Is College Worth it Anymore?

[Cdub100 3,824]

At my friend's NYE party, I talked with 2 of my friends. One is an Engineer with a master's degree. The other has a doctorate and is the dean of admissions at her small college. I only have a bachelor's degree, and I took an unconventional route to get one

They asked me what my teenage son was planning to do. I said I'm not sure, but probably utilize the (now "free") community college they offer in Michigan. And after that, I wouldn't mind if instead of using his 529 money and taking out loans to go to a 4 year college he instead bought a Jets Pizza franchise.

They thought he should absolutely get a bachelors with the lady saying he should get a degree in business that he could learn how to run the franchise better. 

I countered that college doesn't teach kids how to run a business. At best, you get 2-3 classes that are useful and the rest are garbage credits for the school to make more money. Everything you can learn in those 3 classes is free on the internet with even more/better information.

Besides he would be better served working at a Jets pizza while doing the free schooling and learning that way.

I believe AI is coming for every single job. Not only data scrubbing, but engineering coding etc...20-40 years down the road AI will be built into robots who can do everything humans can only 100x better. I'd rather my son be the business owner who brings in AI rather than the employee who is replaced by AI.

Ultimately it's his choice and I will help guide him. 

.Do you think $100k tuition and increasing 5%-9% every year is worth it anymore?

[Hawkeye21 2,378]

Of course it's worth it, just not for everyone.  It's very situational.

[TBayXXXVII 2,480]

3 minutes ago, Hawkeye21 said:

Of course it's worth it, just not for everyone.  It's very situational.

I think "worth it" is subjective.  Like you, I think it's necessary in certain fields and not in others.  But when it comes to being "worth it", I think that's debatable even for things that are necessary.  The costs for things like being a doctor, nurse, lawyer, accountant, etc, college is necessary.  With the internet though, as well as databases and what not, is the cost worth what you're getting?  Maybe, I'm just not so sure.  

[MLCKAA 540]

5 minutes ago, Cdub100 said:

At my friend's NYE party, I talked with 2 of my friends. One is an Engineer with a master's degree. The other has a doctorate and is the dean of admissions at her small college. I only have a bachelor's degree, and I took an unconventional route to get one

They asked me what my teenage son was planning to do. I said I'm not sure, but probably utilize the (now "free") community college they offer in Michigan. And after that, I wouldn't mind if instead of using his 529 money and taking out loans to go to a 4 year college he instead bought a Jets Pizza franchise.

They thought he should absolutely get a bachelors with the lady saying he should get a degree in business that he could learn how to run the franchise better. 

I countered that college doesn't teach kids how to run a business. At best, you get 2-3 classes that are useful and the rest are garbage credits for the school to make more money. Everything you can learn in those 3 classes is free on the internet with even more/better information.

Besides he would be better served working at a Jets pizza while doing the free schooling and learning that way.

I believe AI is coming for every single job. Not only data scrubbing, but engineering coding etc...20-40 years down the road AI will be built into robots who can do everything humans can only 100x better. I'd rather my son be the business owner who brings in AI rather than the employee who is replaced by AI.

Ultimately it's his choice and I will help guide him. 

.Do you think $100k tuition and increasing 5%-9% every year is worth it anymore?

@Cdub100 it really depends on what someone wants to do with his life.  Unfortunately, although understandably, most kids leaving HS don’t know what they want to do for the next 40-50 years.

I am a good example of success that can come without a degree.  I only finished my degree 2 weeks ago.  Without that degree I still had a 6 figure income, tuition for 2 kids saved up years ago, a half million dollar house, BMW in the garage, an outrageous net worth…

BUT, I’d also be quick to tell you that I worked my tail off to move up in my industry AND had some nice luck along the way.

 I would also admit that I don’t know if I could have gotten my foot in the door without having the college background.  I did an internship which led to the contacts that led to my first real job.

It also helped that my mom (single parent) had a hella admirable work ethic.

