Who Scammed America's Youth?

Comment: My response to a young friend who said: "This is so true! Getting a career in the US is non-existent. A four-year college degree is barely worth it!"

Dear Class of ‘13: You’ve Been Scammed

Excerpt:

Class of 2013, No one else is going to tell you this, so I might as well.

You sit here today, $30,000 or $40,000 in debt, as the latest victims of what may well be the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history.

It is a conspiracy so big and powerful that Dan Brown won’t even touch it. It’s a conspiracy so insidious that you will rarely hear its name.

Move over, Illuminati. Stand down, Wall Street. Area 51? Pah. It’s nothing. The biggest conspiracy of all?

The College-Industrial Complex.

Consider this: You have just paid about three times as much for your degree as did someone graduating 30 years ago. That’s in constant dollars - in other words, after accounting for inflation. There is no evidence that you have received a degree three times as good. Some would wonder if you have received a degree even one times as good.

According to the College Board, in 1983 a typical private American university managed to provide a bachelor’s degree education to young people just like you for $11,000 a year in tuition and fees. That’s in 2012 dollars.

Instead, those of you at private colleges paid this year an average of $29,000.

And back then a public college charged just $2,200 a year in tuition and fees - in today’s dollars. You could get a full four-year degree for $8,800. Today that will get you one year’s tuition, or $8,700.

Notice, please, we are not even counting the cost of all the “extras,” like room and board. This is just the cost of the teaching. It is, as a result, no surprise that total student loans are now approaching $1 trillion. They have easily overtaken credit card debts and car loans.

My response:

• Why my wife and I didn't borrow $$ for college way back when? Because you couldn't borrow $$ for college. We probably would have been foolish enough to walk into that trap. But that trap wasn't set! (I know Ma and DoDad (Kathee's parents) or Alvah and Cleone (my folks) wouldn't have co-signed for us or steered us that way!
• Private college? Yeah sure. Kathee went to a 2 year community college (now a University). She lived at home with her parents and road a bike to college. And worked at various jobs like a bakery and a museum making minimum wage. See On the Value of Community College
• Christian colleges: They have skimped on accreditation, are poorly run (Pillsbury), and flaky (Northland). Plus they offer "majors" like "women's studies", "camping", et cetera. To young people who love the Lord - great! Love the Lord. But don't think the you have to satisfy your Pastor or Youth Director by attending the latest fad school. Want to serve the Lord in a ministry vocation? (It's commendable!). Get a BA or BS from a decent college and then get an M.A. or M.Div from seminary. 
• Can a young person still go to college and graduate debt free? Two of my own young adults did. It wasn't easy for either of them. One started working at 14 and saved and saved working as a coffee shop barista. All the way through college. Graduated debt free. With honors. Was offered a bonus (as I recollect of $ 5000) to be hired on with 3M. The other risked his life in the the USMC (served in Iraq and soon to serve with the MN National Guard in Afghanistan. GI bill paid for all tuition. Was that hard work? Yes ... finally graduated debt free from the U of Minnesota last year (Engineering)
• There are plenty of jobs available. But one must match the education and training to the job. Kids think that they have to get an education in an area where they have passion. I know many who have degrees in Art, and other such areas where there just aren't jobs. We know a young person who got a degree in history and wanted to work at the Wells Fargo Museum. Fact is ... the workers here get by just fine with a HS education!
• The perfect storm for failure: hard-headedness + averageness + an aversion to hard work and risk. I'm average. I mean completely average. But I was able to figure out how to get a half way decent education and graduate without debt (my parents and my wife's parents instilled in us an aversion to debt. I had HS friends whose parents filed for bankruptcy and that was considered a very shameful thing. My Dad's basic credo was "if you don't have it don't spend it". Frankly I violated that many times and sometimes overused debt. It was foolish! On risk: My risk-taking points: applying for a job to be on the road working for the phone company as a laborer (summer job). I was offered the job and even had accepted it ... but was offered a better job at a chemical plant and reneged (interestingly twice I was offered jobs from AT&T and twice I turned them down for better offers - once after college)
• Here's the great thing about youth! You are not too old to learn and recover from your mistakes. Unsatisfied with your job? Met with a career counselor or a mentor. Ask yourself these questions: What would I like to be doing? How much would I like to be making? Do I have an aptitude for that? Be realistic! What options are there to get from A (where you now are) to B where you would like to be. 
• For the Christian: It's not a shameful thing to have a career. Rather it's a shameful thing to lack ambition and gumption. I have more respect for the man working at the mundane job in industry but providing for himself, saving, being a productive member of society, active in his church and giving faithfully than for the dreamer who wants to "serve the Lord" and is dreaming about ministry glory. 
• Who scammed America's youth? Pogo answers above!

