College in America Blog

I see this question a lot. The answer is a resounding, “NO!” That a bachelor’s degree of today is equivalent to a high school diploma of yesteryear is an overly simplistic and dangerous analogy. In the US one hundred years ago only ten percent graduated from high school. (Neither of my grandfathers finished high school. […]

Warning! Warning! The approach to planning for college I am going to describe here is not going to look anything at all like what your student’s high school guidance counselor is going to send home. Let me begin by sharing an anecdote with you: A few years ago my adult daughter had two boys about […]

I am sure you have heard one of your classmates assert, “A college diploma is the new high school diploma.” One hundred years ago only ten percent of the population graduated from high school. If you had a high school diploma, you stood out. You might get a job at the local bank, work diligently […]

Twenty years ago student loan debt wasn’t a serious problem. The “arithmetic” made sense. You could work your crummy minimum wage job in the summer and get another crummy minimum wage job for ten hours a week while you were at school. Maybe you could get a little scholarship money, and then you borrowed a […]

If you spend much time hanging out around the guidance counselor’s office, you are likely to see a poster that exclaims, “Invest in Yourself.” I can’t say I’ve ever heard a guidance counselor even utter the phrase, “Going to College is a Risky Business,” much less put up a poster, but your post-secondary education choice […]

The current generation of students seems just fine with the idea of spending five years to earn a college degree. (The average is now 5.1 years.) That fifth year: Increases your cost by 25%. Increases your opportunity cost since you aren’t collecting a paycheck. Increases your student loan debt—often disproportionally if the extra year comes […]

Often I get chided for being too premonitory about college planning. I’m told, “My parents [high school guidance counselors] aren’t all that worried as long as I can get accepted into a good school.” Maybe your parents went to college twenty-five years ago. Can things be that different today? Let’s roll back the calendar sixty […]

Going to college used to be the “no-brainer” path to middle-class, or better, financial success. However, in the last twenty years, this paradigm has self-destructed. Tuition has gone up 200%. The job market has undergone a dramatic transformation, i.e. there are nowhere near enough suitable jobs given the number of sheepskins being churned out by […]

In the US a half century ago any college degree would set you on the path to middle class, or better, prosperity. College today is a competition for a few good jobs: Half of all recent grads are under employed or unemployed. Twenty-five percent of all minimum wage jobs are held by college graduates. Fifty-one […]

A quarter century ago the late Dr. Stephen Covey, businessman, author, and educator, wrote his most famous work, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. These “habits” are just as powerful today as they were twenty-five years ago. In particular when I talk to graduating high school students about college, Habit #2 is foremost in […]