You can, however, hide a college degree…just don’t mention it on your resume or application. Manufacturing one out of whole cloth tends to get you in trouble.
My econ textbook says college grads have twice the income as non-college grads.
And I don’t know if it makes that much difference what you major in - provided you are willing to accept jobs outside your field of study and have talent and ambition. The CEO of my company has only a bachelors in Political Science (and he didn’t found the company). I’ve done quite well in IT with Film Studies.
A college degree has some advantages. You can’t blow it all at once (I know SEVERAL people who inherited $100,000 and have nothing to show for it after several years - well, except a three year old rather nice car). Your no-good significant other can’t waste it away. Bankruptcy court can’t take it away from you.
Of course it carries some risks - majoring in Studio Arts and working for Starbucks anyway while you try and sell your bronze castings. Not finishing. But I think its a better bet.
(And to back me up, read The Millionare Next Store about giving your children cash.)
Not all community colleges are created equal. At the college I attend for example:
• Microbiology Prof. – nominated for the Nobel. Twice. Formerly a professor at a major medical school.
• Biology Prof. – Worked on research which ended up winning the Nobel for the head researchers. Twice.
• Organic Chemistry/Anatomy-Physiology courses - considered THE most challenging and comprehensive in the state. Even more so than the prestigious “Big Name” school in the area.
• Physics Dept., Biology Dept. (possibly others, these I have personal knowledge of) both have nice equipment and research opportunities for students. So much so that students from “Big Name” school have been known to spend a semester doing research with us.
• We will offer a class if enough students wish to take it. We will offer another section if there is enough demand. I’ve had only one class with more than 30 students. This is NOT the case at “Big Name” school, and they often have courses with over 300 students enrolled.
• According to our Pre-Dental club, we have a 100% placement rate for students who apply to dentistry schools.
• We regularly have seminars on subjects ranging from Muon-mediated fusion to synthetic diamonds to the discovery of a new plant hormone, all from those projects principle researchers.
My point isn’t to contradict you. It’s just to say that it pays to investigate whatever school you are interested in. The above most certainly would NOT have been the case at my school five years ago, and I would not have chosen to come here regardless of the cost savings. For what I am interested in, my school is as good as any for your first two, or even four years.
$100,000 for college or investing requires a level playing field for comparison. Have you ever tried valuation of money? The whole idea of valuation is that money today is worth more than money in the future. So with a financial calculator or excel spreadsheet, you can compare both possibilities. Of course the comparison is based upon assumptions that might prove wrong. For example, $100,000 invested today, with an interest rate of7% over 30 years will give you a future value of $761,225.50.
You’re talking about the time value of money. To compare this fairly, you’d have to take the extra money someone going to college would make over time (the same time as not going to college less four years) and compute what the time value of that money is. I think you’d find it much greater.
Oh, and to pre-apologize, when I was talking about 2 year colleges I was only concerned with those intending to do four years. There are plenty of good careers for which a two year college is just perfect.
And I agree with NPC. I think there are some expensive colleges that are fairly worthless - the kind you can get into two weeks before the term begins. My brother started at one, but made it to a more reasonable place eventually.
Oh, and another thing, it’s not exactly clear if the reason college grads earn more money is because college makes people smart or because smart people go to college. That is, it may well be that even if the entirety of college was sitting in an empty room, twiddling your thumbs, college grads would still earn more money since the dumb people don’t get in. It might very well be that from a purely financial ROI perspective, if your daughter is only borderline, investing might be a better idea.
This has already been addressed, but as someone who has been both to Harvard (undergrad) and a community college (a few elective courses in my spare time), I have to say this isn’t true. I agree with **NoPretentiousCodename ** that community colleges can be excellent, but don’t just go with the cheapest option under the belief that English is English.
My advice: give your daughter the best education you can afford. (Granted, “best” doesn’t necessarily mean “most expensive.” As others have said, research your options.) The opportunity to learn and explore and experience is worth so much more than whatever the financial return on investment is.
My Harvard education is the best gift my parents could have given me. The experience - including the educational part, the extracurricular part and the social part - expanded my way of thinking and gave me knowledge I will use for the rest of my life. This in spite of the fact that what I studied (political science) has nothing to do with the career I wound up with (computer science).
First- good post NoPretentiousCodename- I agree with it.