An unlimited open wallet for college?

In Applying to College, Is Cost a Factor?

Excerpt:

My husband, John, and I, however, are trying to decide whether to include a criterion that's a bit more concrete: "What will it cost?"

... And yet, John is adamant about whether cost should play a part in the college-selection process: We should not veto any of Jamie's choices, he says. Certainly not at this stage and probably not ever.

"She should not limit herself," he says. "Her primary focus needs to be on what she's interested in studying."

John's stance is all the more surprising because he intends to have us foot the entire bill for all four girls' education—including graduate school. He wants to make sure they get through college debt-free, and he's willing to tap into our retirement account if needed.

Comment: Glad all of this is behind us. 2 kids paid way through college. One of those going to MIT for MBA starting in August. 3rd kid (who is the 1st kid) is about to graduate finally with Bachelor's this Summer. The reality is (Econ 101) is that cost is a factor in any decision that involves finances!

• 1st graduate was 3rd child. Paid way through college as barista. Off to MIT in August
• 2nd graduate was 2nd child. Paid way through college working and GI Bill. Graduated last May from U of Minnesota

College isn't cheap

College Isn't Cheap (full image)
Comment: Worthwhile graphic ... click link for full graphic (I had to clip it to fit on the blog). Suggestions: Pick a regionally accredited school. Do post-secondary (not all states have this program) and or advanced placement. Consider a school close to home (or even live at home while in school!)

Go to Technical College

Comment: Source: XKCD

The "Bennett Effect" and why College Education costs have tripled

Why College Aid Makes College More Expensive Excerpt:

Recipients of federal Pell Grants have, by definition, limited means to pay for college, so they are likely to qualify for grants and price breaks given out by schools, too. But schools view a student's sources of federal aid before deciding how much to give on their own, rather than the other way around. The result is a crowding out effect, where some schools give less as the government gives more.

Lesley Turner, a PhD candidate at Columbia University, looked at data on aid from 1996 to 2008 and calculated that, on average, schools increased Pell Grant recipients' prices by $17 in response to every $100 of Pell Grant aid. More selective nonprofit schools' response was largest and these schools raised prices by $66 for every $100 of Pell Grant aid.

Aid from schools over the past decade has increased about half as fast as federal aid, according to the College Board.

Perhaps worse for students than a crowding out effect is the Bennett Effect, named for William Bennett, who 25 years ago as Secretary of Education wrote for the New York Times, "Increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions."

If subsidies puff up buying power and shift prices higher, as economics courses teach, could federal aid for college help create an affordability problem? After all, the federal government began spending more on college aid with the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the full funding of Pell Grants in 1975. Since 1979, tuition and fees have tripled after adjusting for inflation. That's much faster than the increase for real estate and teacher pay.

Comment: Image source: Unintended Consequences of Health Reform

On "college education makes for a 'well-rounded' person"

George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok on college education

Excerpt:

In Germany, far fewer kids go to college than in the United States. Instead, most German high school students opt for apprenticeships and on-the-job training. These students are given high-skill, technical training that motivates theory with practice, and the students are paid! Moreover, on-the-job training promotes acculturation into the adult world instead of walling off 16- to 18-year-olds in their own, sometimes dangerous, world.

By the way, when I make these arguments I am sometimes accused of not appreciating that college education makes for a "well-rounded" person. What a load of rot. Basically, these critics define well-rounded as someone who can quote Plato! Rather self-serving. Well-rounded should also mean being able to replace a light fixture, a challenge to many Platonists!

More seriously, take a look at students in Finland, Sweden, or Germany. In these countries, more than half the students enter apprenticeship programs instead of going to college, but these students are very well-educated and well-rounded.

Comment: More

Forty percent of students don't graduate within six years (and probably never will), many more graduate with degrees that won't help them much in the labor force, and even the ones that do graduate often do so with student debt that will follow them for decades.

