25 years old and deep in debt

[Eddie Teach]

Also does that blurb really suggest that it is a good degree to get or rather than people think if they get one they will "get to be the man" rather than "work for the man"?

People who start their own businesses don't need expensive degrees to prove to the boss that they have what it takes.

[LaCroix]

And what of the ones that will be dead twenty years down the road?

oh well -- success isn't guaranteed. he was born in the US and managed to reach higher education, so he had the opportunity. a lot of factors go into poor decision making, and the blame isn't always on the individual. but it's not always on the school, either, or society. there are 300 million people in this country, and there are going to be those who simply overload on debt and fail to find employment.

[CountDeMoney]

They should taken a better assessment of the state of their finances and potential risks?

Unless one works for the government, there's always the chance one is going to lose their job.  So don't buy a house, don't buy a car, don't get married and have kids, don't get that degree management says you need if you want to aspire to leadership positions.

In short, be you.  Gotcha. 

[CountDeMoney]

And what of the ones that will be dead twenty years down the road?

oh well -- success isn't guaranteed. he was born in the US and managed to reach higher education, so he had the opportunity. a lot of factors go into poor decision making, and the blame isn't always on the individual. but it's not always on the school, either, or society. there are 300 million people in this country, and there are going to be those who simply overload on debt and fail to find employment.

Oh well.  Win some, lose some. 

[garbon]

They should taken a better assessment of the state of their finances and potential risks?

Unless one works for the government, there's always the chance one is going to lose their job.  So don't buy a house, don't buy a car, don't get married and have kids, don't get that degree management says you need if you want to aspire to leadership positions.

In short, be you.  Gotcha. 

The first thing I did out of college (right after graduation) was buy a brand new car.

[CountDeMoney]

Well then, good for you that you took that assessment of the state of your finances and potential risks.  You were one of the lucky ones.

[CountDeMoney]

One for Ide to file, under "H" for "Hater".

Opinions
Washington Post
Thinking too highly of higher ed
By Peter Thiel November 21 at 8:11 PM

Peter Thiel, an investor and entrepreneur, is author of "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future."

Perhaps the least controversial thing that President Obama ever said was that "in the coming decades, a high school diploma is not going to be enough. Folks need a college degree." This vision is commonplace, but it implies a bleak future where everyone must work harder just to stay in place, and it's just not true. Nothing forces us to funnel students into a tournament that bankrupts the losers and turns the winners into conformists. But that's what will happen until we start questioning whether college is our only option.

Is higher education an investment? Everyone knows that college graduates earn more than those without degrees. Maybe that earning power comes from learning valuable skills, networking with smart people or obtaining a recognized credential. Well, maybe — it's hard to say exactly, since "college" bundles so many different things into one arbitrary package. And if all the most ambitious kids in our society go to college just because it's the conventional thing to do, then what happens on campus might not matter, anyway. The same kids would probably enjoy a wage premium even if they spent four years in the Peace Corps instead.

Or is college mostly about consumption? One look at a college brochure suggests that college students consume much more avidly than they invest. That's why schools compete to attract student-consumers by furnishing a lively singles scene with plenty of time and space to party in glamorous surroundings. Or is college really insurance? Parents who despair of all the partying reassure themselves that college doesn't have to guarantee a bright future so long as it wards off career disaster — sort of how nobody expects to make money buying car insurance.

But what if higher education is really just the final stage of a competitive tournament? From grades and test results through the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the colleges themselves, higher education sorts us all into a hierarchy. Kids at the top enjoy prestige because they've defeated everybody else in a competition to reach the schools that proudly exclude the most people. All the hard work at Harvard is done by the admissions officers who anoint an already-proven hypercompetitive elite. If that weren't true — if superior instruction could explain the value of college — then why not franchise the Ivy League? Why not let more students benefit? It will never happen because the top U.S. colleges draw their mystique from zero-sum competition.

This tournament is obviously bad for the losers, who end up shut out of a self-satisfied "meritocratic" elite. But it's bad for the winners, too, because it trains them to compete on old career tracks such as management consulting and investment banking instead of doing something new. And it's worst of all for society at large because our economy stagnates when its leaders jockey to collect rents from old industries instead of working to create new ones that could raise the standard of living for everyone.

Today that's the tournament-style economy we have. Median household wages are actually lower than they were in 1989 (adjusted for inflation), so Americans have flocked to the few things that seem to promise an escape from stagnation. In the 2000s, that was real estate. Was housing an investment? A way to consume bigger houses? Or was it a kind of middle-class insurance policy when everything else looked broken? Nobody thought very hard about it because everybody believed that house prices would always go up.

Now education has taken the place of housing. If a college degree always means higher wages, then everyone should get a college degree: That's the conventional wisdom encapsulated by Obama. But how can everyone win a zero-sum tournament? No single path can work for everyone, and the promise of such an easy path is a sign of a bubble.

Of course, you can't become successful just by dropping out of college. But you can't become successful just by going to college, either, or by following any formula. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg aren't famous because of the similar ways in which they left school. We know their names because of what each of them did differently from everybody else.

Learning from dropouts doesn't require closing colleges but rather questioning them carefully. Higher education holds itself out as a kind of universal church, outside of which there is no salvation. Critics are cast as heretics or schismatics endangering the flock. But our greatest danger comes from the herd instinct that drives us to competition and crowds out difference.

A Reformation is coming, and its message will be the same as it was 500 years ago: Don't outsource your future to a big institution. You need to figure it out for yourself.

[The Brain]

Hitler figured things out for himself.

[MadImmortalMan]

We went to a food truck event by the river (the day I posted the picture). One of the trucks was a coffee trailer. Essentially they had a barista machine in a trailer. Running it was a sorta cute girl, and on the window was a flyer that claimed it was a TMCC Young Entrepreneur Business. That's a community college here. So I asked the girl about it, and she said she had graduated from the college and then started this business. I asked her if she had student loans. She said yes.

So basically, she went through four years of school in order to become a barista in a trailer. 

[The Brain]

Some posters would kill to be a barrister in a trailer.

[Savonarola]

Learning from dropouts doesn't require closing colleges but rather questioning them carefully. Higher education holds itself out as a kind of universal church, outside of which there is no salvation. Critics are cast as heretics or schismatics endangering the flock. But our greatest danger comes from the herd instinct that drives us to competition and crowds out difference.

A Reformation is coming, and its message will be the same as it was 500 years ago: Don't outsource your future to a big institution. You need to figure it out for yourself.

I recommend we start by expelling the Bush clan and burning text books. 

[Ideologue]

What a great piece, except where he doesn't propose the obvious solution: central planning of America's educational resources.

[Barrister]

Some posters would kill to be a barrister in a trailer.

Kill is too strong, but I have a trailer, and I didn't get to spend any time in it at all last summer...

[Valmy]

So basically, she went through four years of school in order to become a barista in a trailer. 

I sure hope it was two years if it was a Community College.

[grumbler]

So basically, she went through four years of school in order to become a barista in a trailer. 

I sure hope it was two years if it was a Community College.

Don't spoil the anecdote with facts.