Are you buying your college education right?

If you choose the college option:

• Is it a specific education plan, for a specific job, and a known, verifiable career-track?
• Can you really count on a job upon graduation? Or, is it just a guess – an opinion?
• Is it a reasonable cost in
  • time,
  • money,
  • risk, and
  • opportunity

Or, are you earning a college degree for it’s noble value?

• Will this college experience make you better, for a lifetime?
• Will your status or station in life improve?
• Will you become attractive, more sensitive, more meaningful?
• Can you name those actual, valuable, enduring benefits?
• Is it a reasonable cost in
  • time,
  • money,
  • risk, and
  • opportunity

And, why pay those costs, at that particular chosen college? Does it really make a difference where and how you get your learning?

Example Extremis.

See this from a recent Wall Street Journal Q&A

Q: My husband and I earn over $270,000 together. Our modest mortgage will be paid off in about six years and we’re almost debt-free. We have more than $400,000 saved for retirement, which is not nearly enough. We’re in our mid-50s; my husband doesn’t want to retire ever, but I’d like to switch to lower-paying, more rewarding work soon and downsize to a modern apartment.

But tuition for our only child’s college is $53,000 a year. We’ve paid for one year, but need to borrow at least $25,000 a year to pay for the next three. Should we take out equity against our house, borrow through the PLUS loan program, or sell the house and rent?

ProfessorDad: Not having all of the financial detail, we assume tuition is only one part of the true cost of college.

Using the College Costs Calculator, the “real costs of college” – not only tuition, is probably $410,000 for the four years – it could be considerably more – if the student does not complete the degree program, in the required four years. Apparently, the “average” college BA or lightweight BS degree program is actually completed in 5 years. In this instance, that brings the bachelor’s degree tab, to at least $500,000.

Does that seem reasonable?

Think.

It’s in our best interests, to evaluate the reality of these expenses. View these extraordinary costs against the potential of unemployment of either or both parents, their value of personal debt-freedom, the real worth of a bachelor’s degree from a no-name college, and the graduate’s real potential for paying his way, once graduated.

The parents are already aware they have underfunded their retirement – the mother wants “to switch to lower-paying, more rewarding work soon and downsize to a modern apartment” which may help the couple’s savings effort – but, conflicts with the college costs over-burden.

Suggestion.

Downsize the kid, now – as soon as possible.

Folks, tell your son today:

“Son, there’s been a death in the family. Our wallet died last night. We’re awfully sorry to tell you like this – but, Uncle Wallet died empty.

We all have to adjust – along with this terrible economy, we are having to lop-off spending of all kinds. We have become born-again frugal savers.

Now, since you are an adult, and because we want the best for you, we have figured-out your part in this situation.

We want you to start acting on this list today, dear boy.”

1. withdraw from the high-cost, low value college,
2. live at home, with us, and
3. get job – any job to pay room & board, live frugal,
4. pay for your CLEP or DANTES testing units, through the third year of college, and
5. take the last year of college, online,
6. graduate with a job-career plan, then
7. live at home while saving every penny,
8. pay for your room & board, and
9. leave home once the career track has started, then annually
10. thank God for your parents, that have set you straight for self-discipline and maturity.

A reader asks about the price of a liberal arts education.

College bought right is 90% Less - No Debt!

Is a college degree really worth the price?

In my opinion, there are definitely low or negative returns, assuming that a single year at a private college is $50,000.

Does it really need to cost $50,000 per year to give someone a liberal arts education?

I don’t think so.

Also, colleges have strayed far from their original mission of providing a solid education in science, mathematics, literature, history and philosophy. Today, they list a large variety of interdisciplinary courses: these include questionable studies of the visual arts (video, movie and TV production, etc.)

It’s disturbing to see the construction of grand sports pavilions, stadiums, research facilities, high-value dormitories, etc. Wonder who pays for all of this excess? Mostly the student, with some help from the endowments.

So, yes, a liberal arts education is worth it, but you shouldn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for the college excursions into grandiosity.

The answer is no Bachelor of Arts or lightweight Bachelor of Science is worth more than $20,000 for the entire four years expenses. Depending on the College Costs Calculator, that’s a 90% discount – with a whole lot more value.

How is that possible?

