This article’s author suggests that our government is responsible for pushing kids to college, including many who are not college material to begin with. It’s sad to think of so many young people graduating with a diploma that doesn’t help them find a job, but does saddle them with debt that they must repay.

The author offers a solution to that problem, though…..a certain type of job that will help new grads develop a very important skill: how to sell products and themselves. Makes a lot of sense! In the meantime, we should be encouraging this skill in our kids before they leave home.

• What practical course of study can be used to teach your children about science and theology?
• Where will you find a huge database of teaching helps and lesson plans?
• Where can you get a free eBook about beating the high cost of college?

The answers to these questions plus other useful information for homeschooling parents can be found in the current issue. Do subscribe so you can receive each newsletter “hot off the press.” 

Today marks one of the big things. It’s the 30^th anniversary of the day my husband and I graduated from college. I guess you could say we graduated together, though we were sitting on opposite ends of the enormous building where the ceremony was held. He sat with fellow new grads of the architecture program, while I sat with my fellow journalism grads, many of whom were passing around a joint in celebration (how I hated that smell!)

But I digress. I have fond memories of college, and I’m glad I went. But it was a different time. You could actually graduate from college debt-free if you worked your way through. In my case, my parents paid for two years and I paid for the other two by working on-campus jobs during the school year and summer jobs over summer vacations. My husband did not work during the school year, but paid for all of his college expenses by working summers at a very good job and taking out a small college loan (less than $1,000 @ 3%) that we paid off within a few years of graduation.

How times have changed! As the parents of one college grad and one in process, we’re well aware that today’s college students don’t study nearly as much as we had to study. (I’ve heard this from other parents, too.) Finals week does not appear to be the traumatic event that it was back in the 1970s. So we’re not sure that today’s college students are learning as much as we did. But they’re sure paying more than we did! College costs are out of control, going up at an annual rate of more than 6%. To make matters worse, the college loan industry has become a cesspool.

Just yesterday we got a very friendly letter from SallieMae kindly offering our daughter a “Sallie Mae Smart Option Student Loan.” It urges her to make a “smart choice,” to “invest in your future,” and “Apply now—20 minutes is all you should need!”

My favorite part? “By making timely monthly payments before graduation, you’ll begin to build a credit history. That may make it easier for you to buy a car or purchase a home after graduation.”

“May.” They use that word a lot in the letter, along with “could “and “potentially.” None of these words indicates certainty, of course. But the upbeat tone of the letter is meant to keep students from worrying about any negatives in their offer….and there are plenty of them.

Don’t take my word for it. Read the complaints of some who have taken out Sallie Mae student loans. Here they are, 71 pages of them. I found them while doing research for the college chapter of my upcoming book.

People who take out student loans from Sallie Mae (the largest of four privately owned companies chosen by the federal government’s Department of Education to manage and service federal student loans) often discover that the amount they borrowed expands over time due to a variety of fees and rule changes that they were never warned about. Some people now owe twice what they borrowed only a few years ago, particularly if unemployment caused them to miss payments on their loans somewhere along the way.

In an economy with high unemployment, it’s very likely that a new college grad may not find a job right away or may lose the one they get. Our kids need to be aware of the dangers of these loans. The stakes are high. As one borrower said, “I will likely have to deal with this debt for the rest of my life.”

Some of the things she’s told us has surprised us. Of course, it’s been a long time since we went to college, but still……

For example, there were no cell phones when we were in college, but even if there had been, I’m sure our professors wouldn’t have allowed people to sit and text during class. But dd says most of her teachers don’t seem to care.

Some teachers swear around and sometimes at the students, not in anger but just as part of their apparently limited vocabulary. I don’t remember any of my college profs doing that.

Many of dd’s classmates are attending school for career retraining. It’s part of their severance package from a previous employer. They don’t have to pay for their college expenses, and it shows. They complain about having to be in class, and often don’t show up. They don’t take the work seriously, which can be frustrating for those who do because they often have to work in teams.

Dd found a couple friends at college who were also homeschooled for their entire lives. They didn’t know this about each other until after they became friends. One of their common complaints is that many of the teachers don’t have lesson plans, but instead stand in front of the class and talk about whatever they feel like. Dd says it’s hard to find out what the assignments are because the teachers don’t always know. Once they figure it out, they may forget to tell the students; the next class, they’ll ask for everyone to hand in their assignments and the students won’t know what they’re talking about. Dd says she liked that I had lesson plans and gave her assignments because she always knew what was expected of her. Her friends say the same thing about their moms.

When I homeschooled my kids for high school, I gradually increased their responsibility for getting their work done so that by the time high school ended, they were used to getting assignments on Monday morning and having them ready for me to look at on Friday afternoon. If I saw them goofing off during the week, I didn’t say much, figuring we’d see if they were ready for me on Friday.

My thinking was that making them responsible for getting their work done would prepare them in case they went to college. Seems like I prepared them for college the way it was back when I attended. But it appears that things have changed.

