The Anti-College Chorus Grows Louder

In my book Thriving in the 21st Century, I argue that the pursuit of a college degree should no longer be the default position assigned to teens as soon as they graduate from high school. I’m happy to say that I’m hearing more people who share that opinion speaking out.

One of them is John Stossel, who recently interviewed college professor and economist Bryan Caplan about his recent book on the subject. I highly recommend both of these links to parents who are considering borrowing tens of thousands of dollars so their offspring can earn a college degree because they think it’s the only way they’ll ever get a job. I suspect this chorus will only grow louder as more time passes and tuition keeps rising.

Should You Co-sign Your Teen’s Student Loans?

These days, most people don’t have enough money saved up for a college education for their child because college has become so ridiculously expensive. Instead, they encourage their offspring to apply for financial aid, which includes grants and loans.

Grants are great, but generally hard to obtain in more than a nominal amount; hence the popularity of loans. But since young people just out of high school (or home school) rarely have a financial track record, their parents are often asked to co-sign loans, especially if the total annual cost of the chosen college is more than several thousand dollars a year.

Should you co-sign your teen’s student loans? If you’re a Christian, you need to be aware that the Bible, while not specifically prohibiting co-signing loans, makes it clear that it is foolish to do so.

Check out Proverbs 17:18 (KJV):

A man void of understanding striketh hands, and becometh surety in the presence of his friend.

Surety, in case you’re wondering, is pledging to repay a loan without any sure way to pay it back. Co-signing means you’re taking on that obligation for someone else in case they can’t pay it back. The reason the bank requires them to have a co-signer is because it considers them a bad risk.

It’s possible to borrow money but avoid surety. For instance, if you get a car loan and use the car as collateral, you can sell it and repay the loan if you have to. If you obtain a mortgage and use the house you’re buying as collateral, you can sell it and use the proceeds to pay off the mortgage.

But if you pledge to pay your child’s student loans back if they can’t, what do you have to use as collateral? Nothing. Now you’ve plunged yourself into surety, and according to the verse above, have become “void of understanding,” or lacking in good sense, according to other Biblical translations.

To make matters worse, by co-signing a loan for your own child, you have also obligated him or her to extensive debt for which they have no collateral.

Why would this displease God? Larry Burkett explained this in his book, Using Your Money Wisely:

Obviously, surety is not a biblical law— it is a principle. A principle is a biblical guide to keep you on God’s path and out of the world’s traps. You don’t get punished for violating a principle unknowingly; you suffer the consequences. The consequences of violating the principle of surety is that you presume upon the future. In other words, when you sign surety for a debt, you pledge your future. If you have omniscient insights into the future, then there is really no danger. But, since only God has omniscient insight, when you sign surety, you presume upon God’s will.

So if you’re a Christian, you should not co-sign college loans for your teen. Trust me, refusing to do so will not make you popular with your teen or possibly others in your family or social circle. But as Christians, we know that obedience to God trumps the approval of man.

How can you help prepare your teen for the future without co-signing student loans? Well, you could have saved up over the years so you could just give them the money. If that didn’t happen, you can help them research scholarships and grants.

Another option: seriously consider whether your teen even needs to go to college. In homeschooling circles, sending kids off to college has been a way to prove that homeschooling works, so there’s always been a lot of pressure to do so. But the U.S. already has an overabundance of college grads who can’t find work in their field. Do you want your teen to end up in that boat?

In the updated and expanded third edition of Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, available for purchase at all online and brick-and-mortar book sellers and from Cardamom Publishers on June 1, you can learn how to determine if your teen is college material and whether it’s worth sending him or her to college in the first place. Stay tuned for more information!

Diversity Danger in Colleges

What diversity oaths seek is to maintain political conformity among the faculty indoctrinating our impressionable, intellectually immature young people. Vladimir Lenin said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” That’s the goal of the leftist teaching agenda.

Dr. Walter E. Williams

One of my favorite writers, Dr. Walter E. Williams (who happens to be black), has issued a warning about the dangers of the diversity mindset that has taken over most college campuses. Please read his thoughts before you plunk down thousands of dollars for your college student.

More College Silliness

Here we go again, with a major university that gets millions of dollars from parents of college students who simply want a good education wasting kids’ time by pushing indoctrination instead. And this school is just up the road from me :0

UW-Madison is offering “men-identified students” (sheesh!) the opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a man. Oh, brother, we can see where this is going.

The Worst College Courses

I knew that there were some silly college courses out there that kids were paying enormous amounts of money to take, but it’s worse than I thought:

  • Arguing with Judge Judy
  • Football Culture
  • Pilot Brewery (brewmaster)
  • Queer Musicology
  • The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender, and Media

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. See the whole list (and the colleges responsible for this lunacy) HERE.