Paying much .... being taught little

What's Your Kid Getting From College? Occupy Wall Street has a point about student debt—sort of.

Excerpt:

As for the "practical" majors, New York University's Richard Arum and the University of Virginia's Josipa Roksa tell us they might not be as useful as once thought. In a recent work called "Academically Adrift," these authors tracked the progress of more than 2,300 undergraduates at two dozen U.S. universities. They found that more than a third of seniors leave campus having shown no improvement in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, or written communications over four years. Worse, the majors and programs often thought most practical—education, business and communications—prove to be the least productive.

So yes, the student protesters with their iPads and iPhones may come across badly to other Americans. Yes too, even those who leave school thousands of dollars in debt will—on average—find their degrees a good investment, given the healthy lifetime earnings premium that a bachelor's degree still commands.

Still, when it comes to what our colleges and universities are charging them for their degrees, they have a point. Too many have paid much and been taught little. They've been ripped off—but not by the banks or the fat cats or any of the other stock villains so unwelcome these days in Zuccotti Park.

"If these students and grads understood the real issues with their college debt," says Ms. Neal, "they would change their focus from Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the Ivory Tower."

Comment: See The sad plight of Joe Therrien and his puppet degree

Engineering and Science majors: "It’s dry and hard to get through"

Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)

Excerpts:

Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.

...

The bulk of attrition comes in engineering and among pre-med majors, who typically leave STEM fields if their hopes for medical school fade. There is no doubt that the main majors are difficult and growing more complex. Some students still lack math preparation or aren’t willing to work hard enough.

Other deterrents are the tough freshman classes, typically followed by two years of fairly abstract courses leading to a senior research or design project. “It’s dry and hard to get through, so if you can create an oasis in there, it would be a good thing,” says Dr. Goldberg, who retired last year as an engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now an education consultant.

...

The latest research also suggests that there could be more subtle problems at work, like the proliferation of grade inflation in the humanities and social sciences, which provides another incentive for students to leave STEM majors. It is no surprise that grades are lower in math and science, where the answers are clear-cut and there are no bonus points for flair. Professors also say they are strict because science and engineering courses build on one another, and a student who fails to absorb the key lessons in one class will flounder in the next.

Comment: STEM mentioned above is science, technology, engineering and math. Image above is Don Herbert from Watch Mr. Wizard. On Engineering majors ... I know from the experience of my son who is now a Senior at the University of Minnesota. Balancing school, work, an internship at 3M, the Army National Guard and marriage is tough.

"Get a part-time job — that's what I did"

30,000 college students kicked out of food aid program in Michigan

Excerpt:

Michigan has removed about 30,000 college students from its food stamp program — close to double the initial estimate — saving about $75 million a year, says Human Services Director Maura Corrigan.

Federal rules don't allow most college students to collect food stamps, but Michigan had created its own rules that made nearly all students eligible, said Brian Rooney, Corrigan's deputy director. As a result, the number of Michigan college students on this form of welfare made the state a national leader. For example, Michigan had 10 times the number of students on food stamps as either Illinois or California, Rooney said.

Cutting off the students is part of what Corrigan says is an effort to change the culture of the state's welfare department and slash tens of millions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse.

"Maybe (students) could go get a part-time job — that's what I did," said Corrigan, a former justice of the Michigan Supreme Court who attended Detroit's Marygrove College and University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.

"We want to encourage people to be self-sufficient, not to be dependent on the government," she said in an interview with The Detroit News.

Comment: Quit sucking off the government!

Good thing he can play football ....

Brinkley uses lockout to earn degree

Excerpt:

Vikings middle linebacker Jasper Brinkley left the University of South Carolina one class short of earning his degree.

Brinkley wanted to return to school after his rookie season but the Vikings advanced to the NFC Championship game so that made it impossible. But with the NFL headed toward a lockout this offseason, Brinkley figured the time was right to return to school and get his degree.

"I wanted to take advantage of the extra time that I had," Brinkley said. "It was always something that I felt like was hanging over my head and I wanted to get it done. The lockout gave me the opportunity."

Brinkley accomplished his goal when he graduated last weekend with a degree in African-American Studies with a concentration in social work. Brinkley took part in the graduation ceremony held in South Carolina's basketball arena.