I should note here that my older son, who graduated from a private Christian college, didn’t have these kinds of complaints. From what I could tell, his professors were a lot more dedicated. On the other hand, he used to say he didn’t have a lot of homework. I remember my own college experience as being packed with endless amounts of reading and paper-writing. So even his college education differed from mine quite a bit. Guess I overprepared my kids!

How about you? Do you have any kids in college yet? What are they telling you about it?

The article is somewhat helpful in that the reporter tries to present both sides of the story. But there’s nothing there that you probably haven’t heard before, and some of the statistics used are a bit questionable. For example:

Studies indicate that college graduates are healthier, donate more blood, vote more often than other Americans and are more open-minded. They smoke less, exercise more and, a 2005 Pew study found, were 25 percent more likely than high school graduates to declare they were happy.

Note that it refers to college graduates. Last I heard, only half of college students actually graduate. So it makes sense that grads will be happier than non-grads, because many of the non-grads have the debt but not the sheepskin! Also, a healthy chunk of those who graduate come from families with above average income, which is where the likelihood of better health, less smoking and more exercise comes from, too. Other studies have shown that being happy is related to good health and having enough money. So duh.

Then there’s this factoid:

In 2007, Sandy Baum, a professor of economics at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., studied the value of a degree for the College Board. ….Baum said that college was easily worth the cost. Plus the recession has laid bare another factor to consider:

“Even in this economy, the number of unemployed college graduates is half that of the unemployed who did not go to college,” she said.

That’s supposed to make college “easily worth the cost”? How so? As noted later in the article, less than 1/3 of American adults are college grads. That means more than 2/3 of American adults are not college grads. Since 1/3 is half of 2/3, it makes sense that the number of unemployed college grads would be half of the number of unemployed non-college grads. If college was “easily worth the cost,” a far smaller percentage of college grads would be unemployed. As it stands, the unemployment rate of the two groups is about the same. Hardly a point on the pro-college side.

OK, so I’m picking nits. I guess I’m just getting tired of the pro-college cheerleaders (note that Dr. Baum’s study was for the College Board) whistling in the dark. But bear with me while I share one more reason for going to college, from the article:

Another, even grimmer way to look at it: The poverty rate is 10.8 percent among high school grads. It is one-third less for those with bachelor’s degrees.

I got out my trusty calculator and learned that if this statement is true, then the poverty rate among college grads is 7.1%. I’m sorry, but 7.1% vs. 10.8% doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering difference to me.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that parents believed the hype about college being a necessity and sent their kids there in droves. Now we’ve got way more college grads than we need. The lousy economy makes the situation even worse.

What to do? I found some thought-provoking suggestions in the comments section of the article. Here are a few that made sense to me:

“I’m glad I never went to college until I was sure of what I wanted to do for a living instead of wasting my education by studying some major that was only somewhat interested in……I know so many who never liked the field they studied for.”

“Higher education in this country is a scam, it’s bloated, over-priced, and has sold us a bill of goods for the last 20 years. When a student pays $1,000 for a class at a state institution and has a grad student teach it (while the professor ‘conducts research’) that amounts to robbery. The entire system from 7th grade on up needs to be scrapped and re-designed.”

“There needs to be more emphasis on technical careers. Everyone is not college material and some people just don’t want to go to college. High school guidance counselors need to do a better job of telling kids about technical careers (cosmetology, mechanics, HVAC, etc.). A middle class society needs to have a balance of college educated as well as citizens who have skills in technical fields. I’m probably wishing for too much, though.”

“Simply having a degree doesn’t separate you from the pack anymore like it once did as more and more people are earning their BS. It’s simply supply and demand now. Get a degree in economics along with 200,000 other students, and what job exactly requires an economics degree? How many people with marketing or business degrees do we need?

Focus on a specific career like engineering, something in the medical field, accounting, etc. and you’ll be fine…….And if you want to be a teacher, don’t spend $200k getting the degree because it’ll never pay itself back… go to school somewhere more reasonable.”

What do you think?

In addition to the fact that half of all college students drop out before graduation, there’s the reality that most of the high-growth jobs of the future do not require a college degree.

This flies in the face of the common wisdom of the past 50 years that said you must have a college degree in order to get a decent job. That’s true in some career fields (who wants to be the patient of a neurosurgeon who hasn’t gone through college and medical school?) but it’s certainly not true for all fields.

The U.S. government makes projections about the growth (or lack of growth) in different career areas. You can find those numbers at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) website. Here’s the latest BLS projection of above average growth and above average wage occupations. It’s an interesting document. Note that the projected increases in job growth are for a ten-year period (2006-2016).

When reading it, keep in mind that a high percentage increase in a given career field doesn’t necessarily translate into a lot of jobs. Check the “Employment” column on the left side of the page for actual numbers (in the thousands).

For example, on the first page you’ll see that the rate of increase for “aircraft cargo handling supervisors” is a healthy 23.3%. But that only equals 1,000 new jobs over the next ten years. Not exactly a booming career field in a country of over 300 million people.