[Hawkeye21 2,378]

3 minutes ago, TBayXXXVII said:

I think "worth it" is subjective.  Like you, I think it's necessary in certain fields and not in others.  But when it comes to being "worth it", I think that's debatable even for things that are necessary.  The costs for things like being a doctor, nurse, lawyer, accountant, etc, college is necessary.  With the internet though, as well as databases and what not, is the cost worth what you're getting?  Maybe, I'm just not so sure.  

Going to college doesn't have to be that expensive though.  There are less expensive colleges and there are plenty of scholarship opportunities.

Just going to college because you don't know what to do is no longer worth it though.  I went to a community college because I didn't know what I wanted to do but now I'm not even sure that's worth it.

[Bier Meister 1,655]

i think there is value in attaining degrees, however, current costs are outweighing rate of return.  they are not proportionate to salaries upon graduation. 

[thegeneral 2,875]

Less so than it used to be perhaps. But it’s what you make of it. 

[BufordT 425]

“You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

 

[TBayXXXVII 2,480]

4 minutes ago, Hawkeye21 said:

Going to college doesn't have to be that expensive though.  There are less expensive colleges and there are plenty of scholarship opportunities.

Just going to college because you don't know what to do is no longer worth it though.  I went to a community college because I didn't know what I wanted to do but now I'm not even sure that's worth it.

Agreed, I think that's what @Cdub100's point is.  That's why I believe he asked if it's "worth it".  An example would be a cousin of mine.

He went online and learned how to do a grading plan for his property.  He paid an engineer $500 to sign off on it.  He later bought a large property and learned out to survey it and subdivided it into 8 lots and sold the lots off one-by-one.  He didn't need anything, just a surveyor and civil engineer to sign off on the plans.  It cost him $4k to make $320k.  Why go to school for 4 or 5 years and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a civil engineer when you can learn to do the bulk of the work by reading stuff online?  With AI, as he stated in the OP, it'll be even easier in the future.  Even for many of the high end professional jobs, the value of the degree won't be as high as it is now... yet, I'm willing to bet that the cost of the education/degree will increase.

I think too many people convince kids they need to go to college to get a degree instead of telling them to go to a trade school, community college, or the military.  All are more financially more responsible than jumping to a 4-year degree program.

[Hawkeye21 2,378]

5 minutes ago, TBayXXXVII said:

Agreed, I think that's what @Cdub100's point is.  That's why I believe he asked if it's "worth it".  An example would be a cousin of mine.

He went online and learned how to do a grading plan for his property.  He paid an engineer $500 to sign off on it.  He later bought a large property and learned out to survey it and subdivided it into 8 lots and sold the lots off one-by-one.  He didn't need anything, just a surveyor and civil engineer to sign off on the plans.  It cost him $4k to make $320k.  Why go to school for 4 or 5 years and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a civil engineer when you can learn to do the bulk of the work by reading stuff online?  With AI, as he stated in the OP, it'll be even easier in the future.  Even for many of the high end professional jobs, the value of the degree won't be as high as it is now... yet, I'm willing to bet that the cost of the education/degree will increase.

I think too many people convince kids they need to go to college to get a degree instead of telling them to go to a trade school, community college, or the military.  All are more financially more responsible than jumping to a 4-year degree program.

It all depends on the career you're looking to get into.  There are still some companies that want you to have a college degree in order to get hired.

I tell my kids that they don't have to go to college.  Nothing beats having actual life experience in the field you want to work in.

I still think college can offer a lot of other experiences that can lead to future opportunities.  Many people move to go to college but most likely wouldn't if they worked instead.  You can make a lot of new friends in college and sometimes it's who you know, not what you know.

Kids need to know that there are plenty of options and they should look into them all.  Weigh the benefits and disadvantages.

[The Real timschochet 6,378]

47 minutes ago, Cdub100 said:

At my friend's NYE party, I talked with 2 of my friends. One is an Engineer with a master's degree. The other has a doctorate and is the dean of admissions at her small college. I only have a bachelor's degree, and I took an unconventional route to get one

They asked me what my teenage son was planning to do. I said I'm not sure, but probably utilize the (now "free") community college they offer in Michigan. And after that, I wouldn't mind if instead of using his 529 money and taking out loans to go to a 4 year college he instead bought a Jets Pizza franchise.

