he didn't go to college


Considering the ridiculous costs associated with big name schools, those are probably out. My DH tends towards the anarchic, and is really excited about some of the online ed. opportunities that seem to be out there and which may even nudge out regular colleges in a few decades. He sent me an article about how kids who go to college are going to be increasingly considered 'on vacation' and when applying for jobs considered less well prepared than someone who has been working for a while.

I don't buy it; some of it sounds great - skip a huge tuition bill? SURE!

But at this point I think that if my child can get a full or nearly full scholarship the idea of skipping college to go straight to work will not be considered.

Anyone else having these ruminations?

College, for sure.

There's no real need to go into life-long debt to accomplish a BS, though. Do the first year or two's worth of credits at your local Community College, and then transfer to a decent in-state public University to finish up. People love to shit on random state universities, but they tend to have excellent post graduation employment rates.

The biggest key, if he wants to program (video games or anything else) is to ACTUALLY PROGRAM. A lot. Over and over. Publish his stuff online. A lot. Then, when you graduate from school, you have a real portfolio of products to present an employer.

There was an interesting interview on NPR this morning on the very subject.

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/05/173416593/skipping-out-on-college-and-hacking-your-education

While I can't say that my BA from a highly ranked uni made a huge difference nor did my Masters, I also can't say that I'd be better off without them and I really didn't graduate with a ton of debt. Of course, prices have gone up a lot. I do still think that it is well worthwhile to get at least a Bachelors degree in most instances.

My dh, on the other hand, regularly expresses his opinion that he wasted time getting a BA and would have been better off doing like one of his childhood friends and training to work in something more trade oriented. I don't think that he is influencing our oldest who is very directed toward a career that will require at least a Masters likely, but I worry about our youngest when he tells the kids that college is a waste of time and money.

Did you, perchance, see this segment on 60 minutes a year or so ago: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57436775/dropping-out-is-college-worth-the-cost/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarouselhttp:// ? I don't know that I agree with the premise, honestly, though for most people. I'm sure that there are people for whom no college education works fine if they have some really innovative idea, but they are in the minority and statistically speaking college educated folks make more money in the long run. I do think that there are kids who are not college material and who might do better with training in a field that did not require college, but most of our kids probably aren't those people.

Computer programming, especially in game design & programming (nasty field btw; super long hours, significantly lower pay and poor job reliability) still looks heavily at what someone has done and can do. But if he can't make his own successful game or work as an intern to build credible, the degree may be the only way to get seen. But a career there is made more strongly by past successes.

There are also deeper skills and explorations one can do in school that you may not get to in a job where you are trapped in release cycles. Some of the specialty areas in game development need fairly advanced knowledge like AI, physics, graphics, and performance tuning.

There are some two year professional degrees in game development. If he is ahead in school, maybe he should plan a gap year to see what he can by himself before making a commitment.

p.s. I've never directly factored in a degree in hiring a business software developer.

p.p.s. Many game designers start out the field as testers and essentially work an apprenticeship until they move onto assistant producer or junior level designer or such.

Just keep in mind that most companies now use an online HR system as an application gatekeeper. For some companies, the lack of a college degree would prevent him from even getting an interview. It would really limit his options not to get one from any school.

Also, college provides a great opportunity to intellectually explore that is hard to recreate elsewhere. I'd focus on teaching your DS to take advantage of the opportunities available.

I agree with this (although one can consider things before rejecting them).

Gifted children may be able to earn enough AP/IB/CLEP credits
before college to graduate in three years. This should be considered, although some gifted children have a range of intellectual interests that even four years of college cannot satiate.

I found it disturbing when my daughter recently listed one of her long-term goals as simply "going to college" with no goals beyond that. At 12, I don't expect to have her life planned out but I feel like she already has bought into the "getting into college" arms race. I pointed out that there is no reason why she wouldn't have the option to go to college given our family situation and her abilities. Given that assumption, i.e. she will get into college somewhere, I want her to think about why she is going to college and how it fits into the rest of her life. Unfortunately, IMO, college is too expensive these days to go and take classes just because you don't have any better ideas about what to do after high school. I've started talking to her about how to make college worthwhile and how to use it to achieve a goal, i.e. finding a way to make a living that aligns with a passion.

Of course, all of this may be for naught. As my husband and I have seen with ourselves and our older siblings' kids, our kids may get through college with a marketable degree and then chuck it because it turns out they don't want to work in the area that they studied after all.

In the short term, being a video game designer may be his only aspiration. But longer term he may want to be promoted into a manager job with a tech company, and this is where he will bump his head if he does not have a four year degree. Unless he starts his own company -- but in that case it would really help him to have some business classes (accounting, marketing, finance, operations management, business law, etc.) under his belt. It is a WHOLE lot easier to get that degree when you are in your late teens/early 20s than when you are married with kids & a full time job, rent, etc.

The students getting the best jobs are doing both -- getting a degree AND getting good programming experienc in part time jobs & internships. I work it IT, very much a "what have you done for me lately" field, but still think he will regret it if he does not finish a four year degree.

By the way, if he (or your husband or anyone else) tosses out Bill Gates as a guy who did great in tech without finishing a degree, I recently read an interview with Gates where he said he should NOT be the poster boy for not going to college. He finished 3 years at Harvard before dropping out, and he says he only did so because he knew the Microsoft idea could not wait one more year given the speed of the market.

I have always regretted not going.

For example (this is one of many, many examples), I'm currently in a 10 month (continuing education) TA program. We recently had a class in math, and one of my fellow students said to me "Why are you doing this? You're wasted here - you should be the teacher, not the assistant." It's fine, because I don't want to teach, but if I did I'd have to start from scratch. Here teachers need a minimum of five years post-secondary, and I have zero.

(I'm in the program because of my kids... a) it's like an insider research project about the workings of the public school system to which they are currently exposed, and b) the schedule a TA works allows for me to be available to parent whenever they're not in school). Win, win.

College is more that just access to more career opportunities. It's about exposure to knowledge and learning, and also about connecting with people closer to your cognitive profile.

The reasons I didn't go are varied but involve a combination of apathy, indecision, resentment (towards formal education) and anxiety. I wish (I DEEPLY WISH) my parents had taken a more assertive role and persuaded me to go. This is one of my biggest regrets.

college/university = YES, 100%

At the very least could your DS attend a technical institute where he can earn transferable credits in case he does decide to pursue his masters? Transferable credits are a good thing

pm'd you a story.

I've never seen a posting for an IT gig below managerial level that didn't require a 4-year degree "or equivalent experience," which generally translates to 5 years of actually doing the job. Companies have a habit of plucking enterprising individuals off of internships, the helpdesk, or operations center, and giving them a shot at something better. That's where you get the experience, and then you're free to do what you want with it after that.

That's the path I took. I got some real world experience in the Navy, though not in a role that directly translates in any way to what I do today. So, I landed in a data center as a night operator, got a shot at systems work, and ran from there. The upshot is that I got my education while getting paid, rather than while accumulating debt.

I've tried taking college courses related to IT, but the ones I tried were painfully awful. I just don't have the same tolerance for slow-moving, largely irrelevant, excessively time-consuming activities in my adulthood. For example, the first college course I took was on networking, but it focused entirely on procedures for configuring a Windows NT server on a network. I didn't care about pointy-clicky procedures on a single proprietary (and soon to be outdated) platform, I wanted to know how it works. So I dropped the course, bought a book, problem solved.

Another course I tried was in web programming. The teacher kept screwing up his sample code, and I had to keep correcting him in order to get the class moving again.

In general, I'd never recommend a child go into development work. For once thing, it's too easy to outsource. There are other specialties in IT that are far more stable. The key is to find something where you have to at least occasionally touch the platforms. Network, systems, storage, and security admins come to mind.