However, there are a few other note. Yes, Voyager, you are certainly correct in that living in a Dorm is way different from living in a Dorm. But for some 17-18yo kids, the shock of moving out and not having the support of their parents and home can be a BAD thing. “Animal House” is only a movie, but there are frats thataren’t far off- many kids turn to booze, drugs & parties. Being 2 years older, and 2 years more mature significantly reduces the chance that someone immature will be swamped by the new experiences.
When you send your kid off to an expensive 4 year (for the 1st two years)- you have to pretty well be sure that he/she isn’t going to succumb to the lure of parties, and* is* going to find that College is 'their thing".
Big Classes at Big Colleges are often mindnumbing huge (300 or so bodies) and are in reality taught by the TA’s. Having a Nobel Laureate somewhere on staff won’t help.
I know kids who did live at home for these years and were just as out of control. But I agree that if you send your kid to a party school they’re going to party. Kids are going to get drunk, but if they do, better in a dorm or frat than in someone else’s house where they drive home. Of course I went to college in the late '60s early '70s, so my baseline is high. (ahem.)
Well, freshman physics and freshman calculus lectures at MIT were this large, but were far from mind numbing. In both cases there was also a smaller class taught by a real professor - typically more senior than the guy doing the big lecture. It depends on the teacher. My daughter had not complaints about big lectures at the University of Chicago recently. I’d not be surprised if big state schools have bigger classes due to funding cuts, but there is still the opportunity to take interesting seminars that don’t exist at 2 year schools.
If a kid has no interest in actually broadening his horizon, and is going to college to get the piece of paper with as little effort as possible, then the 2 year - 2 year plan makes sense. But if the kid is still an eager learner, a 2 year school can kill the spark. I’ve seen it happen.
Couple things about community colleges: for the really good students at my school–the sort that Harvard would look at-- they really aren’t an option because the top kids almost always have 24-36 hours of AP credit, and some have quite a bit more than that. A kid who is used to carrying six AP classes is wasting time if they take under 18 hours a semester in a community college, and so there is really, at most, a two semesters worth of credits to even be earned at a community college. Do most community colleges offer math beyond Cal C? Because if not, someone who got a 5 on the BC calc test and goes to community college for a year before transfering to a four year school is going to have to sit out of math for a year. Not a big deal if they are going for a liberal arts degree, but a big deal if they are going for an engineering degree.
Two: It seems to me that two years at a community college might make it harder to get into any of the really good schools. If I were Dean of Admissions at a good school, I would really wonder why a kid with a great GPA, a 1500 on the SAT, passing scores on a bevy of AP exams, and an impressive transcript would have chosen to spend a year at Cow County Community College instead of looking for a four year school.
I would think “this person didn’t have the money to attend -insert good school- and so worked his or her way through school to be able to attend -good school-”
Not everyone can get a scholarship, even with great scores and not everyone is willing to take on that kind of debt.
The bald fact is, it doesn’t matter whether or not college graduates are actually smarter, know more, or have better job skills than the person who skipped college. As long as many employers think college matters, then college is financially valuable.
Maybe employers are dead wrong, maybe they should all be like the restaurant that hired Abbie’s mother and devalue a college education. But the fact is, many of them don’t devalue it. Apparently a good number believe college matters, and will be more likely to hire/promote a college graduate, and will pay them more.
For me college wasn’t just about the money. From what I could see–and perhaps my views were ignorant, here, but it was my perception–that many of the jobs high school diploma holders got didn’t offer as much autonomy, flexibility, benefits, and other things that mattered to me. There are some quality-of-life issues that may or may not come into play, depending on what she’s interested in and what her alternatives would be.
Based on my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience I think this is almost exactly what an admissions counselor would think. This route to college seems to be less uncommon than it used to be (or was perceived to be).
AFAIK, all the transfers to Swarthmore College in Fall '01 were from places like CalTech, NYU, Cooper Union, UPenn, etc. Obviously I don’t know how many (if any) people applied to transfer from a CC. Yes, the really good schools want to see that potential transfers did not fold, but they also want to be sure that they can handle the work load that will be waiting when they arrive. I’m also not sure that Swarthmore would have accepted a single credit from a CC. The place doesn’t even like to accept credits from UPenn. Granted I think they’re a little too full of themselves over there.
As for not affording it, I would think that the admissions office would like to see that the student actually applied to see what financial aid they can get. However, I would also think that admissions officers would worry that the student would have fallen behind in those two years. They’ve got to think that their education is better than at a community college. I hadn’t though about Manda JO’s point about AP, but it is a good one. Lots of top colleges don’t give credit for AP, but still want it as evidence that the student took the hardest classes in high school.