"It means a lot for the simple fact that when I left [school] I left with a goal to not only be able to live my dream of playing in the National Football League but at the same time be able to come back and finish up my degree," he said. "A lot of guys go to college and getting their degree is not their main objective, but it was one of mine. It was one of my goals that I was able to reach and hopefully I'll continue to reach the other goals that I have set."

Comment: Because I'm not exactly sure what the career prospects are for this major! (I wonder if there is a Caucasian -American Studies major?!)

D-I-Y majors: "Omigod, what is that? Like basket-weaving?"

Comment: Further reflection on my previous post

Can't Pick a College Major? Create One

Excerpts:

When Pete Merzbacher chose to major in "globalization studies" at UMass, Amherst, his parents were happy to see how excited he was about it, says his mother, Peg, of Norwell, Mass. But they also wondered how it would look on his resume. "I spent one night Googling 'globalization studies' " to try to learn what direction he might take, Ms. Merzbacher says. While she has faith in Pete, she was a little worried that "people will look at 'globalization studies' and say, 'Omigod, what is that? Like basket-weaving?' "

Fields of Study

A sampling of some students' D-I-Y majors

• Ethnobotany
  
• Magic
  
• Ethology (animal psychology and behavior)
  
• Music promotion
  
• Anthropology of mental health and illness
  
• Peace and conflict resolution
  
• Historical clothing
  
• Sociology of fashion
  
• Environmental racism
  
• Complex organizations and informational systems
  
• Neuroscience, human behavior and society
  
• Asian-American studies
  
• Bioethics in crosscultural perspectives
  

Comment: Anybody that wants to do research in the field of "Historical clothing" is welcome to visit my closet! Image. Some period clothing from The Kid (1921)

College: Graduate in 3 years

The Three-Year Solution: How the reinvention of higher education benefits parents, students, and schools.


Excerpt:

Hartwick college, a small liberal-arts school in upstate New York, makes this offer to well-prepared students: earn your undergraduate degree in three years (six semesters) instead of four, and save about $43,000—the amount of one year's tuition and fees. A number of innovative colleges are making the same offer to students anxious about saving time and money. The three-year degree could become the higher-education equivalent of the fuel-efficient car. And that's both an opportunity and a warning for the best higher-education system in the world.

Comment: A great idea.

I like this quote (as it could apply to any organization):

In The Reckoning, his chronicle of the American auto industry's troubles, the late David Halberstam wrote about George Romney, the square-jawed, upstart president of American Motors who saw the Big Three as a "shared monopoly … musclebound and mindless in the domestic market—increasingly locked into practices that their best people knew were destructive but unable to break out of so profitable a syndrome." Romney warned, "There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success."

Summer ... a wasted season (but on the other hand some students need to work to earn $ for tuition!)

But as I discovered myself during my four-year tenure as president of the University of Tennessee in the late 1980s, in some ways, many colleges and universities are stuck in the past. For instance, the idea of the fall-to-spring "school year" hasn't changed much since before the American Revolution, when we were a nation of farmers and students put their books away to work the soil during the summer. That long summer stretch no longer makes sense. Former George Washington University president Stephen J. Trachtenberg estimates that a typical college uses its facilities for academic purposes a little more than half the calendar year. "While college facilities sit idle, they continue to generate maintenance, energy, and debt-service expenses that contribute to the high cost of running a college," he has written.

Six years to graduate?

Meanwhile, tuition has soared, leaving graduating students with unprecedented loan debt. Strong campus presidents to manage these problems are becoming harder to find, and to keep. In fact, students now stay on campus almost as long as their presidents. The average tenure of a college president at a public research university is seven years. The average amount of time students now take to complete an undergraduate degree has stretched to six years and seven months as students interrupted by work, inconvenienced by unavailable classes, or lured by one more football season find it hard to graduate.

How Sarah Lukemire paid her way through college

College on the pay-as-you-go plan

Excerpt:

Here's her advice for getting a degree sans college loans:

Save money. Lots of it. Sarah figures she's a natural-born saver, but she also credits her father for instilling this important virtue. "When I was, like, 14, my dad was, like, 'You might want to start thinking about saving for college. It's expensive.'" She took his advice to heart and began to save at least 50 percent of her earnings.

Sound tough? "Put any and all spare money into an account and tell yourself that account's off limits," she said. Sarah would stop by the bank and make a deposit, even if she had just a few bucks in her pocket. "If it was out of my hands, it was kind of like 'out of sight, out of mind.'''