A university education opens up opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable due to a combination of signalling ability/knowledge to others and actually imparting ability/knowledge to a graduate.

I remain cynically attached to my university studies:
1. Attached thanks to the few profs who shared knowledge and passion that is exclusive to them. These are the individuals who offered a transformative experience in the classroom-- I was totally inspired to self actualization by dint of meeting these brilliant folks. I can think of 2 of, say, 50+, and they were life changers.
2. Cynical because I believe higher education is becoming quite commoditized. The field of candidates is being diluted by universities' fiscal motive and student apathy/entitlement.

My suggestion would be to seek out mentorship for starting personal projects/entrepreneurship during high school-- earlier, if interest warrants. Anyone bright can go to university (pending finances) but few university students are truly impassioned about their field. In my experience, it's the people who have initiative outside the classroom who are most successful in life because they take ownership of their life direction. University can easily follow personal projects and, IMO, should follow if an individual's interests align with a university appropriate field of study.

Aquinas (above) and SAHM


pretty much summed up my personal take on this. While I've become fairly cynical about the rat race surrounding higher ed, and the commoditization of the industry (I can't even believe how icky it made me feel to type that word), I still see no real route around it for the generation of kids who are now 8-18yo.

With the automated HR systems now running screening, NOT having a degree means that you only have networking as a workaround. Now, if you happen to be very good, and in the right place at the right time, then that CAN work out. But that's like putting all of your hopes on winning the MLB homerun derby, isn't it? Sure, you may be talented, but there is an element of luck involved, too, and nobody can predict that or change it either.


I want my DD to have that opportunity and I want her to have enough BREADTH of theoretical knowledge/learning that she has a formalized way of demonstrating throughout her life that she can learn a wide variety of things. It's a certification process all right... but it's not job training. It's better than that.

My DH and I both have advanced degrees in fairly specialized fields. Both of us have been quite gainfully (and stably) employed in related (but not integral) disciplines. Considering underemployment, either one of us could land a job in materials, chemistry, physics, related engineering disciplines, pharmaceuticals, toxicology, environmental science, or grant/technical writing/editing within DAYS, and that job would pay well enough to support a family adequately.

That kind of stability is an amazing force in one's life, honestly. It enables things.

My DD sees that very clearly. We want her pursue what she loves, of course... but perhaps more to the point, we want her to be sufficiently pragmatic as to choose wisely, too. Some 'loves' are better left as sidelines.

I do not buy all the hype surrounding elite/not-quite-elite college admissions, however. I simply do NOT think that an additional 40K annually can be justified over what the local state university costs. DD might apply just to prove to herself that she's good enough to get in... but I for one am not going to encourage (or even stay silent) if she proposes racking up more than 10K in loans. No way. You're borrowing against your future at the company store, kiddo...


I think of it in terms of "what if the worst case scenario came true?" What if you became unable to work through illness or injury? Could you still repay it? What if you were forced to drop out before finishing? Could you still repay it?

Any time the answer is "I'm not sure how I would do that" then that's a red flag, in my opinion. Educational debt is unsecured, and it's no longer easy to discharge.

THIS. Exactly. (One of the reasons I'm filled with regret for not going). And how lucky is your DD to have this modeled for her



Agreed. Also, if they're local, they're close by. My kids are still young, but I don't ever see a time when I'll be ready for them to be thousands of miles away.

I can't speak for other industries, but as I said earlier, that's just not true for IT. "Or equivalent experience" is a very common term. Getting your resume past an automated screener in IT is simply a matter of loading it up with the kind of acronyms and jargon that you'll find listed on the job posting: SQL, Cobol, TCP/IP, disaster recovery, etc. Depending on your area, there are certifications that can count for more than a degree, and those certifications are cheaper to attain.

What's more, those certification authorities are better at keeping up with the industry than colleges.


Ditto.

For the last 20-30 years, we've seen college expenses increase annually by double digits, even when adjusted for inflation, while wages have stagnated, and benefits have decreased. Educational debt is nigh on impossible to discharge in a bankruptcy. It's already getting to the point where a degree is not worth the expense for a growing number of people, the ROI just doesn't work. As these trends are allowed to continue, the pool of people who will materially benefit from a college education grows ever smaller.

10k in loans is quite optimistic. The average student graduated in 2011 with $26,600 in debt.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/student-loan-debt-hits-record-high-study-shows-1C6542975

I am all in favor of college education. I have a Masters degree and it has truly helped me in two ways: 1) I have changed careers three times to find the career that would be the most fulfilling to me and the only reason I was even qualified to apply for jobs in other career paths (with zero experience) was because I had a degree that was somewhat relevant. 2) It gave an opportunity to meet people with similar interests and similar intellectual range. I learnt to think critically, to work diligently just to find a tiny bit more info than you had before, to assimilate information from various fields into a cohesive whole, etc. Skills that continue to help me in my highly technical field. I believe that I have the ability to see through issues without losing sight of the big picture because of my college education, if that makes sense. PS. We have been saving for DD3.5's college education from day one.

Thank you all for the various responses!

CCN - I do dread the idea that he will end up on the other side of 25 without a degree and realize he's made a bad mistake; if I really thought he wouldn't benefit from a college education and the experience socially, I wouldn't be so concerned with keeping it on the table.
My college friends are still my best friends, for one thing. Finding people of similar interests and intellectual ability will be much less likely for him without going to college. I want him to finally be at a place where it's ok to read shakespeare for fun with your friends (ok maybe my college was weird).

My DH says he just wants to make sure it won't be 'required' by me...

If he gets into a job and realizes he hates it, I'd want him to have more options, not less, thus the degree.

ex: I have a degree in fine art; no one cares what it's in at this point, they just want to know I really wrote a couple of essays in my life and can probably do algebra and think.

I am in IT also, pretty successful considering my start;
I am a computer systems administrator
(regarding being a programmer
vs. systems admin, I heartily agree with the idea that the programmers tend to get the short end of the stick, hours-wise and software lifecycle wise
I swear whoever came up with the "agile" idea should have realized it would devolve into 'hurry up and throw something together by thursday every single week*'.
*Until you get so sick of it you quit.

Zen Scanner -
yes I definitely think he will be much happier if he is one of the people doing 'wow' stuff instead of one of the grunts churning out 'assets' in a 'piece work'/sweatshop arrangement.
"There are also deeper skills and explorations one can do in school that you may not get to in a job where you are trapped in release cycles. Some of the specialty areas in game development need fairly advanced knowledge like AI, physics, graphics, and performance tuning."

He has such an aversion for repetitive/non meaningful work I'm afraid he'll be completely miserable if he has to grind away in a dead end job...more miserable than the average joe, in a way.

One point in the article my husband sent: Especially don't go to college if you can just do what you want by going to the library (good will hunting anyone?);
the inverse being - DO GO to college if you are interested in STEM category career - this does include computer science/technology in general.


I would truly be delighted if this vid. game programming course our ds is taking really lights a (further) fire under him and he just plugs away for a couple years on that.
If he sticks with it beyond that, gets employment offers in addition to applying to college, I would likely not stand in his way, but at least try for part time college to keep the ball going.
I do hope getting him access to learning about this sooner rather than later will help him know whether it's for real his dream career. But almost everyone grows out of what they want to do when they are 12, so maximizing options is the ideal.

I still want to be a computer game designer as I did thirty some years ago. But I've enjoyed having maximized my options in many peculiar ways.

Pass this website on to your son:
http://gamasutra.com/

I still have irritating nightmares about college on a regular basis and it was probably the worst period of my life.

However, as much as I wish that I hadn't had the *experience* of college, you pretty much have to have a piece of paper that shows that you are a college graduate.

