Why Do We Send Our Kids To College To Earn Degrees We Know Are Worthless?

Fifty years ago there weren’t any “worthless” degrees. For example, I graduated with a BA in Philosophy, answered a newspaper ad on a whim, and, lo and behold, was launched into a successful career in Information Technology. (I had never seen a computer.) College in America no longer works the way it used to: The […]

Why Do So Many Grads With Liberal Arts Degrees End Up Making Lattes

Colleges and universities are churning out 1,900,000 bachelor’s degrees every year. College grads are a-dime-a-dozen. Forty-three percent of those who graduate (around 800,000) end up in jobs that don’t require a college degree. This varies widely by major. Liberal Arts majors end up underemployed upon graduation fifty-four percent of the time. That’s not a good […]

What Your Parents Don’t Know About College

Making a success out of college has become really difficult. I was a first-gen student sixty years ago. I made every mistake in the book. However, the world was a lot simpler then, and I managed to stagger through it all. When I think about what it would be like to be a first-gen student […]

Another Way To THE TEN PERCENT

Only ten percent of the jobs in the US pay $30-$40 per hour. I don’t believe many parents start out with the question, “How can my little Johnny make $35/hour.” They just assume that sending their kid to college will put him on the road to financial prosperity. They couldn’t be more wrong. To get […]

I’m Helping My Daughter Prepare For College in 2019.

” Can you give me a heads up on the three most important things I should be thinking about?” This was a question I tackled on Quora recently. It got me to thinking. We have this “College Thing” all screwed up. It used to work pretty well. Not too long ago, a bachelor’s degree would […]

Mike Rowe, of “Dirty Jobs” fame, claims that thousands of jobs are available in the US, but nobody will take them. Doesn’t this mean that the rate of pay needs to be increased for these jobs?

I certainly understand the economic point you are making but I don’t believe that money is at the heart of the problem. My plumber makes $100,000. He can’t find apprentices. My local community college has dropped their plumbing certification—no interest. As a society we “crossed a bridge” some time ago. College has been established as […]

The Month of the Locust

August is here. Swarms of freshmen are descending on our college campuses—like locusts. There are three factors that will have a major impact on whether or not these young people will make a success of college: • You have to graduate. About sixty percent of these high school graduates who are matriculating will earn some […]

The Lesson I Learned From High School Graduation Season

Summer is flying by. College football starts in six weeks. It was just six weeks ago that the high school graduation season wrapped up. I attended graduations in three local, public high schools near my home. Now I don’t live in Lake Woebegon, where all the children are above average. I live in a middle-class […]

Just How “Hazardous” Are Those Student Loans?

When you take Econ 101, one of the first concepts taught is that of “moral hazard.” Here’s how Investopedia describes “moral hazard.” “Moral hazard is the risk that a party to a transaction has not entered into the contract in good faith, has provided misleading information about its assets, liabilities, credit capacity, or when one […]

College Is For Everyone. (Well, Maybe Not.)

There are segments of our society where college has become “a rite of passage,” a societal norm. I saw a two question survey for parents a few weeks ago: Q1 Do you think college is for everyone? A1 Oh, no. Absolutely not! 80% Q2 Should your student go to college? A2 Yes, certainly! 80% Way […]