Time Going Ever Fast

For all the 14 or 15 years that the average child spends, in a “learning environment,” can we assume the child would graduate from high school, at age 18, fully-capable, fully-enabled, “actualized” for employment, self-direction and self-management – in other words, ready to go? Nope, not a chance.

What’s The Point?

We all know this, I’m stating the obvious. Legally, our children graduate into the responsibilities of adult life, at 18 years. By law, they can sign contracts, join the military, marry, and seek any employment they wish. However, for most of these graduates, these are not transactions which they have any competency, at all. They likely will fail badly, should they try.

And, why should they try?

• They haven’t a clue, what’s next on the agenda.
• They certainly don’t have a plan – for the goals they tout, are fed to them by pushy, naïve counselors, dubious government ‘studies’ and claims, and magnetic, attractive, college propaganda.
• And this, in a tough economy – these matters are likely to get a whole lot worse, for a lot longer than we can imagine – these kids won’t have a whole lot of traction to get started in life.

Choose Sensibly

Supposedly, college is a “growing experience” – actually, it’s just another spendy buffer from reality. Should they fall into the college trap, they’ll not have to face the real world til 22 years old – or longer, if possibly, “grad school” can be negotiated. In the meanwhile, they’re spending their parents diminishing savings, taking on un-payable “student debts,” and still not knowing what will to happen to them, after college graduation.

This is my point: everyone involved playing along as if nothing is wrong – “kicking the can” as long as they might escape.

Well stop it now! Please! This is dishonesty and fantasy.

Dishonesty as a way of life, is not only a waste of time, money, and resources, it’s training for a life of meaninglessness and futility. Why do stupid, when sensible is easier, with a lot less difficulty?

Blame

Truthfully, the blame for this nasty situation lies squarely on the

• parents – who are the first line of defense for their own children, the
• state, and federal governments – that institute and sanction bad behavior, and the
• “education system” most of all.

We need to buck-up here, folks. Yes, I know it hurts but, we need to take corrective action right now.

Parents need to face the reality of their responsibilities, and work with their immature children. They need to do “coach parenting” – help raise their children into adulthood.

Action Step

Don’t send me your anger. Instead, re-direct your energies into a positive drive of meaningful personal change.

Take action now!

Commit to fulfilling your ambitions. Make your child’s dream of lifetime success, by channeling and focusing on planning – specifically, life planning.

Take the time: start with thoughtful assessing, figure which behavior-modeling works best, personally use goal setting, strategies, and use exercises in incremental steps of achievement. All this is do-able, for you and your child, if you are really interested in turning your future for the better.

Suggestion

First Step: Join this site.

• Keep updated.
• Ask questions.
• Get solutions.
• Work one problem at a time.

Act now!

Seek Vocation

There’s something happening here. What it is an’t exactly clear.

Til now.

Plug Into The Dream

During the last sixty years, the American way of lifetime success has been delivered in an increasingly expensive, gift-wrapped puzzle, pushing histrionic behavior. It’s an up-side down, inverted, distorted process, that costs parents and students their lives time, their lifetime earnings, their credit, their self-worth, and their dreams of betterment. It is “the college promise.”

Though the “education system” mainlines college degrees, sometimes vocational education – and result, is the same heavy promise – higher education pays for anyone that tries – regardless the personal costs.

Hey! Graduate college – and you are some body. You’re credentialed, baby! Step out the door, and into success and admiration. You have made it!

Then, Reality.

However, now it is painfully clear to parents and students, that the way they buy college, is screwed-up. They also realize that the college path may not work at all, for most people. If the college track does make sense, for career and profession, then the way they buy college, really is wrong.

What is not clear to parents, is the “traditional” pathway of success for them, and for their children, is purposely laid with financial traps of lifetime debt, and academic traps of failure. Some parents notice that the colleges, the high school counselors, the independent consultants, the national publications, and all of government push “student loans.” Why do you suppose that is?

Ever hear this one about a car dealer?

After a round of hard bargaining with a customer, the dealer realizes he is about to lose profits. The customer will not “finance” the car purchase.

He will only pay cash.

The dealer cares less about the final purchase price – he wants the customer to sign the financing package – that’s where the profits are really made.

What To Do?