It really is the current high school diploma and there's no way to avoid that if you want to be employed at a pretty basic level, you want to have a college degree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/b...d-by-increasing-number-of-companies.html

It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
New York Times
February 19, 2013

ATLANTA —The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job.

Consider the 45-person law firm of Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh here in Atlanta, a place that has seen tremendous growth in the college-educated population. Like other employers across the country, the firm hires only people with a bachelor’s degree, even for jobs that do not require college-level skills.

This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office “runner” — the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office — went to a four-year school.

“College graduates are just more career-oriented,” said Adam Slipakoff, the firm’s managing partner. “Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures. They’re not just looking for a paycheck.”

Economists have referred to this phenomenon as “degree inflation,” and it has been steadily infiltrating America’s job market. Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that didn’t used to require a diploma — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — are increasingly requiring one, according to Burning Glass, a company that analyzes job ads from more than 20,000 online sources, including major job boards and small- to midsize-employer sites.

This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor’s degree: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.

Some jobs, like those in supply chain management and logistics, have become more technical, and so require more advanced skills today than they did in the past. But more broadly, because so many people are going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable.

Plus, it’s a buyer’s market for employers.

“When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,” said Suzanne Manzagol, executive recruiter at Cardinal Recruiting Group, which does headhunting for administrative positions at Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh and other firms in the Atlanta area.

**************************************

Ugh!

Your college sounds awesome


(sigh)<--(empathy for you)

Co-parenting can be hard (no disrespect to your DH - I'm sure he's a great dad). My DH thinks that post secondary is a waste of time and money. My kids are only 8 and 10 and already I'm stressed about it.

I wish my parents had made college a requirement.

I'd say keep it on the table for sure (without creating too much conflict with your DH). Could you show your DS this thread so he can see how everyone has weighed in? (I couldn't with my DD10 - she'd be embarrassed even with the anonymity).

This was pretty much my point.

A basic college degree simply means that you can be hired for a non-labor intensive job.

My assistant (formerly the receptionist) has a college degree.

The college degree is one reason she got hired in the first place (I didn't do the hiring).

After high school, graduates have many more options than they think. While many people push them into college, this decision has to be theirs. No point in wasting that much money if one really doesn't want to be there. If he wants to go right into the work force, then he should go for it. He may find it hard to sell himself above someone with a college degree, but that's where you have to think harder. A college degree is just something that tells employers you're smart. What you did in college tells employers how involved you are - showing work ethic. If he can build a portfolio with work that relates to the type of work he wants to do, and if he was involved in high school and can show he was above the rest, then he should have no problem finding a job. However, college provides an opportunity to learn and grow his skills in whichever field he chooses to pursue. With this, he'l get experience in other fields and maybe even find something he never would have considered to be more enjoyable than being a video game developer. Let me know you're thoughts on a college degree and what it really means to an employer

MoN, this has been a hot topic socially among faculty for over a decade. Post-secondary educators were pretty savvy, IMO, to that particular shift in thinking the moment that "partnerships with industry" and "certificate programs" started becoming major buzzwords outside of engineering fields, back in the late 90's.

We knew what it meant. But administrators only saw $$, and told us that we were just Ivory Tower Snobs who didn't care about our students and their "real world needs for marketable skills."

I think it's increasingly obvious that this shift has done NOTHING to benefit students (and the alums they become), but much to help employers heave much of the burden of training off onto applicants.

HowlerKarma, could you further explain the shift you mention? I agree that college these days benefits more the employers than the students, but for reasons that pertain to what college has become. From higher education being about broadening one's education and truly becoming "educated," nowadays, colleges have strict curricula for majors that prohibit students from becoming educated in other areas of interest. For example, science and engineering majors are increasingly pushed further away from liberal arts areas of study, and never get the chance to be exposed to these areas which may or may not have held interest to the student. This seems like a fast track for a student to become specialized to work in a specific field, rather than a true secondary education for a student to experience a variety of knowledge. Being a current student, this is just my opinion, is this the shift you were mentioning?

Not exactly.

Also, what you're currently experiencing is neither new (I recall that same frustration in the 80's as a college student in a STEM field) nor the result of any shift/commoditization.

It's the result of laboratory coursework on campuses requiring a disproportionate bite out of a STEM major's schedule, and the nature of STEM disciplines, which really require a sequence of learning that is both additive and dependent in order to master the discipline (as required of a BS degree, I mean). The other thing is that STEM classes with labs run on a five-day schedule (three lectures, two lab blocks) or a four day (three lectures, one lab block) and that lab block interferes with humanities coursework, which tends to run on a different kind of 'schedule' week to week. It's hard to fit the two schedules together.

There really ISN'T a lot of 'wiggle' room in those STEM majors past the 200-level, either. It's a lot of information, is the problem, and while you could make room for more humanities coursework and fine arts... it would be at the expense of that hands-on time in laboratories. And that is where good STEM students learn to be fearless in tackling and solving real problems, which is our real value in later workplace/graduate studies. That's really where we learn to be autodidacts. So the lab bit of things cannot be "virtualized" nor can it be trimmed/ditched without losing something pretty essential.


Besides, exploring some of those other things is what the general education core is for on most campuses. I know this because I've been involved in producing the standards/creating courses that meet them on two different campuses. That really IS the goal.

The other option is to take overload credits, but I also know from experience that this can (because of those lab hours, darn them!) be easier said than done. This is yet another reason why I consider it DEEPLY distressing that high school students are caught up in a sort of arms race that doesn't allow for "fluff" in order to make themselves look "better" on paper to elite colleges.

Okay-- so that shift, though? That is about "distance" coursework, offering "certification" (the kind of thing that only trade schools used to do), and two year programs, or requiring internships, etc. etc. Things related to "the needs of industry" are particularly troubling. Those things are transparently about JOB TRAINING.

The troubling part is: a) this is higher education (not post-secondary job-specific training), and b) wait a second... aren't companies supposed to TRAIN their hires at their own expense, not choose from those who have paid to be trained to specs?? Neat trick, that. Education is portable and broadly applicable to learning NEW things that can fit into, or add onto, the framework that has been carefully built, but it almost always requires refinement/shaping in order to fit the needs of particular demands in the workplace. Training, on the other hand, is about learning particular tasks, protocols, or skills-- which may or may not have any other application or use.

Personally, I feel that college is important. People may be successful in life without it, but studies have shown college graduates earn more money, on average. And if money isn't your thing, then I feel college provides you with skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, monotony, commitment, and life experience- skills that are useful in any career path.

I always talk to my eldest about college as though it is the done thing. I tell him it is another lot of schooling after high school. Even if my boys choose to outside of academia, I think college should be done first, then your dream.

I had no idea what the point of that was.

The laboratories, I mean.

I was mostly annoyed that I actually had to show up for them and do things while there.

The lab is not where I learned to be fearless in tackling and solving real world problems, and I've known a number of STEM workers who completed those labs and were still frozen by fear, and rendered ineffective in their jobs as a result. Labs are scripted, and they're designed to reinforce or challenge your mastery of concepts that have already been formally taught. The real world doesn't work that way, because it has zero regard for what you've learned. It's perfectly comfortable behaving in ways that directly contradict your certainties.

Fearlessness is gained in the real world by successfully overcoming real-world challenges, and especially by successfully overcoming the ones you've caused yourself. That can only be done on the job.

I'm not saying labs are worthless... they're important baby steps to becoming familiar with the equipment and processes. I'm just saying the benefit isn't what you say it is, and that OJT still provides tremendous value, which is why nearly every job description is asking for experience.

