Tapeworm
Given your choice to drop out of school after the first year, it’s easy to see why you imagine the need for a college degree will eventually decline. Obviously, as a product and producer of higher education I have an opposite bias, but the arch of history would appear to be on my side. The vast majority of “successful” people (however one defines that) appreciate the need for degrees for themselves and their children and they are willing to make great sacrifices to enable that education.
For better or worse the pressure to get that degree is increasing! The number of students who sit for the SAT is in the tens of millions. Even more take the PSAT and as recently as yesterday the College Board has unveiled a new, earlier version of the PSAT test for students in 8th grade! Cirtics say such an exam is test overkill but others argue that even 8th grade is ‘too late’ to get ready for college.
Your point is well made Bay. I'd rate myself as a moderate statistical outlier in terms of success without a degree (not that I'm too well off, but I do ok). I'm a tradesman/business owner with his fingers in a fair few pies, and my industry is sort of the Wild West of money making, so that's another tint in my world view spectacles as far as degrees go.
Like I said, I'd never tell a kid not to go to college. His employability will be highly dependent on having a degree, provided he has chosen a marketable field. That assumes, of course, that he can stomach the marketable field in question and that he wants to be an employee.
I know, there's always consulting....
I feel bad for guys whose chosen field isn't very marketable, like pure science majors. Some of these people are doing research that almost anyone would call essential, but they have to spend their lives scratching around for grants to make ends meet.
I'd like to see these folks rewarded for doing important work, rather than having to go to work for Phizer making exercise pills or stiff dick pills.
Physicists living in near poverty, astronomers freezing their ass off on some mountaintop, lol.... That's another topic tho.
I agree with you on the whole. Odds are, you'll make more money with a degree than you will without a degree, and you'll find more employment options with one than without. I think that students need to be reminded that the literal translation of an "educator" is the one who is doing the drawing forth, so strictly speaking the student is the educator. I would like to see an educational system (not just universities) designed to facilitate this. I bet you'd get many more kids finding their way to and through university without any additional "stay in school" messages required. They'd just do it naturally. The rest can wind up in the construction game.
