Would You Encourage You Child to Go to College?
With everything going on in colleges today (the progressive brainwashing, protests, etc.), high cost of education, and the fact that it isn't necessary for some careers, would you encourage your child to go to college?
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When I was growing up, I was told I had to go to college because it was the only way to get a good job.
I received a bachelor's degree in business with a concentration in technical communication. I also received $30,000 in student debt.
I have stated in the Gulch before that I believe my degree is worthless. Not only did I not learn much if anything during my college days, no one has ever asked to see proof of my degree.
I started my own business and taught myself (or learned from others like sdesapio) everything I know. College was definitely unnecessary and I wish that someone (a parent, grandparent, etc.) would have told me that.
If I had a child, I would ask them what they want to be. If they wanted to be an engineer, doctor, or some other profession that requires higher education that would be a different story. However, if they said "I don't know" or answered with a career that doesn't really require a college education I would encourage them not to go. Instead, I would help them find an internship, apprenticeship, job, or alternative learning opportunity. Ex. if you want to be a software developer there are all of these immersive bootcamps popping up that'll teach you the skill in 6 months or less and help you get a job.
- - - - -
When I was growing up, I was told I had to go to college because it was the only way to get a good job.
I received a bachelor's degree in business with a concentration in technical communication. I also received $30,000 in student debt.
I have stated in the Gulch before that I believe my degree is worthless. Not only did I not learn much if anything during my college days, no one has ever asked to see proof of my degree.
I started my own business and taught myself (or learned from others like sdesapio) everything I know. College was definitely unnecessary and I wish that someone (a parent, grandparent, etc.) would have told me that.
If I had a child, I would ask them what they want to be. If they wanted to be an engineer, doctor, or some other profession that requires higher education that would be a different story. However, if they said "I don't know" or answered with a career that doesn't really require a college education I would encourage them not to go. Instead, I would help them find an internship, apprenticeship, job, or alternative learning opportunity. Ex. if you want to be a software developer there are all of these immersive bootcamps popping up that'll teach you the skill in 6 months or less and help you get a job.
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I did go off and on for 35 years. I enjoy learning. I got to teach. I went back and learned more. I believe that you get out of it what you want, based pretty much on what you put into it.
Yes, I had the same Marxist and Post-Modernist professors that everyone complains about. I learned a lot from most of them, for what they had that I could benefit from. On the other hand, another one of them and I took each other to the Judiciary Office on a classroom complaint. That was part of the experience, also, and I still got an A-minus in her class.
As for the "brainwashing" after one class, walking down the stairwell, I heard two girls above me. The one said to the other in a nattering tone, "American sucks, America sucks, week after week it's the same stuff, America sucks." In other words, she was not buying what the instructor was selling.
The same sort of thing happened a year or so later in a graduate class in international economics. The professor was a committed Marxist. He knew another student and me to be "Republicans" (close enough), but he gave us our due. When the Bush-Obama Bailouts pumped $3 trillion into the money supply, he put up a graph of that and asked what will happen to prices. No one answered. He nodded first to Jim and then to me. "You know. Tell them." We did. But on the flip side, he delivered a great lecture on extractive industries, the multinationals that go in, dig out a landscape and leave it worse than they found it. The Gabon is a perfect example: the only paved road is the five miles from the palace to the airport. The ruling family is paid in cash by the oil companies. Literally: suitcases of it. For the paper on the chapter, about half the class wrote about the great things that multinationals do for little countries, like build roads. So, all that Marxist brainwashing was sort of down the drain...
I have had classes in astronomy and geology that were not practical for me, but which did give me a better understanding of the physical universe around and under me. Could I have learned that on my own? Perhaps. I just read In Suspect Terrain by John McPhee. But the thing with an instructor is that they know how to organize and present material. They correct your mistakes, and give you challenges.
Is it always that way? No. On my blog, I have many articles about numismatics. Numismatics provides the evidence in support or contradiction to economic theories. Murray Rothbard was a faker. Even von Mises and Hayek were ignorant of the "stuff" of commerce, and so they left their students, readers, and followers equally ignorant. No college teaches numismatics. It is also the largest unregulated money market in the world.
It is one reason why my daughter never finished more than a year of college. When she was 12, she started working coin shows as a page, and later worked in a coin store. It was obvious that everyone knew a lot. "Knowledge is king" is a by-word, along with "Buy the book before you buy the coin." But none of it was taught to any of them in college... though they all had educations and degrees of various kinds and sorts from business or engineering or whatever.