Perhaps a distinction should be made here between *types* of "labs." There are lab courses exactly as Dude described, scripted to provide a different perspective on core concepts. But there are also design courses (I am thinking engineering, here) that are not so scripted, where students face real-world constraints with the support of instructional staff. And then there are research labs - the undergrads who seek opportunities to work in them get to experience the real mccoy.

I kind of enjoyed the one I had like this.

The scripted labs that Dude is talking about is what I found less than interesting.

Managers have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize the profits of their companies. If they can do that by demanding highly-trained employees, they will. Companies do invest in worker training, but one risk they face in doing so is that their trained workers will go somewhere else.

You folks might enjoy Gary Becker's seminal article on the acquisition of general vs firm-specific capital. He delineates the cases in which it is rational for the firm vs student to incur training costs, and in what proportion, be they general or firm-specific.

Broadly speaking, it could be rational for firms in some industries to have students finance a portion of firm-specific training if contracts are in place and enforceable, with the firm paying efficiency (above-market) wages. We see this a lot in science and business fields with tuition fees being reimbursed upon hire. In these cases, admission to prestigious programs or training pertinent to the firms acts as a signal of quality and actually increases the likelihood of "good" candidates being hired into the work of their choice.

My opinion is that employment litigation and unionization have driven a wedge between the risk appetites of employers and employees and upset the apple cart.

But back to Becker's paper! One of the major inputs into the decision process of investing in human capital is the relative cost to the student--in financial costs and effort-- the latter of which is low for our gifties.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...0&uid=4&uid=83&uid=63&sid=21101788582171

Of course-- BUT... in looking at Dude's post:


That's untrue. Well, the labs are scripted... and they ARE intended to reinforce particular concepts. However, the real world STILL doesn't care about the script, and most undergraduate students don't go through a whole program without learning that the hard way at some point. THAT is what makes the lab experience (as opposed to simulations or demonstrations) valuable. Because it allows the student to make mistakes/errors-- and to problem solve as a result-- or to rely on the safety net of the instructor to help them do so. It's a very controlled framework, though, because of the scripted nature of the laboratory exercises, which is important in those first baby steps to open-ended problem solving.

Simple materials and less-than-anally-retentive procedural detail always produce interesting results in a teaching lab. Always. Because invariably, there are a few students who don't do what was intended. Now, at that point, it is incumbent on the instructor to DO something with that... which is why I think that many people who have been through those scripted labs at an engineering-type institution, or one that doesn't place highly skilled teachers into those labs may have not learned much in the process, since, well... in those situations, the answer is usually just a shrug and dump, or for the instructor to quietly tell the student "here, use Jim's data." It becomes a missed learning opportunity.

But that's not the fault of the structure of those classes. It's a failure in the educator in charge of them-- it's lazy.

That's when those introductory laboratory classes become nothing more than "training" (which is what Dude was referring to, in my opinion-- since that kind of environment is little more than a mindless "follow the directions. Bleat after step 2," kind of 'learning' environment). Note that I drew a distinction between learning and training.

And even when it's not a procedural lab, but a troubleshooting lab, you know ahead of time that whatever problem you're going to encounter is one the teacher has already provided you the tools to resolve. For example, if it's a software issue, you know a significant clue to the nature of the problem is going to show up in a message somewhere, and it's somewhere you've been taught to look. In the real world, you may find yourself supporting software that was poorly engineered, where many error messages, if they're cut at all, are not meaningful.

The problems are also limited in scope. If I'm learning server administration, I know that whatever problem is occurring in the lab, it's related to server configuration. In the real world, I'm more likely to spend time troubleshooting issues that are caused by bad programming, user error, network changes, security issues, hardware failures, or integration problems with another system. In other words, most of the problems I spend time on are not server configuration problems.

Naturally, I've seen many, many problems occur in troubleshooting labs apart from the ones the teacher had set up. The normal reaction is, as you said, to steer the students away from the problem, because it interferes with class time and the purpose of the lab. Anyway, the student usually doesn't have the skills, access, and/or big-picture process and design knowledge to resolve the unexpected problem.

I do concede that amylou had a good point about research labs. They're turning students loose on real world problems, which is totally awesome. But this conversation was about a child who wanted to create games, and there aren't research labs at universities doing that. I think a lot of university presidents would balk at the idea of student teams writing games using university resources. There's no federal grant program tied to it, and securing grants seems to be the point of most research universities, at least from an administration perspective.

Thread is drifting... engaging mini-thrusters

Quite a few universities now have Game Programming Clubs and competitions, which is pretty neat.

For a semi-technical college path, an Interaction Design degree may be a great path into the industry.

While I think there is potentially much value in a college education, it may well not be the best preparation for a game designer.

If I had a kid who was interested in game design, I'd try to arrange for some mentoring by game design professionals before making a decision one way or the other about college. It could well be that college does not make sense given the culture of that business. And college would still be an option later on. (But perhaps this has already been discussed - I didn't read through all the pages of this thread.)

Hmmm-- yeah, honestly, the coursework that I've seen up close tends to allow for independent projects on a pretty regular basis. Now, it may require instructor approval, but that is an opportunity to practice real-world problem solving and theory (which depends on the course). This would include both engineering and computer science coursework, obviously, but less obviously, it's also common in the sciences and in math.



Also just noting that my explanation of lab activities is predicated on a perspective from the physical sciences. Dude's is in computer science. My objection to 'virtual' lab exercises is founded in precisely Dude's argument: that these activities don't really ALLOW for serendipitous learning beyond the scope of the planned exercise... and the reason is that interaction with a machine basically is perfectly reproducible aside from human error. The framework/scaffold is too tight. That just doesn't exist in a chemistry or microbiology lab setting-- there are always things that go wrong. I've taught literally thousands of lab sessions, and I can count on one hand the number that never resulted in something unexpected. It's of value to students to watch the problem-solving of an expert in action on a real-world problem like that, for one thing. "Hmmm... wonder what happened here... do you mind if I try something? Huh. Let me check this other thing, then...oooooo... I think that this reagent wasn't completely dry before you started. Let me explain why I think that."

I really don't like "foolproof" lab activities, because I consider them sort of pointless. They might as well be demonstrations.

Argh.

I wish someone would explain schools' fascination with iPads to me. In this context,they strike me as being (expensive) shiny toys, and I honestly do not understand what they add to the learning process.

Let me quote a fascinated school principal that I disagree with.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Many-US-schools-adding-iPads-apf-1245885050.html

Many US schools adding iPads, trimming textbooks
Many US public schools providing iPads to students, moving away from traditional textbooks
By Stephanie Reitz, Associated Press | AP – Sat, Sep 3, 2011

At Burlington High in suburban Boston, principal Patrick Larkin calls the $500 iPads a better long-term investment than textbooks, though he said the school will still use traditional texts in some courses if suitable electronic programs aren't yet available."I don't want to generalize because I don't want to insult people who are working hard to make those resources," Larkin said of textbooks, "but they're pretty much outdated the minute they're printed and certainly by the time they're delivered. The bottom line is that the iPads will give our kids a chance to use much more relevant materials."

***************************************

I did not realize that algebra or history textbooks became outdated so quickly.

That must be what Tom Lehrer was singing about. How prescient of him. LOL.

Sorry for being dense, but could you please explain the reference?

The principal just sounds out of contact with actual reality when he says that.

Not to mention the fact that you have to pay for the iPad AND pay for the textbooks in this model. We have a few of these gadgets at home and the electronic books aren't much cheaper.

Tom Lehrer "New Math" (sadly this doesn't include video of his extremely charming performance)

We've never known any gifted people who don't enjoy Tom's work. It's very clever.

Not to mention the fact that the textbooks are then NON-TRANSFERABLE thanks to the miracle of modern DRM.