So, let’s begin at the beginning. This approach is a “problem solving exercise” – once worked, results in great confidence.

The exercise requires honesty, clarity, thought, and consideration. It also requires writing our organized thoughts. We are about to make a map, a chart, a schematic of our life past, our present, and our projection of our personal future. We’re talking about life planning.

Life planning is not an attempt to foresee the future, or predict exactly, what will happen when, to us. It is a documentation of the present and the past, with a meaningful projection of where we would like to go next.

Imagine a vacation.

You are going to travel extensively. Your trip will take at least a month. During your travels, you will be transported by every imaginable mode, known – jet, train, bus, ocean liner, car, horse carriage, camel, donkey, and walk.

You will stay in a wide range of accommodations on land and sea, and eat foods you would never have considered before – some of which are highly suspicious in origin, quality, and sanitation.

You will be served by the good, the bad, and the ugly. It seems that every one of them is wanting a handout, a tip, a bribe. You will have items stolen from you. You will be glad to leave with only your life!

And yet, in some of your encounters with the local people, you will find gracious and warm receptions from every social status – but they expect nothing at all, from you. You are made to feel like a long lost brother, uncle, or child. They show you every consideration, listen to your every word, laugh with your stories and your attempts at jokes. They are deeply moved by your losses. They are happy, your shadow graced their doorway. Yet, you must move on. You are very unhappy to part from them – you wish you could stay there, forever.

In the end, you will arrive at your destination. The place is like nothing you could imagine from the travel brochure, and online pictures and videos.

This is a perfect location – you claim this for your new residence.

From this place, you decide the most important thing you can do, during your life is right here.  It is the one thing, which you would be most difficult to replace, by anyone else. You can do the greatest service.

Interpretation: the vacation destination is your vocation. Your adventures and excursions, are the career, the profession, the jobs you really wanted, and that you fell into, along the way. What you learned and accumulated, during the travels, is your education and your learning.

Assess.

This is one way, how we can start our written life plan. (Assess phase.)

• Imagine.
• Then write it down, in clumps and single words, phrases and paragraphs – in reflective moments, during a quiet lull at work.
• Set it aside for a few days – let it rest a bit.
• Take it up, once again for organization. Circle ideas. Add connecting lines. Add numbers of importance, or sequence.
• Re-write your notes in a rough outline. Make additional comments, revise, re-order.

Sequence Of Action.

From a young age, the general sequence for one’s life plan, is this:

1. vocation selection – the most meaningful trip of your lifetime, then
2. profession choice – what will you be known for, when available for hire, then
3. career track – what is your history, then
4. job entry, and employment track – what income producing occupations will you work, then
5. education, internship or apprenticeship – what and how do you learn, acquire skills and usable knowledge.

Note: If you are well along in career and profession, and have not figured your vocation or calling in life – consider how rapidly you can advance by going through the Sequence in a modified fashion. It’s quite powerful.

Focus On Vocation.

A vocation is that principle occupation for which one has a lifetime dedication. It is the one thing, which you would be most difficult to replace, by anyone else. The one occupation by which you can do the greatest service.

Sometimes one’s employment is directly related to one’s vocation: tree assessments (job), employed as a forest ranger (career) complementing a profound lifetime study of tree diseases (vocation.)

Sometimes, one’s career and profession are very wide of one’s vocation. Charles Ives and Alexander Borodin are two examples – both are known as famous composers of serious music, today. Who could have imagined that one was a highly successful insurance salesman, and the other an equally successful chemist.

Our problem is selecting that vocation that equally works with our aptitude, skills, and ambition – as early in life as possible. Once identified, our course of life decisions, is relatively easy.

Thereafter, we can chase the complementary employment, identify those employment options, assess the means to get into the career and job track, and then develop and act on specific goals in our own written life plan.

Traditionally, this “…assumes a linear path between your major and your career. And the lure of the linear path is powerful. It’s embedded in our thinking. From the time you played with fire trucks and people asked you if you wanted to be a firefighter, linear paths to careers have been assumed to be the natural state of things. So it seems only logical that you would pursue a major that would become your ultimate career.”

“Where is my linear path?”

You Majored in What?: Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career pages 2-3

Suggestion.

Have the desire to change for the best, by using your present and past, re-shaped for the future. Start your life plan now – here.