They thought he should absolutely get a bachelors with the lady saying he should get a degree in business that he could learn how to run the franchise better. 

I countered that college doesn't teach kids how to run a business. At best, you get 2-3 classes that are useful and the rest are garbage credits for the school to make more money. Everything you can learn in those 3 classes is free on the internet with even more/better information.

Besides he would be better served working at a Jets pizza while doing the free schooling and learning that way.

I believe AI is coming for every single job. Not only data scrubbing, but engineering coding etc...20-40 years down the road AI will be built into robots who can do everything humans can only 100x better. I'd rather my son be the business owner who brings in AI rather than the employee who is replaced by AI.

Ultimately it's his choice and I will help guide him. 

.Do you think $100k tuition and increasing 5%-9% every year is worth it anymore?

Are your friends anti-Semite idiots like you? If not are they aware of your Jew hating bigotry? 

This is important to know because I don’t believe college is worth it if you’re a white supramacist Holocaust denier. For the rest of us it might be. 

[TBayXXXVII 2,480]

9 minutes ago, Hawkeye21 said:

It all depends on the career you're looking to get into.  There are still some companies that want you to have a college degree in order to get hired.

I tell my kids that they don't have to go to college.  Nothing beats having actual life experience in the field you want to work in.

I still think college can offer a lot of other experiences that can lead to future opportunities.  Many people move to go to college but most likely wouldn't if they worked instead.  You can make a lot of new friends in college and sometimes it's who you know, not what you know.

Kids need to know that there are plenty of options and they should look into them all.  Weigh the benefits and disadvantages.

Of course companies require it, it's because no one wants to get sued.  lol

[BunnysBastatrds 2,300]

 No. Not for eighty percent of our population. Maybe more. We pay on an average twenty plus grand a year. With mandatory housing and food costs. I was fifty grand in when she was at LSU.  Covid hit and all of her classes were online with ZERO contact with personal face to face professors. She hated it and was extremely disappointed and depressed. So I say no in some cases. 

[edjr 6,578]

1 hour ago, Hawkeye21 said:

Of course it's worth it, just not for everyone.  It's very situational.

Not at what it costs. 

[cmh6476 1,008]

My son is not like his dad.

First, he just had his wisdom teeth pulled today, and everyone knows my teef never lasted until I was 17 years old.

Second, he way's more disciplined than I ever imagined myself being.  He's in the top 1% of his HS graduating class of 400+, 32 (I think he said) on his ACT, and extremely active in extracurricular (state band honors, baseball, FBLA, student council, etc.) and has a job at a pizza shop where he works probably 15-20 hours per week.

My point in sharing that, is that he is setting his own course and I'm minimally involved.  He has applied to K-State, MU, KU, Wisconsin, Purdue and Florida.  I feel like it's between MU and KU and he's leaning MU because of in-state tuition.  He has a close friend from school at Florida, feels like he's close enough to one of his grandma's in Wisconsin (she lives near Lake Michigan) and for some reason he also picked Purdue.  He wants to go into engineering, and he thinks he's landed on Data Science Engineering.  KU doesn't offer that as a specialized degree, but MU does.  But I think if he just had to pick schools he would probably choose KU because I've raised him to be a fan as we've gone to games nearly every year.

He wants the college experience.  He wants to play in marching and pep bands and go on excursions and travel with a team.  He's also interested in study abroad.  I'm sort of encouraging him to not be so mindful of the cost, but that's easy for me to say.  I think he's hoping to have $10k saved up on his own for school and is calculating what his degree will eventually cost him.  I think he could also get some BS gov't money for school because his mom fills out the FASFA as a single mom and I don't think I have to be included for my kids, but for some reason I am with my step-daughter.  It's all jacked up and needs reform, with affordability and accountability built in somehow.

So for him I think it makes sense.  And when I talk to him about a business degree (because he's good with finance and numbers) he wants something more specialized to set himself apart.  However, if you're not sure what you want to specialize in, I think it is becoming less and less attractive to go to school just to go like I did back in the day and party and miss classes.