Ooooo-- darn, we weren't supposed to notice that. Look-- SHINY!

But-but--- SHINY! SHINY!!

Apple is certainly doing a VERY hard sell in higher ed; they are recruiting faculty with perks to get them to use iPad compatible materials.

So many students can't afford this stuff...

DeeDee

I wanted to go to college from around the age of ten years old or so. I read retired college textbooks just for fun as a pre-teen and teenager. I started at a community college when I was 18 with the hopes of eventually going onto a double major in music and theater at somewhere like NYU. It ended up being one of those 'life happens' type things. I dropped out and didn't go back to school until I was 23. I do have a completed associates degree in business administration and I completed all but one year of my BA in Fashion Design before I quit.

I quit because I was absolutely miserable, and it just wasn't worth it. I was older than the majority of the students, I was already running my own business that was going quite well and I was about to burn out completely. I found myself in a semester where I felt like I spent hours upon hours doing the equivalent of the busywork I was given back in the fourth grade by a teacher who wanted to shut me up. I just couldn't go back after that. I felt broken.

For me, the question about going to college depends largely on the field as well as the person. My husband has a Masters in Computer Science and yes, he has seen a spike in his income after completing it (also a back to college at a later age kind of thing). I am all for college. I will encourage my children to go to college and try it, but if they truly decide in their hearts that it is not the path for their life, I will be 100% okay with that. It was a very difficult decision for me initially because I had that college dream for so long. But, in the end I feel like I made the right decision for ME. It's another one of those personal choices. I still love to learn, but in my situation, I just wasn't reaping the benefits. Perhaps if I had taken another course of study it would have been different.

Thanks for the reply HowlerKarma. I agree, education really is important as a tool that helps create this frame around that which we will eventually pursue in our lives. Whatever type of education one receives is almost always useful in more ways than recognized. Like you said, TRAINING is specific and most often internships, from those that I've talked to, are a useless experience when it comes to the real work force. But why then, do companies look for this type of check mark on an application. I think it all comes down to work ethic. There are different types of people in the world. Those that meet educational standards and are considered "smart," and those that are "smart" but also busy themselves with being constantly involved and motivated. This is really general of course, but what I'm getting at is that employers look for several characteristics. Education (usually a college degree and how well one performs), People skills (being able to communicate and come off as a well rounded conversational individual), and work ethic (a major factor companies want in a new hire, from which they look at not how well you did in college but WHAT you did while you were there. This is where internships, clubs, work studies, all come in handy.)

To summarize, I feel that while the TRAINING that you speak of seems like a falsified shift from education to companies simply becoming lazy in hiring pre-trained employees, the employees more often than not still need to become trained for their specific area of work. My sister held an internship with a major contracting company as a civil engineer after her Freshman year of college. Because of her efforts and her people skills, she managed to hold this position for the next 3 years, becoming a paid intern which originally wasn't in the contract. After college when she went to enter the real workforce, she was quickly picked up by another company where she does nothing that applied to her internship. Instead she holds an inspection-type job where she's traveling and representing the company by meeting with people and what not. Basically, her years of internships were not seen as job training, she still went through a period of training with this new company, but the internships were enough experience to show that she has both the work ethic and the people skills to be sought after in the real world.

Also, with a later post you mentioned stressing that high school students do whatever they can to put themselves above others to be attractive to prestigious colleges. This is similar to getting work experience while in school. It's not to gain any sort of training that will help in the real world. It's simply to stay ahead and stand out from the crowd. That's really what it comes down to. College or not, work experience or not, if one can stand above the crowd and distinguish themselves as more useful than other candidates, then that person will be hired.

It's never too late. Even if someone doesn't go to college right out of high school it's never too late to start. It should be a personal choice, as you mentioned, where it's both affordable and sought after enough to get through it. It's a hell of a lot of work, but the personal drive is what makes it worth while. If there's an area where you wish you had more knowledge, go after a four-year study in that area and watch your intellect flourish. If you wish to pursue knowledge that's obtainable outside of a college degree, that's equally as awesome. It's a personal choice for everyone.

Actually, as both a faculty member AND as parent to a high school junior, I feel that this outlook is a VERY serious problem right now.

The problem is that there are way too many people way too concerned with "appearing" to be things that they aren't really. It's an arms race now, and that is a problem. My daughter frequently sees this in her peers-- they ONLY want to sign up for responsibilities that sound lofty and take little-to-no preparation or behind-the-scenes time. It's all about maximizing their resumes. These kids are 14-18yo.

I don't think that is healthy, I don't think it is sustainable, I think that it is BAD for communities, and for that reason alone, my family has opted OUT of the race to elite college admissions. It's not a goal. Period.

I think that high school ought to be a place for more exploration than it currently allows for, thanks to that rat-race mentality of out-competing one's classmates... er... "opponents" (as I think Jon has helpfully termed them ).



The slow and steady, but authentic route still works. There still isn't a substitute for hard work and time devoted to an activity that genuinely matters to you as a person. That is, do things because you feel passionate or intrigued... or because they seem like a good idea for you personally, and don't worry about whether or not they'll look "good" on a vita later.


I understand that the workplace is a marketplace that works this way when demand is outstripped by supply, and I don't really have a problem with employers selecting those candidates that demonstrate the best capacity to add value to a company in one way or another...

but why is this kind of thinking appropriate in COLLEGE admissions, again? (I don't believe that it is appropriate there, actually.) The goal of a college or uni is to educate and shape students into learners and thinkers. The goal of most employers is to make money efficiently. If the argument is that "students should be prepared for the 'real world' as soon as possible," then the entire notion of "education" is flawed to begin with, because it IS about being something else to start with. We accept that children should not have adult responsibilities and should be shielded from some things in the name of education... so when does that end? If it ends at "maturation" then for some individuals, it's not developmentally appropriate until age 25-27. Which is why rental car agencies have some interesting policies about what they consider "adulthood." Actuarial science has some lessons to teach us there. LOL.

I also disagree with your interpretation of the data re: internships. I tend to think that most industrial internships are mostly about identifying those people who: a) will work for nothing (or nearly so), b) have no sense of their own worth or human dignity, and c) have a high pain/tedium tolerance. It's a sorting method, all right. LOL. But that is the cynic in me. Graduate students are often subjected to a similar sieving process, for whatever that is worth.

I also agree that it is never too late to seek education, though. One of my best friends in graduate school was a sixty-something retired county sheriff who returned to school after his kids were gone, and found he loved it so much he went after a PhD when he finished a bachelor's in the subject! I always loved to see returning students in my classes-- they KNEW why they were there, and they were enthusiastic, engaged, and eager.

BigLaw internships were always the precise opposite of what you set forth here.

You get paid a ton of money (about $3K a week these days), endure firm receptions, various sporting events, and parties in your honor, and don't have any true responsibility.

I still have my Ritz-Carlton squishy ball from one of my summer interview flyback interviews.

I should find that squishy ball and sit here and squish it in my office.

I should also mention that the summer associate experience has no relationship to the actual practice of law.

Because the career paths to Greater Glory are only open to certain people at certain times?

Because you end up on the post-industrial scrapheap at age 40, broken and in profound despair, because you don't make the right choices early in your career and get into I-banking, the Right Kind of Consulting, or the correct medical specialty?

Remember parents, it's never too early to point your children in the direction of dermatology!

Here is the story of one poor castoff from BigLaw who now has entered the "Despair Period" of his life.

http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-disappeared.html

My husband firmly believes in Dental School as The Best Route to All that is Worthwhile and Pleasing.

No, he isn't a dentist. LOL. He just WISHES that he had been.


Or an FBI agent. Or a superhero* of some kind.