The College Con Is Still On

from The College Tuition Squeeze by Chris Gacek on April 12, 2010:

“…(In the article,) “Why Top Colleges Squeeze You Dry,” … the author, Andrew Manshel, notes that “[t]op private institutions charge what they do because a substantial number of people will pay it.”  Prestige schools have convinced parents that they hold the key to success for their children.” (ed: read Tuition Travesty)

tuition dollar debt

“Manshel does a terrific job of explaining how these schools set tuition levels to maximize the percentage of students who accept college admission offers.  He notes that schools do offer tuition reductions for some, “[b]ut this pricing system enables elite institutions to charge a premium to those families able to afford it.”   Marshall describes how these long-term tuition hikes above inflation have led to very high salaries for senior faculty and administrators.  Additionally, college building programs have become an educational “arms race” that waste enormous amounts of resources.

“This tuition game might be tolerable if it weren’t landing recent graduates in mountains of debt (ed).  Manshel doesn’t make enough of this problem, for he seems to think that financial aid covers the costs except for those at the top of the demand curve.  From what I hear it doesn’t come close for most.  That said Manshel does exhort his colleagues with this closing:

[College] leaders need to take a sharp pencil to their cost structures; raise their endowment payouts; end annual cost increases in excess of inflation; and rededicate themselves to providing opportunity to the talented regardless of means, enhancing social mobility and fostering the production of knowledge.

“Amen to that.  Costs are out of control.  The time has come to re-think the entire education model when we have low cost alternatives being made available through web-education, for example.  If the Teaching Company can give me a 24 lecture course on the American Revolution on DVD (video) for $69.95 with a top-ranked professor (Allen Guelzo, Gettysburg College) … something is out of whack.”

“However, I would add that parents need to reconsider the value of the educations their children will receive.  Do you really need to pay Ivy League tuition and costs (approx. $45,000 per year) to study English anymore?  The debt loads of the young – not including those being created by government entitlement programs – are massive.  This debt will impair the ability of a generation to attend graduate schools, buy housing, and form families.  It’s time for a paradigm shift.  Washington, are you listening?”

ProfessorDad: Thank you, Chris Gacek for your observations. These need to be said over and again at all levels of education.

There are many faults to the college education paradigm but, these are so much a part of our culture that it may be another generation until corrections have measurable effect.

One future significant paradigm change is the complete upheaval of traditional financial supports, mostly in Federal dollars. Another, is the current issue of the real value and worth of a college degree.

In the article above, “do you really need to pay Ivy League tuition and costs” – I would add: do your children really get value from college? Would it be best that they design a career built on non-college knowledge and skills? (see Life Planning.)

Frankly, the recommendation to make ‘pencil sharpening’ corrections, is not an option. The college cartel is coming apart at the seams – the long-term trend shows a ‘bankruptcy head and shoulders pattern.’

The massive loss of the real economy, the rise of onerous taxes and regulations, the incomprehensible volume of un-payable debt will force significant changes in society for at least a generation. (One issue: marital relations have taken an extreme turn, in the recent two years – females have an increasing role as the family breadwinner.)

By the way, one low-cost college solution can be found at JumpstartCollege.

Working for Free: The Boom in Adult Interns

Monday, Apr. 12, 2010  By Eve Tahmincioglu

…Unpaid internships have long been a mainstay for students who get academic credit in lieu of a paycheck. But in the Great Recession, with the unemployment rate hovering near 10%, job-search sites like CareerBuilder and Monster.com are reporting increases in the number of postings for internships. And more and more college graduates and even middle-aged professionals are willing to work for free in hopes that it will help them land a paying gig.

…Companies are often eager for the extra set of hands. Michael Schmidt, an employment attorney in New York City, has seen an uptick in recent months in private employers calling him to find out if they can bring in unpaid interns as a way to cut costs.

…”It can be very tempting if you’re laying off employees to bring in free help and call it an internship,”…

Read the complete article.

ProfessorDad: “internships that offer no real training are exploitative — and illegal” – if done correctly. The Intern should expect no rights whatever from ignorant or dishonest employers.

Why not offer an “understanding” in writing to the employer listing your expected responsibilities with learning experiences in detail. That’s “in detail.”

Go here for the download.