I actually don’t think that many really top colleges worry about dropouts a lot. It happens, but it is not a major issue.
I think there is a lot of movement between 2 year colleges and 4 year state schools in the same system. I doubt there is a lot to top ranked elite colleges. I’ll see if I can find data when I have the time.
No, dude- it is the dude who first makes the claim that has to back it up with a Cite. Not the person who sez “I don’t think so”. It’s up to Manda JO to show it’s harder to get into the second two years of a 4 year from a 2 year (fully accredited, of course!) college. My advisor said elsewise, but I do admit that was a couple decades ago. So- if either of you have facts to back up your claim, go for it.
Well, the University of Chicago’s page for transfer students claims that they usually admit 75 transfer students each year, and that last year they accepted 125 applicants. Since their page on class statistics says they admitted 1220 freshman last year, it would appear that transfer students do not make up a signifigant portion of their population.
I suspect that your average community college doesn’t count as “a liberal arts curriculum that is similar to Harvard’s”
As a counterpoint, Tulane makes a point that they accept transfers from two year schools, but I don’t see any numbers on how many are actually accepted.
And St. John’s specifically mentions that they accept credit "for students who have completed an A.A. or A.S. degree and wish to continue their studies in a related area. "
This is a pretty cursory search, but it is looking like your really top tier schools are not as interested in transfer students–so it isn’t the same as Harvard–but there are good schools that will accept you.
As far as “burning out” the first year of college: do you have ANY idea what it is like to carry a load of six AP classes, participate in a sport and the musical, be on the newspaper staff, and have a part-time job at the mall? Or carry six AP classes in a language that is not your first and work full time to help pay your family’s bills? Or carry six AP classes and dance 40 hours a week? A year at a junior college is a walk in the park compared to that, and those are the sorts of schedules our top kids–the ones we push towards the very best schools–have.
When I went to the University of Minnesota, we had a lot of Community College transfers, who were usually incised to learn the the U wouldn’t accept about half of their credits (particularly withing the Institute of Technology - Liberal Arts majors had it easier). Yep, you took Physics from “local community college” but to be an engineer you can’t have liberal arts Physics - you need engineering Physics. So instead of saving money, they spent it twice. At that time (twenty years ago) they had a long list of what they’d accept and what they wouldn’t from the local CCs - and the list of what didn’t transfer was pretty significant.
It was bad enough that I know several people who went to CC intending on transfering, then when they discovered how much they’d need to retake, dropped the idea of a four year degree.
Here is the page on transfer guides…at the very least, you need to know where you intend to transfer to and what will and won’t count.
Nitpick here–they enrolled 1220, admitted far more than that. Transfer students generally don’t comprise a large part of a school’s undergraduate body, true, but that doesn’t mean that a student is unrealistic to try. More on this in a moment…
No, I’m sure it isn’t. But it is important to note than many community college do see themselves as a gateway to four year schools, and offer a general education/liberal arts curriculum designed for students who plan to transfer. Whenever possible they will get articulation agreements so students aren’t in the position of those mentioned by Dangerosa. I don’t believe there is much transfer from CCs to elite institutions, but it’s still a valid means of entry to your average public and even to some elite publics. In fact, state schools which are stingy about CC transfer credits and admission may face some heat from the state. I have heard–although this is anecdotal, someone in CA help me out–that in the California university system, CC transfers are advantaged over transfers from private 4-years.
I really don’t think this is true. Now I’m getting away from the original sidelie which is about community college, but I want to clear up what i think may be some misperceptions. Elite schools don’t lose large numbers of stop-outs, drop-outs, and transfer-outs, but transfers are still a means to replace those bodies who do leave. It can be an important enrollment management tool, as well as good second-chance policy for a few of the students you made the wrong reject decision on as Freshmen. Community college transfers may not be sought after everywhere, but transfers (in general) do matter.
In sum, I’d say that going to community college for a couple of years isn’t a terrible bit of advice, but it depends on where you plan to go afterwards. A student has to pay careful attention to what he or she enrolls in, as well. I personally know students who have done this, and have run the numbers for our own institution as well. Just from general conversation, every indication is that it’s becoming more acceptable to take this route, at least among familes with financial constraints.