On the other hand, note that while the BLS projects there will only be 10.4% more truck drivers needed over the next ten years, that’s the equivalent of 193,000 new jobs.

Once you become familiar with the chart layout, note the “source of training” column on the right side of the page. Most of the jobs on the first few pages do not require a bachelor’s degree. As you go through the document, you’ll find more jobs that do require at least a four-year degree. There are quite a few.

However, only a few of them show the highest growth potential in both percentages and numbers. They include a variety of tech careers, social workers, jobs in education, and accountants. For those willing to earn more than just a bachelor’s degree, a career as a pharmacist, physician or surgeon would certainly be a growth area to consider.

Still, most of the above average growth jobs that require bachelor’s degrees don’t equal many jobs. For example, only 100 jobs per year nationwide are expected to open up for archivists, anthropologists and archaeologists, marine engineers and naval architects, and atmospheric and space scientists. So unless your child passionately desires to become one of those professionals, you might want to gently point him or her in another direction.

Since many of the degree-required careers have such low projected job numbers, today’s parents have to think seriously about whether a degree is even worth it, particularly if their children’s interests and abilities don’t necessarily fit with the jobs with the most openings and growth in the future.

Again, colleges and universities will not tell you that the degrees they offer do not necessarily translate into good jobs, especially in the working world of the 21^st century. This is one area where parents and their teens really have to do the homework for themselves.

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It’s become an expectation in our society that most everyone, homeschooled or not, literate or not, will attend college. Whether a young person’s bent leans toward book-learning or engine-rebuilding doesn’t seem to matter. The important thing, we’re told, is that they go to college.

There’s an entire empire based on helping parents and teachers help students get into college. There are books and classes available, professional help can be hired to lead you through the application process….it’s a huge industry in itself.

But there are a few dirty little secrets about college. One in particular is purposely suppressed by colleges and universities. For all the fuss about getting into a good college, for all the money that’s saved up from the time the student is a toddler, for all the home equity lines parents must tap into, the fact is that only half of all college students actually graduate! And this is nothing new; it’s been true for 30 years.

(I worked in my college dorm office in the late 1970s. I vividly recall that officials overbooked all of the dorms at the large university I attended because they knew students would begin dropping out the first week. They didn’t want to end up with empty rooms.)

There are many reasons for such a high college dropout rate, the primary ones being that students can’t hack it or can’t afford it. But the bottom line is, half of all students don’t make it through college.

Of course, when a student drops out of college, he still has to pay for the time he was there. If he borrowed money to pay tuition and room-and-board (increasingly likely), that money has to be repaid with interest. So while he doesn’t leave with a diploma, he may well leave with a parting gift (as the old tv game show hosts used to call the loser’s consolation prize) of years of debt burden.

College brochures and websites are slick and packed with information, but they sure don’t mention that high dropout rate, do they?

I’ve been using Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers with dd17 for the past 18 months or so, and we’re almost finished. We’ve been having a lot of fun with the projects.

Funny how using Life Prep has been a different experience with each of my children.

Our eldest was very eager to get out on her own, so we emphasized the rent, food and utilities projects over the others. Our son was completely college-minded, so we stuck to more reading and less projects. Dd17 is not in a big hurry to be out on her own, but she’s not sure about college either (she’s already racked up a few credit hours and isn’t sure if she wants to keep going), but she really gets into all of the projects.

She has run a couple of small businesses, so she understands the need to watch your expenses and make prudent choices. She seems to really get into studying how loans work, and how you can save a lot of money by prepaying them.

While working on the projects from the book, she enjoyed playing with some online financial calculators at Bankrate.com. They’re wonderful! I plan on adding mention of them to the next edition of the book when we update it again in a few years.

Nevertheless, today’s typical college or university may not be what many kids need. Here’s an interesting take on the changes one experienced professor recommends to make college worthwhile for more American young people.

Not at all. What it does mean is that you and your teen must be extremely diligent in the choice of a college, once you determine that he or she is “college material.”

How to define “college material”:

Motivated to attend college, to study hard and to succeed.

Strong enough to handle peer pressure of all kinds.

Interested in a career that requires a college degree and will allow the degree-holder to make enough money to cover the cost of said college experience and then some.

Willing to help pay for college (important for what it says about your child as much as how it will help financially).

If you still think your teen is “college material,” it’s time for due diligence. Check out prospective colleges thoroughly. This includes Christian colleges, some of which are Christian in name only. If you’re going to leave your teen somewhere for four (or more) years, you want it to be a good, safe place, not just a well-known place, right?

Finally, in light of what we’ve considered in these college posts, consider online learning and/or community college for at least part of your child’s college experience. Starting out by studying at home can give your child time to mature further, in order to face the trials and temptations of modern college life with more maturity than he or she had at 18.

One good book for those who are attracted to the benefits of distance learning for college is Accelerated Distance Learning.

Next: College: The Bottom Line