*I know, I know-- I thought that, too... He IS! He is "Chemistry Dude!" but he wasn't buying any of my baloney that particular day. Besides, he is well over forty, so he is beyond that post-industrial scrapheap frontier, evidently. I think of this particular scrapheap as being much like the deadfall in the Stephen King's Pet Sematery. A boundary. The self-worth Rubicon... reanimating one into a corporate zombie at all points beyond. Sometimes they come back, you know? LOL.

I've been thinking a lot about student loan debt, the law school graduate glut, vet school loans (salaries are low and yet costs are as high as med school loans), the lack of jobs and alternatives, and the lack of social and safety nets in this country.

Personally, I think we're living in a very cruel time in American history. Not only are people pretty much on their own here in the economy and as we become isolated as individuals, we have a population that's been conditioned to believe that expecting that a government invest in its citizenry, keep its thumb on corporate excess, and provide meaningful safety nets is b-a-a-a-d. This is so wrong, and yet so many people chug down this particular flavor of Kool-Aid without really considering the damage it does.

Charles Blow wrote a column about student debt in the NY Times recently. A commenter named Kevin Rothstein (#2 in Reader Picks) wrote this:


This guy made a really good point. And again, we condition the students to think that getting a degree is their responsibility because it benefits only them, while completely ignoring the fact that educated people who aren't yoked to debt are essential to the survival of this nation. Worse, many of the people leading the charge benefited from affordable college educations themselves. We put all the burden on students; this is crazy. Other countries get this. We don't.

Oops -- did I wander into the wrong forum?

While it would be fun to pit all the Freepers & KOSkids against each other, it just might detract a teensy bit from the overall experience here, which has been reasonably & pleasantly non-partisan over the years.

This thread doesn't feel partisan to me.

As American eras go, this one is really doing pretty well.

I agree that hard work and talent don't seem to add up in today's economy when stacked against privilege and the right pieces of paper from this or that school, but I don't think they ever have.

I often think I've done some hard work (not ENORMOUS AMOUNTS of hard work, mind you) and by luck have a brain in my head, so I am hanging in there.
But then there are days when I realize, in the grand scheme, I *am* fairly privileged with *ok* pieces of paper...huh.

(I have just run into enough serious problems by my own ignorance of 'how things work' to keep me from thinking that others should DO WHAT I DID to get where I am!

Please, good heavens, hope nobody follows the meandering path I took!

......

I am also reminded of a conversation I heard in an IT office a few years back where one woman, in her 40's, no kids, recently married, was congratulating herself for paying for her new car with cash, and another like minded individual, in his late 50's was agreeing with that...she said, 'we're a dying breed!'.

My snarky thoughts on this exchange will remain untyped.

The fact is that the sentiment "Nice work if you can get it" was famously used-- and ironically intended-- in a popular song penned by the Gershwins in... 1937. Even then, it was hardly a revolutionary idea, since it was the basis of a kind of tongue-in-cheek jab and a translation into interpersonal domains.

"Let them eat cake" and all that.

So yeah, I think this is not really a new phenomenon.

I used to have to bite my tongue REALLY hard when some of my colleagues would bemoan the 'talented' students who just couldn't seem to pull it together enough to 'take full advantage' of all of those fantastic opportunities in front of them...

Made me mad as anything, though, that such students (many first-gen college students or those from low SES homes) were judged as "unmotivated" relative to more privileged peers.

In theory the places that hire on paper, privilege, and approved hair gel are not the places that oddball talented people want to be anyhow. There is just a disturbing bi-directional signal to noise ratio issue.

As much as anything else, I was referring as much to the stratospheric cost of a college education combined with employers wanting a college degree for menial positions.

UC costs roughly $30,000 a year unless you live within commuting distance and you can live at home. Tuition is $13,900, and even if you live at home, the cost is still about $18,000. You can't pay for that with a part-time job. In 2003, tuition was $5,500. It used to be nearly free.

People are leaving a public university with debt in the mid-five-figure range. And many end up in menial jobs that don't even pay enough to cover the interest. So they watch their loans balloon. The loans aren't discharged by banktruptcy or death. There's a 25-year forgiveness program. But the forgiven debt is treated as income and you pay tax on it.

It's like there's no way out of debt and no way to avoid incurring unless you're very wealthy. This is wrong.

ETA: And because of overcrowding there is a high chance of having to go on the 5-year-plan or go to summer school, or both, which just add to your costs. The latter option also reduces your ability to earn money over the summer.

YES.

This is NOT what I was talking about!

rephrasing...the debate goes on:

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE92B06R20130312?irpc=932



To me, Mayer sounds like someone who assumes that without a B.S/M.S. from Stanford or equivalent school you will not be able to think. That idea in itself shouts 'not thinking' to me.

But as to school costs going through the roof, that is very very scary; I personally did the 'barely servicing' a loan thing, and balloon it did. Thankfully I have dealt with it, but it is just crippling a huge number of people financially unnecessarily.

In a vague attempt to dodge any semblance of political discourse, it was what I was talking about in relation to what Chris and HK were saying in relation to what you were mentioning in relation to the broader topic but then rerelated back to the original concern of the specific instance of one person considering entering the workforce through an atypical path with an atypical background drawn with the illustration that the entry points when approaching it from that perspective is to cut through the noise and excessive "requirements" and identify the like-minded who are actually looking to hire the very sort wanting to work for them.
i.e. bifurcation happens

Mayer is also the one who built a nursery in her office, at her own expense, so she could continue working long hours. I'd say she's already established her misplaced priorities in life.


Indeed. And the larger point is that, at double-digit annual increases and flat salaries, the model is not sustainable. We're already looking at college debt being the next economic bubble to burst.

Well, except that bankruptcy reforms have made it impossible for the bubble to burst, precisely...

which is even scarier, now that I think it over.

Yeah, we are pretty much thinking that borrowing for college is something that needs to be looked at with a SUPER-critical eye at this point.

Not that college isn't worth it, but maybe "college that I can't afford to pay for" is more of a question mark.

Then again, you're reading the words of a person who is pretty much convinced at this point that sticking up liquor stores is a reasonably sound retirement plan, given the other options available to my spouse and I, and our desire for adequate medical care in our dotage. So take that into account.

The "college debt bubble" and the "medical care bubble" are not true bubbles in the economic sense, which are generally driven by financial speculation in a specific product, tulips, dot-com stocks, houses, etc.

This is something different and I'm not sure what to call it.

The issue is general sovereign debt issuance and financial system stability.

The only financial instrument that I know of related to student loan debt is the "SLAB" product.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/11/loan-m11.html

I could make money off of the housing bubble.

I have no idea what to do with the student loan fiasco or healthcare fiasco because I can't use standard-issue contrarian market timing, which is annoying because after the market crashed, I haven't been able to generate solid returns.

2008 was my last good year.

There are still publicly-traded companies that are going to be hurt when default rates rise. To make money off the student loan bubble, short Sallie Mae:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/277941-shorting-student-loans-the-next-major-credit-bubble

You could call it negative equity in human capital.

You can think of a B.A. as being the product. The speculators are the people who believe that they will make money if they invest in getting the product.

But now, tens of thousands (or more?) of people with the product are unemployed or discovering that their B.A. is, well, underwater. They watch their loans balloon because they can't even pay all the monthly interest on them. But this particular bubble can't burst the way that the housing and dot.com bubbles burst, because student investment debt follows people (and often, their parents) in perpetuity. They can't walk away from loans the way you can walk away from your drowned mortgage. They can't declare bankruptcy, plant the tulips, and call it a day.

This is where I am also not really sure about what's going to happen.