[cmh6476 1,008]

If I were my son, I might think about military if I were him.  Again, with my lackadaisical approach to life I never would have survived the environment.  But going to somewhere like officer school at Fort Leavenworth or applying to a military academy... maybe joining a military band for my son, is something I would think would be an ideal fit for him.  But I don't think that's what he's looking for, either.

[Hawkeye21 2,378]

3 hours ago, TBayXXXVII said:

Of course companies require it, it's because no one wants to get sued.  lol

I'm not following you.

[Hawkeye21 2,378]

3 hours ago, edjr said:

Not at what it costs. 

Not every college is crazy expensive.  There are also plenty of scholarships that people forget about or are too lazy to apply for.

[easilyscan 853]

4 hours ago, Cdub100 said:

At best, you get 2-3 classes that are useful and the rest are garbage credits for the school to make more money.

For real.

[TBayXXXVII 2,480]

8 minutes ago, Hawkeye21 said:

I'm not following you.

Companies hire people with degrees because the law requires certain accreditation.  Meaning, a random person can't sign off on engineering plans.  Only a person who graduated with a degree and has their PE is legally allowed to do so (I know that's the case in NJ... I'm assuming its all or at least most states as well).  If you owned an engineering firm and had some random employee who worked 25 years for you and knows just as much as an engineer and something went wrong, not only will your company get sued, you personally would get sued, and you might even go to jail.  If a certified engineered signed off on it, your insurance would pay off any debt and you go to work the next day.

[Horseman 2,350]

Solely as ROI I think there is recent evidence that it isn't.  Going into the trades gets you making good money quicker that gets invested sooner and a degree 4+ years later might not get you a big enough salary to catch up. Certainly not if you take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.  

That being said the experiences, not necessarily converting into ROI, are irreplaceable for me.  I assume you'd still get some of those life experiences still today.  

[avoiding injuries 1,501]

I spent $200k on my gender studies degree. Can’t find a job and the government keeps teasing me with promises of paying off my debt, but then backtracking. 
Definitely not worth it. 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 3,826]

5 minutes ago, avoiding injuries said:

I spent $200k on my gender studies degree. Can’t find a job and the government keeps teasing me with promises of paying off my debt, but then backtracking. 
Definitely not worth it. 

$200K?  How did you find one so cheap?  I spent 300K on my Gender Studies Interpretive Dance Degree w/a minor in Social Justice for Non-Binary Transexual Lesbians.  I was told this was the future!!! 

[Death 300]

Not if it's Yooper University, where a pulse is the only admission requirement and first-grade spelling is considered a weed-out class.

[jbycho 569]

11 minutes ago, avoiding injuries said:

I spent $200k on my gender studies degree. Can’t find a job and the government keeps teasing me with promises of paying off my debt, but then backtracking. 
Definitely not worth it. 

 

7 minutes ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

$200K?  How did you find one so cheap?  I spent 300K on my Gender Studies Interpretive Dance Degree w/a minor in Social Justice for Non-Binary Transexual Lesbians.  I was told this was the future!!! 

You both are turning me on. fftoday.com/personals. I'm a male liberal democrat seeking a male liberal democrat who hates Trump with reckless abandon. Meow. 

[Fnord 2,049]

16 hours ago, Horseman said:

Solely as ROI I think there is recent evidence that it isn't.  Going into the trades gets you making good money quicker that gets invested sooner and a degree 4+ years later might not get you a big enough salary to catch up. Certainly not if you take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.  

That being said the experiences, not necessarily converting into ROI, are irreplaceable for me.  I assume you'd still get some of those life experiences still today.  

Truth. The issue with the trades is typically the wear and tear it puts on your body. From my experience, if you're not interested in management, the trades are not a great long term career choice, though they are a great way to make decent money pretty quickly out of HS.

I work for a prestigious healthcare company that has always highly valued degrees. The last few years they have started backing off of the degree requirements, replacing them with experience. I.E., a position that used to require a Master's is now Master's degree preferred but can be obtained with a HS education and 10 years of relevant experience.