Via Wintry Knight, some very good advice from Lindsay about tertiary education.
If you want to go to college and get a good value for your money, you have to do these things. None of them are optional.
1) Study a subject that will get you a job. A majority of majors in the university will leave you unemployed and deep in debt too. Study STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), not humanities, English, or social science. The latter fields are simply not worth the money to study at a university because they don’t yield good job prospects. Unless you are independently wealthy and have nothing better to do with your money, you’re better off to just study these things in your spare time by checking out books at your local library. Paying a college to teach them to you is not a good use of money.
2) Only go to college if you have reason to believe you are good enough at academics to finish your degree with a decent GPA. Unfortunately, many colleges are all too willing to accept unqualified applicants who can’t do the work and will fail. If you don’t finish the degree, you’ve wasted your time and money.
3) Make studying a priority during your college years. College is far too expensive to waste your time partying and acting like an adolescent. If you’re going to pay for a college education, use it wisely and actually educate yourself. Make getting good grades, gaining knowledge, and making connections who will give you a good recommendation a priority.
4) Avoid student loans as much as possible. Instead, work as much as you can and apply for scholarships and grants. Go to a cheaper school, if necessary, or sit out a semester and work full time to earn the money. And if you do take out student loans, at least work part time so that you aren’t putting all your current living expenses into loans in addition to tuition.
5) Remember that the proper amount of student loans is zero and any non-zero amount must be justified by careful study and number-crunching to make sure it is worth it. Your future is at stake. In my experience, the only time student loans are an acceptable investment is when you’re going into a high paying field (think doctor, lawyer, or engineer), have very high graduation and employment potential (good grades and some work experience), and your realistic (not idealistic) future income will be sufficient to pay for your total student loans in less than 10 years while also allowing you to cover all your living expenses. You have to crunch the numbers and make sure the investment, including the interest you will pay, is worth it in better job prospects and pay than you could achieve without the degree. You can’t rely on the system to check this for you. They are all too happy to mortgage your future for a degree you can’t afford and that won’t get you a job.
I see the casualties of thoughtless career counselling in High School. Encouraging people just to go to university: in NZ we have (no, I am not joking) interest free student loans. Which Son one has taken, banked, and by getting me to pay for most things, pocketing the interest on. But… number 2. If you cannot handle the course, don’t go. Number 3. I have seen too many kids start partying and using the various substances available… at work. I don’t want to see people’s lives ruined: but the party atmosphere exists at every university, and this is a trap.
The Knight comments further.
I mentor a lot of young Christian men and women about their educations and careers. Of all the other young Christians I mentor, everyone is in a STEM program, except for these two girls in California who just started working on. One got a job on Monday night, and the other one (who is shy) is investigating getting a promotion at her current job, as well as adjusting the courses she is taking now. Parents really need to be on top of the education and career situation of their children. And older Christians like me, well we need to be taking an interest in young Christians… making sure they study apologetics, apply themselves in school, study for jobs that pay – either in vocational training or in a STEM college program. Something where they can find a job that pays. This is especially important for men, because they are tasked with the role of primary provider.
By the way, college is not for everyone. Previously, I blogged about the specialty welder who has struck it rich. There are many advantages to being in a field like that where you get to work as much or as little as you want, instead of working 40 hours a week regardless of money requirements. If you don’t like welding, here’s a list of blue-collar jobs that pay well.
My advice?
- Do not do an US Degree. Their quality is too low, you have too much exposure to the humanities (which are now beyond redemption, and they cost too much. Most courses in NZ are under 20 000 US a year. Go to the Commonwealth, and I do not mean Canada. Get your degree from Australia, NZ (You won’t have a hope of getting into an Indian University) or Singapore. From a top 500 university only.
- Do it in minimum time. Take summer school: don’t party. If you are overseas, you won’t be able to work
- Learn another language. Informally. If you are an academic…
- If you don’t know what to do, a round the world ticket and spending time in another country is well under ten thousand, if you use hostels and backpackers (and you should: leave the hotels to old farts with broken bodies like me). Take a year off, do that, and then get an apprenticeship. Or start a business. Or just work.
- The humanities? A good reading list for your cellphone or e reader: discussions online, and your hobbies. You don’t earn money from these: it is cheaper to buy tutorials once a fortnight or music lessons once a week
Prestige signalling, like virtue signalling, is a luxury for those with sufficient trust income to never work. Which is not many of us. The rest of us need to starve the beast, and keep away from the courses that will poison our Souls.
College is a terribly expensive place to be with a very detailed plan. That’s really the problem for most people.
And you can get a degree in Humanities, you just better be willing to have it as a double Major. (Which is pretty easy to pull off if you bring in a lot of credits from your Secondary Education time.) Granted, my body failed its saving throw during college, but the plan otherwise goes well.