I think the safety net is too big, not too small. Casey Mulligan, an economics professor and columnist for the New York Times, has written a book "The Redistribution Recession" asserting that incentives not to work from expanded means-tested programs such as unemployment benefits and food stamps have hampered the recovery. His book is discussed at http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2012/11/the-redistribution-recession.html .

Discussing the proper role of government in areas other than education is not on-topic for this forum. Your view that people who disagree with you and do not favor a larger, more activist government are thoughtless (they "chug down this particular flavor of Kool-Aid without really considering the damage it does") is disrespectful of people who disagree with you.

The Bennett Hypothesis states the increased government financial aid causes college costs to rise http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/research/studies/bennett-hypothesis-2 . Reducing government financial aid would cause college tuition to fall or rise more slowly, but it would also discourage middle and low income students who do not earn academic scholarships from going to college. A four-year residential college would become a place for very smart kids and kids whose parents could afford to pay the full cost. Some would describe this restriction of college attendance as elitist, but I think it is preferable to having the government subsidize through Pell grants and subsidized loans college attendance for people who do not have the scholastic aptitude for college.

So... to recap:

a) you kind of HAVE to go, at least in most fields, or you have ZERO chance of even getting through the door with any employer, (barring some other career paths like entrepreneurship or military service/training); but

b) having that bit of paper in and of itself doesn't mean that your odds are good, they are just "improved" over the alternative, and

c) the eye-watering cost has become a crushing factor in this decision.


Pretty much?

Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor-- NYT Mar 16

Related to this discussion.


Fascinating bias, there, in observations. MAYBE some of those low-income students are all too well aware of just what a gamble such an educational choice is to begin with-- and that, particularly if you come into those "career opportunities" without the network of family connections that high SES provide, you may STILL lack those opportunities that your equally capable (but better "prepared") peers will have.

I'm not sure that the calculus reflected by the graphic in this article is entirely WRONG, in other words.

The bias seems to be that OF COURSE high achieving students want to-- and should-- attend an elite college.

Well, for some families, kids are raised to believe that cost IS a factor. We're not even 'poor' by those standards and we've raised our daughter to look at this more critically.

The bottom line is that coming from her background, an Ivy diploma won't open the same doors as it will for someone from an East Coast boarding school upbringing. She doesn't have the network. She doesn't sail or golf (well, not really), she doesn't play tennis, etc. And this is with parents who have made a concerted EFFORT to get her some minimal exposure to those cultural facets because we know what it means to move in a circle that your early years never prepared you for. Well, I know, anyway. You feel gauche and awkward, and everyone around you knows it too.

I'm not sure why it is such a big deal if HG+ kids decide to go to {LocalPublicUni} rather than Harvard.

Even "not going to college" is a completely valid option for some subset of those high achieving students. Ever hear of multipotentiality? Why rack up 100K in educational debt when your first love is hands on cabinet-making anyway? Why can't a craftsperson be someone PG? I don't consider that a "waste" in the way that these authors clearly do.

I'm also not sure that I agree with their conclusion that elite colleges are "failing to reach out" to low SES students sufficiently well, or the numbers wouldn't say what they do.

Bottom line, elite schools are populated by majorities which are "elite" in the SES sense. There is a 'fit' issue here that I think is being ignored. I could have attended any one of five of those elite schools... (yes, really-- I had acceptances), but CHOSE not to do that for 'fit' reasons. I didn't want to be "that weird girl from the sticks," and a few campus visits taught me in very short order that there was a reason for high attrition among students like myself. Local Uni fit better, and was far less financially risky, to boot.

With respect to your first question, it may be because [Local Public Uni] has a greater chance of leading to complete irrelevance later in life, depending on your interests.

If you have an interests in being a craftsperson, then it's irrelevant.

So, I suppose it's good to know your area of interest.

I didn't have a meaningful choice, since, in hindsight, I wasn't going to fit either place, although I would have preferred some limited guidance with respect to dealing with people in college who were, for all intents and purposes, off their rockers.

I think that "multipotentialitiy" is generally not an issue. In life, you really only have enough time and energy to do one thing, so to speak.

HowlerKarma, have you computed the net price for your daughter at Harvard (say) vs. your state flagship using the net price calculators that each school is mandated to provde? Lots of parents and students do not take this first step.

This is the "don't have significant savings" rule.

If you have actually saved cash, say so that you can actually retire, you pay a lot.

And, if anyone was curious, apparently with future investment returns in the gutter, people are going to have to save about 34% of their gross salary every year to actually retire (granted this is state pensions, but still).

http://www.crestmontresearch.com/docs/Article-Looming-Crisis.pdf

Especially when skilled cabinetmaking is a six figure career!

If you haven't already read it, I recommend "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." You'll enjoy it.

The net price at many of the Ivies and other top schools has to do with gross income. For example, one Ivy has a chart on their website that shows if your gross income is under $120K, it is likely they will cover the entire tuition. If gross income is under $60K, you get tuition, room and board. Certain other top schools (schools that have been around a long time, big endowment) will cover tuition (or pay a hefty portion of it) if you make under $100K.

I know that it would be cheaper for my kids to attend one of those top schools than our state flagship. The tough part is getting admitted to one of those top schools - there are so many qualified applicants these days that the acceptance rate is in the single digits for those schools.

I think that a lot of people - low income or otherwise - look at the tuition, room and board and think that the school is out of reach. If they delved a little deeper - or if guidance counselors gave them some decent guidance - they might find the top schools to be more affordable than other options.

I'm pretty sure that assets are taken into account as well.

Ahhhh-- and delving a bit deeper still, most parents don't realize that "aid" at high priced institutions is often INCLUSIVE of some major borrowing on the part of the student/parent.

That's a perfectly valid means of "meeting need" in an institutional sense.

Not so much for students/families who are stuck borrowing 10-30K annually.

KWIM?

Take-home message (realizing that I've been part of academia myself, and that my DD and her friends are starting to be 'processed' by this particular machine)...

ask a LOT of questions about what is meant by "financial aid." Most of that aid is: a) less than what College Board SAYS they ought to be giving per a particular income level, b) not in the form of grants (which don't have to be repayed), and c) non-renewable if it is.

We have looked at several local private colleges for DD, one of them "highly selective."

Tuition rates are sticker-priced at 36K and 55K. "Need" in our case (and btw, we're below what NotSoGifted indicates as an income where tuition costs at that selective institution are theoretically "covered" completely)... is approximately as follows:

a) Local Public Uni 1: ~12K annually, but likely discounted to ~8K due to academic merit, and we would cover ALL of that cost.

b) Local Public Uni 2: ~14K annually, but likewise, ~9K with merit discount, again covered out of our pocket.

c) Local Private 1: ~35-38K annually, discounted to around 28K with merit-based renewable grants, our "need" at this school based upon a frankly outrageous EFC is ~14K, and they would have us meet that with.... LOANS.

d) Local Private 2: ~55K annually, no discounts (this is a selective school, so DD is a "strong, but not remarkable" applicant)... our "need" at this school is estimated to be around 30K annually. Not clear what grants are like at that level, but if recent matriculation among friends/acquaintances is anything to go by, we'd be borrowing about 20K a year for this institution.

So no, sorry... cost is far lower at the public institutions. By the way, BOTH of those private institutions list themselves with College Board and other calculators/aggregators as "meeting 100%" of student need in costs. They do. With loans. They also offer "merit based aid." Again, they DO. It's just that 15K in merit based aid isn't ENOUGH to offset the fact that the tuition is still more than double what the local flagship public universities have as a sticker price (which, again-- high-merit students DO NOT PAY).

That does bring up another good point, though, and that is-- check out the actual price at any institution. Don't rely on that sticker price, but that applies as much to public institutions as to private ones.