Using these strategies as a teen, she saved enough money to pay for her first two years of school.

Work. A lot. "I started working when I was probably, like, 13 and I was baby-sitting. I pretty much saved all of my money," she said. Most of her jobs paid above minimum wage and she never worked someplace where she liked to shop. "I had friends that were working at Abercrombie & Fitch because they got a discount on their clothes. Well, guess where their whole paychecks went?"

Also, she always worked at least 25 hours per week while in college. "I killed myself the first semester of college," she admits. It took a while for her to learn how much work she could handle on top of her college courses. "I obviously couldn't go out with my friends as much as I wanted to. You have to make sacrifices."

Be cheap and practical. She only drives cheap and reliable used cars and only buys clothes on sale. She remembers her dad telling her, "You can have the cute car and clothes and everything you want now and nobody is going to remember that in five years."

Instead of buying textbooks at the campus store, she'd copy down the ISBN number and head online to comparison shop, buying them at deep discounts. She also sold her textbooks when she was finished to recoup some of the cost.

Sarah also lived at home instead of in the dorms at the University of Northern Colorado. Her friends in the dorm would say, "It's so much fun, you're missing out on your whole college experience.'' But today, some of these friends are struggling to make student loan and car payments and can't even begin to think about buying a house.

Have a healthy fear of too much debt. "I did not want to get into trouble with money and have to worry about paying back all of those loans," Lukemire said. "I knew that as soon as I got out of college, I did not want to have the pressure" of paying down debt. When asked why she thinks so many of her peers have a different attitude about debt and savings, she replied: "I think it's the whole attitude of 'I'll worry about it later. ...' Or they've simply thought about saving too late. It's hard when you're 14 to save all of your money when you want to spend it on other things."

Take school seriously. Sarah had some classmates who didn't care if they flunked a class because their parents were paying. Others switched majors and paid for several extra courses. Then there are students who took out college loans without much thought about paying them back one day. There's been a belief in our society that any student loan debt is good debt. That's beginning to change.

Sarah doesn't want to give the impression that paying for school herself was a cinch. She admits that sometimes she was jealous of freewheeling students with more financial leeway. But today she has no regrets about paying for school on her own. "It definitely teaches you a lot about life in general when you actually have to worry about your finances" before you're out of college.

Comment: My daughter paid her way through college. She started working at 14.

Straight talk on college loans

Some Debt-Laden Graduates Wonder Why They Bothered With College


Comment: Good read. A lot to think about before borrowing heavily for college.

College: Tuition up 439% over 25 years.

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.

Excerpt:

... college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

Comment: 2 of my children are still in college. One is closing in on his Associates' degree (paying his own way while working), the other is working on a Bachelor's (Engineering). He is funding his by work, VA benefits, and tuition reimbursement. Both (along with my daughter) eschewed student loans.

Cram U

A Taste of Failure Fuels an Appetite for Success at South Korea’s Cram Schools

Excerpt:

Inside, a raucous crowd of 300 teenage boys and girls had returned from a two-night leave and were lining up to have their teachers search their bags.

The students here were forsaking all the pleasures of teenage life. No cellphones allowed, no fashion magazines, no television, no Internet. No dating, no concerts, no earrings, no manicures — no acting their age.

All these are mere distractions from an overriding goal. On this regimented campus, miles from the nearest public transportation, Min-ju and her classmates cram from 6:30 a.m. to past midnight, seven days a week, to clear the fearsome hurdle that can decide their future — the national college entrance examination.

“Min-ju, do your best! Fighting!” Mr. Chung shouted as his daughter disappeared into the building. Min-ju turned around and raised a clenched fist. “Fighting!” she shouted back.

South Koreans say their obsession to get their children into top-notch universities is nothing short of “a war.” Nowhere is that zeal better illustrated than in cram schools like Jongro Yongin Campus, located in a sparsely populated suburb of Yongin, 25 miles south of Seoul.

Most Jongro students are “jaesoo sang,” or “study-again students.” Having failed to get into the university of their choice, they are preparing relentlessly for next year’s entrance examination. Some try and try again, for three years running after graduating from high school.

The Jongro school pursues a strategy of isolation, cut off from competing temptations of any sort. Its curriculum is so tightly regulated and the distractions so few that students say they have no option but to study.

