1.5 Trillion!

[Dill]

(03-14-2020, 04:16 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I guess that would be more of my opinion, than anything.  I'll use myself as the "good example of a bad example".  Back when I was in HS (class of '87), the guidance counselors just hammered us with the idea that we MUST have a 4 year degree, in order to be competitive in society.  Not sure if it was the same everywhere else, but they made it seem like settling for anything less than a 4 year degree was selling yourself short, and that two year and trade school programs were setting oneself up for a life of being a peon.

So, after drifting from crappy job to crappy job for a couple of years after HS, I eventually decided that college must be the way to go.  I really wasn't interested in it, but discovered that it was a great place to have a blast and avoid responsibility for a few years.  Eventually I graduated with a pretty much worthless degree in Mass Communications and a job in radio that wouldn't even afford me to fund my own place to live.  I eventually ditched the job in radio for a trade that I worked for many years.  Thanks to the Student Loan programs, I'm still paying for that degree, today.  Even though I went back to school during the recession to learn a new skill, and paid cash at a Community College.  I now have a salaried position with an Engineering firm.

Had anyone really looked at my aptitudes back in HS, they could have efficiently directed me to a more effective path than pursuing a 4 year degree.  I call it irresponsible on my part, as I should have realized that my heart wasn't into the 4 year college degree and changed my own path back them.  However, the lure of guaranteed student loans to provide for my fun existence in college was just irresistable.

But Sunset, surely you acquired some writing and communications skills that help in later life? Would you say your literacy level was unchanged by your years in college?  If you graduated, you must have had to read some books, write some papers, and the like, and so gained some valuable knowledge, even if you could not monetize it later.

I took out college loans back in the day when they were more for students' than banks' benefit, and state legislatures had not yet begun to defund public universities. So I managed to pay mine off--about $5,000--inside four years.  Best investment I ever made, for sure. I was never interested in making money or "being competitive" and ended up making more than my parents or siblings. (To be fair, my parents weren't much interested in money either.)

I had two sisters who wanted to be nurses. One went for two years, became an LPN and began earning right away, the other took out loans to study two more years and became an RN.  Over the next 35 years, she earned over a million dollars more than the one who became an LPN.  That's how it works out for a lot of people.  Overall, the college degree is much "value added" to lifetime earnings.

A side note: College education should raise students' understanding of the world around them, its past history and current global economy; neither students nor the rest of us should view it as just higher level job training.