I just realized the following:
-I am the first in my extended family to have a tertiary education. My parents and grandparents were laborers.
-Despite having two degrees, I’ve never been able to use either of them
-I spent the next twenty years working various customer service jobs while never actually rising through the ranks.
-Today I’m over 40 and looking at living paycheck to paycheck until the day I die or retire. No-one in my generation with half a brain expects retirement to just, y’know, be there when it’s our turn. All of us are waking up to the reality that despite paying into SS for our entire working lives, we will never get even a fraction of what we put in back.
Given these circumstances, how am I supposed to convince my son to continue his education when he’s finished with high school? I feel like a liar already for trying to convince him that if he just works hard at something it’ll eventually pay off, because I have seen firsthand that this just isn’t true?
There are two questions:
Is college a scam?
College is attempting, and failing in my opinion, in trying to balance two demands. The first is preparing young adults for a working life and earn enough money that allows them to pay their debts and create a stable life. The second is to open their minds to a multitude of ways of thinking through a liberal arts education.
Rarely are young adults able to do both. Those that do so, rarely do it simultaneously. Rather, they get the liberal arts education and then get a graduate degree in a field that has a state protected license.
Those who pursue a technical degree usually see their liberal arts requirements as an inconvenience. They graduate and are able to find work that pays off any debt they took on and move up the corporate ladder enough to stabilize their lifestyle.
Those who pursue a liberal arts degree are in a much worse position economically, but see the world with a wider perspective and can see the issues from multiple angles. Their civic duty extends beyond their job and family. They are more readily to being aware of effects that corporations and political agents can have on society and the worst off. However, they usually have adopted an unrelatable disposition and lack the means to make change or even feed themselves without fear of an unforeseen incident changing their lives dramatically.
It is a scam because it claims you can do both.
So beyond that initial assessment. Would someone who pursues college to get either a technical degree or a protected license be better than one who does. Unequivocally, yes. However, if they don’t meet the cut, the amount of debt they took on to get there, especially if they pursue a protected license, will be crippling.
As for pursuing a career path separate from college, you have people who seek jobs in the trades and those who seek uneducated positions. When people say the statistics say college is better, they fail to separate out these categories. Many people aren’t in a position to leverage the benefits of college to justify the debt.
For those in the rare position to have to choose between getting a competitive and costly technical degree and pursuing trade school, you’d have to assess your chances of making the cut and finding out if you’re the type whose only interested in the technical work or if you’re inclined to start your own company. The latter can out earn a college educated technically trained and employed person.
What Should You Advise Your Child?
Each child is unique and with the narrowing utility of college, it makes it harder to universally recommend college to every kid. I went to college just before prices got really out of hand, but still at the time where it was universally recommended. But the people who benefitted the most were the ones who went to college in the 70s and 80s.
In this day and age, you need to really know why you’re going so that you can work hard to get what you want out of it. This may mean waiting a few years till you know your drive better and the lifestyle you want to live. You’ll have to learn a lot of soft skills to parley your degree into a job and your job into a career, but this has always been true to varying extents.
If your kid is finishing high school in the next year or so, I’d probably consider staying away from a CS degree. The industry has no clue who they are or what they want from recent grads.