Yes, as documented in this report:

http://www.artsci.com/studentpoll/v10n1/index.aspx#aboutStudentPoll
A Majority of Students Look at a
College’s Sticker Price Without Taking
Financial Aid into Consideration

Personally and painfully, indeed. And they also don't mention that parental loans do not have a deferment (or didn't thirtyish years ago.) On that subject, I think it would be more enjoyable to just start at an affordable state school and never know what you are missing.

Yes, but some colleges have no-loan policies. A college's loan policy should be checked carefully when making application decisions. This is what Bostonian means when he says that some of the elite colleges can turn out to be less costly than a local public university.

I recommend checking each college's website for up-to-date information on its loan policies. It can't hurt to apply to these colleges. If they say no, you're in the same position you would have been in anyway, but if you get a yes, you might end up paying less.

Jonlaw: some colleges don't include your house in their aid calculations.

Unless, of course, "affordable state school" also turns out to be unaffordable. It's a relative term.

You can also go through some rough EFC calculators to estimate what FAFSA/College Board will say that your expected family contribution will be.

Many of our friends/associates have been VERY unpleasantly shocked to learn that they have EFC's into the five digits... up to 30% of your gross income is possible there, so it really pays to take a close look at what that EFC is.

Also recognize that each college may calculate EFC individually, and that value may be higher. (Or, in some cases, lower.)

I'm not talking house. I'm talking savings. It would deplete them quickly.

Even excluding tuition, room and board for the better part of a year can easily run $10,000. Parents spend thousands of dollars a year on their children while they live at home. If an EFC of $10K per year shocks middle class parents, I wonder why they have been so uninformed.

10-15K looks a lot less than affordable, though, when your household income is only 45-75K.

I agree that parents who have been writing checks for private schooling probably won't find that particularly shocking, no.

But it can come as a pretty significant shock to learn that someone ELSE thinks that you can afford to write a check for 20K annually when your income is 90K and you, personally, estimate that your "discretionary" income is more like 16K annually.


Useful link:

http://projectonstudentdebt.org/index.php

This contains reasonably up-to-date info. One problem is that colleges have a vested interest in pledging to offer to meet "100% of need" but the catch is how they determine "need."

Students/families often do have to beg or borrow in order to make up the difference between what they can ACTUALLY pay, and what the college says that they can.

It's not like those costs suddenly disappear when the kid goes away to college. Kids still need food, clothes, and medical services when they're in high school and college. Also, many parents might defer buying a laptop (use the family PC), a car, or a cell phone for their kids during high school, but these become necessary tools that can't be deferred any further come college.

So, yeah... the parents might be paying more than $10k a year to support their kids in high school, then they'll be adding another $10k for room and board in college, plus all the other expenses that crop up.


Probably because that's more than ten times as much as it took back when they attended college.

When I was a student (80s), tuition rose by more than the cost of inflation every year. And every year, the colleges claimed that "tuition does not cover the whole cost of your education," as though we were being subsidized.

And they make this same claim every year, while still increasing tuition by more than the cost of inflation (this may have slowed slightly in the last couple of years). Yeah, right. It really costs $60,000 for eight or nine months of classes at Yale or Harvard? I mean, REALLY? Or are we spending our money on buildings we don't necessarily need so that we can hire more faculty members who won't get NIH grants or tenure?

I went to an elite private college. I know how good my education was compared to what my peers at public colleges and universities got. No one cancelled a class because fewer than 20 students had enrolled (some classes were actually capped at 3 or 5 students). The biggest class I ever took had 50 students in it. There was never any stress about overcrowding and the possibility of waiting a year to take a class. I never took a multiple choice test. Ever. Everything I did was graded by a human, usually the professor who was teaching the class. And the standards were pretty high. Etc.

Yet even knowing what I do, and even though I happily okay, grouchily, pay for private schools for my kids, I'm beginning to question if elite colleges are actually worth it. At the rate things are going, costs will be over a quarter of a million dollars for four years when my eldest is ready to go to college. Maybe way more. Who knows? And what about when my 8-year-old is ready for college?

So, I've been paying close attention --- and I'm disgusted.

But... but...
I have heard this from many people who went to elite/highly selective colleges.

Here's the thing, though-- all of that was also true for me-- and to an only slightly less true extent, for my DH. My general chemistry labs were taught by PROFESSORS, not grad students. There were fewer than 25 students in my O-chem class, and only two of us in the spring quarter of Biochem.

We did NOT attend private schools, nor particularly elite public ones, either, for that matter. I attended a small REGIONAL state university. I would happily send my DD there if she wanted to go. It was a GREAT education, and it was at a bargain basement price-- then, and even now, it's quite affordable.

Seriously. My tuition was ~1300 a year when I started, and the ONLY reason it took me five years to finish was that, frankly, I was dirt poor and had to work full time. When I finished, tuition rates had risen to a shocking 1800 a year. LOL. They are still under 10K, nearly three decades later.

So I do question what I'd have gotten at, say... Stanford. My classmates and I were accepted at VERY prestigious graduate/professional schools (Caltech, MIT, Johns Hopkins, etc), in spite of coming from a program that graduated just 3-8 majors annually. We've all done fairly well for ourselves, given the field and all. The program was/is solid, but more importantly, it was aimed at teaching UNDERGRADUATES.

I think that is actually the key, myself. It leads to all of the rest that Val mentions (which I agree are important benchmarks to look at in determining the overall quality of an undergraduate program).

I also knew (in graduate school) people who did come from an elite institution as undergraduates, and those who came directly from those programs that had PhD students... tended to be the ones that suffered from the problems Val hints at. They tended to be shy of 'hands-on' work, and not particularly independent either in or out of the lab. But it was both not-so-elite public schools and elite private ones.


I can see the value in a selective college which teaches only/mostly undergraduate students. I can. I'm just not convinced that it's worth the premium when it can be had at places that don't want BOTH arms and legs for the experience.

That's interesting. Maybe the undergraduate focus is key, or partially so. Or maybe we both just got lucky and picked good schools. I was pretty surprised at what would earn an A at the big public university up the road. It was B- or C level work at my college. Some of ther facilities were better, but they were also shared among students....

I moved to California in the mid 90s and was appalled at the stuff I heard from pretty much anyone who had been to a public college out here, including UC Berkeley. While fully acknowledging that other states may be different, here's what was common here:

• Couldn't get a class I needed for my major and so had to graduate in five years
• Couldn't get a class I needed for my major and so had to go to summer school and cut my summer earnings
• My class was cancelled due to enrollment of <20 students (this is the norm in community colleges now; I taught at one and it was always a threat hanging over your job in the next term)
• 100-500 students in most of my freshmen/sophomore level classes
• I took lots of multiple choice tests (again, this is the norm among the educator/reviewers I've met over the last several years, and they're from all over the US)

Now, I also know that there are some dreadful private colleges out there! So I'm not saying that private is just better. Definitely not.

ETA: This stuff all came from current college students or recent graduates. The situation is very rough today, as well (there's even a bill in the legislature that would allow credit for online classes if a student can't get into a class at his B&M college/university).

I'm still not sure precisely what I think of college.

For me, it was free (technically I made a profit my first year) and helped me avoid working meaningless jobs for five years, so that was a plus. I was doing *something* so people left me alone.

However, socially/emotionally, it was pretty much five solid years of despair, isolation, and often chaos, so that was a negative, and a source of recurrent nightmares in the present day.

Education wise, I didn't have any interest in the classes, particularly engineering, which was what I was being paid to do, so I can't tell if I learned much of anything and after a couple of years, I could have cared less.

The biggest thing I got from it was a Ticket to Law School, meaning that it allowed me to go to law school.

I like the fact that I'm employable because of college, but I hated the actual experience of college and would prefer to have those five years of my life back.