“Sending Min-ju here was not an ideal, but an inevitable choice,” said Mr. Chung, a 50-year-old accountant. “In our country, college entrance exams determine 70 to 80 percent of a person’s future. It’s a sad reality. But you have to acknowledge it; otherwise you hurt your children’s future.”

Admission to the right university can make or break an ambitious young South Korean. The university that students attend in their 20s can determine the jobs they get and the money they make in their 50s. The top-tier schools — Seoul National, Korea and Yonsei Universities, collectively known as SKY— may hardly register on global lists of the best in higher education. But here, their diplomas are a ticket of admission, an envied status symbol and a badge of pride for graduates and parents.

Comment: Interesting juxtaposition of this article with Is a B.A. a waste of time

Is a B.A. a waste of time?

For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

Excerpt:

Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants. The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough -- four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you're a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.

The merits of a CPA-like certification exam apply to any college major for which the BA is now used as a job qualification. To name just some of them: criminal justice, social work, public administration and the many separate majors under the headings of business, computer science and education. Such majors accounted for almost two-thirds of the bachelor's degrees conferred in 2005. For that matter, certification tests can be used for purely academic disciplines. Why not present graduate schools with certifications in microbiology or economics -- and who cares if the applicants passed the exam after studying in the local public library?

Certification tests need not undermine the incentives to get a traditional liberal-arts education. If professional and graduate schools want students who have acquired one, all they need do is require certification scores in the appropriate disciplines. Students facing such requirements are likely to get a much better liberal education than even our most elite schools require now.

Certification tests will not get rid of the problems associated with differences in intellectual ability: People with high intellectual ability will still have an edge. Graduates of prestigious colleges will still, on average, have higher certification scores than people who have taken online courses -- just because prestigious colleges attract intellectually talented applicants.

But that's irrelevant to the larger issue. Under a certification system, four years is not required, residence is not required, expensive tuitions are not required, and a degree is not required. Equal educational opportunity means, among other things, creating a society in which it's what you know that makes the difference. Substituting certifications for degrees would be a big step in that direction.

The incentives are right. Certification tests would provide all employers with valuable, trustworthy information about job applicants. They would benefit young people who cannot or do not want to attend a traditional four-year college. They would be welcomed by the growing post-secondary online educational industry, which cannot offer the halo effect of a BA from a traditional college, but can realistically promise their students good training for a certification test -- as good as they are likely to get at a traditional college, for a lot less money and in a lot less time.

Certification tests would disadvantage just one set of people: Students who have gotten into well-known traditional schools, but who are coasting through their years in college and would score poorly on a certification test. Disadvantaging them is an outcome devoutly to be wished.

Comment: Certification instead of a sheepskin! Young people forget that the purpose of an education is to get a job!

Get a job!

America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree

Excerpt:

Among my saddest moments as a career counselor is when I hear a story like this: "I wasn't a good student in high school, but I wanted to prove that I can get a college diploma. I'd be the first one in my family to do it. But it's been five years and $80,000, and I still have 45 credits to go."

I have a hard time telling such people the killer statistic: Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles. Perhaps worst of all, even those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that require a college education. So it's not surprising that when you hop into a cab or walk into a restaurant, you're likely to meet workers who spent years and their family's life savings on college, only to end up with a job they could have done as a high-school dropout.


Comment: The key ... do not borrow money to go to college. One of my kids suggested that I "cash out" my home equity to provide $$ for his college. I said "what does 'cash out' mean?". As you can probably guess, I did not take out a home equity loan to pay for his college. I'm actually pro-college. Kathee and I both have degrees: Kathee in Math from Florida State (1973), me Economics and Finance from the University of Cincinnati (1971).

Sad stories I've heard:

1. A woman who got a degree in culinary arts (borrowed money) and basically makes little more than mininum wage at a restaurant.
   
2. Ones (there's more than one) who have degrees in art, or sociology, or philosophy, or drama who cannot get a decent job.
   
3. One I know who got her degree in History and wanted to work for the (_my company's_____) History Museum. Only to find out that the "historians" are basically clerks.
   

Lessons:

1. Think about the job you will work after college before you go to college.
   
2. Consider the military (like the Navy or the Air Force) where one get get some real life training (and a degree) paid for by the government while one is serving his country.
   
3. Don't borrow!
   

HT: Bike Bubba