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I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

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Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#101

Post by jki275 »

mnm1 wrote: post #97
newguy1234 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military is also a good option to college, especially if your specialty is a skilled trade. My brother did this straight out of high school. Spent a few years overseas and then eventually changed his specialty to biomedical equipment repair. When he left the service he made 60k/year and after 5 years he is at 125k/year. Also when you are in the service, you are getting paid and if you are overseas, all your bills are…

Yeah, but you're gambling that you will survive and that you will survive intact. A life full of PTSD or without legs or arms or eyes isn't worth a million a year, let alone $60 to $125k. Then there's the very real possibility of dying. Not to mention the high risk of suicide afterwards. Given those risks, I can't see how the military is a good option.

Extremely low probability of any of those happening.

Besides, military service changes you. It gives you perspective you will never get anywhere else.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#102

Post by mnm1 »

kxyvr wrote: post #92
hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I will contend that this is not the core problem, but an auxiliary one forced by the states themselves. The primary source of funding for universities is the state, which makes sense because universities rely on local infrastructure and respond to local needs. Depending on the size of the university, they can essentially be a small city within a city. At the same time, the amount of money invested in universities has…

State institutions are only part of the picture and not the worst part. This might explain why they've raised their tuitions but it doesn't explain why private institutions have done so even more aggressively. It's definitely the easy, guaranteed money from student loans.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#103

Post by tmpz22 »

jseliger wrote: post #49
rayiner wrote: post #16

These parents are heroes. > A couple months ago, my 17-year-old daughter’s guidance counselor called her into his office to ask pretty much the only question that adults ask high school seniors: “What colleges are you applying to?” When Ella tossed off a handful of universities, he said, “Have you thought about going to art school?” This is goddamn malpractice. > Like most parents, who save on average $18,000 for the…

College, for most people, is a joke College is great for the right people but we should be emphasizing vocational education and apprenticeships for many more people. Someone who doesn't want to do the reading or do abstract symbol manipulation is a poor fit for universities: https://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boos... . I know because I've taught many students who don't want to be in school and ar…

The problem with vocational training that /r/personalfinance and similar forums trumpet is that it often points directly to manual labor which leads to severe physical decline and often injury. I hope industries such as plumbing, welding, HVAC, construction, etc. have improved and now teach best practices for safe lifting, mandatory physical therapy, and enforce them - but I don't think they do.

Effectively what we're telling people is: you can make decent money with these jobs but you'll have to endure pain which all those kids goofing off in college will never have to go through. Making one class of people go through pain, and the other not, seems like dual-class citizenship. De-stigmatizing blue collar jobs is important but we have to try to make them more equal to white-collar jobs first.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#104

Post by jawns »

Perhaps one way to help college-bound teenagers make these sorts of decisions is not by asking, "What careers most interest you?" but "What lifestyle do you want to live as an adult?" and then work backward from there.

Teens who envision themselves living in a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and dining out frequently could then be counseled to pursue jobs that earn enough to support that lifestyle.

And teens who would be OK living in a modest ranch home in a small midwestern town, driving a 10-year-old car, and making most of their meals at home could be counseled to pursue jobs that earn enough to support that lifestyle.

In other words, instead of saying, "Identify the jobs you would be interested in doing, then choose the one with the best earnings potential or work/life balance," parents should be saying, "Identify the lifestyle you would like to lead, then choose the job that is capable of supporting that lifestyle."

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#105

Post by tyoma »

toolslive wrote: post #11

What I don't understand is: why don't they go to a university in Europe? I just checked for my alma mater: tuition fee is ~500 euro for 1 year. You pay about 4k in rent per year (this is probably too high an estimate). The level of education is high, and the programs are available in English.

Is that tuition for foreign students too? Some countries offer international students a subsidized rate (Germany comes to mind) but others do not.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#106

Post by mnm1 »

jki275 wrote: post #101
mnm1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but you're gambling that you will survive and that you will survive intact. A life full of PTSD or without legs or arms or eyes isn't worth a million a year, let alone $60 to $125k. Then there's the very real possibility of dying. Not to mention the high risk of suicide afterwards. Given those risks, I can't see how the military is a good option.

Extremely low probability of any of those happening. Besides, military service changes you. It gives you perspective you will never get anywhere else.

Maybe the percentage is low but it's still plenty high to be a deterrent and much, much higher than at any educational institution and most jobs.

You bring up another excellent reason to avoid military service. I'm sure there are plenty more.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#107

Post by shantly »

penagwin wrote: post #85
hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I struggled with college and don't know if I'll be returning... I made it over a third of the way to a CS degree but had to take a break from school. I got a job while in college as a programmer - and work full time making around the 50k range. I feel that I self taught myself the necessary technical skills for my job, and that the biggest places for self improvement aren't acedimic but business/relationship related.…

1) look into transferring your credit while it's still good (it can expire) to some place with a fairly cheap online CS program. Most degree programs, including most CS degree programs, are the "do the work, get the degree sort", not the (good) kind that'll run you ragged trying to do 20 hours of math and algo homework a week or whatever, so you can knock them out about the same speed as normal as long as you use the Summer sessions (you'll still have tons of weeks a year without any classes). No one who isn't already (more or less) filtering out non-top-tier school graduates cares where you got your degree or how rigorous the program was, unless the interviewer happened to go there—they aren't getting many candidates from top-tier schools, even at pay much higher than $50k, so they can't be that picky. Just sit down and force yourself to do whatever school work you have for the day before doing anything else, after work. Most days it likely won't really be that much. Every now and then you'll have a 3-hour night of school stuff.

2) make sure the program you're transferring to accepts a bunch of CLEP tests for credit and then pass those for anything you haven't already taken that qualifies—a book, a couple weekends of hard study, and a (relatively) cheap test beats paying for a class and taking all that time. These will mostly be 100-level courses, including and especially "gen ed" classes. Maybe you don't have any of those left, but if you do, CLEP right the hell out of them.

If you can get it cheap enough IMO it's definitely worth some money and some effort not to have questions about why you didn't go to or finish college, in interviews. If nothing else the confidence not having that stuff come up gives you frees you to ask for higher salaries. One 20k bump (not a crazy number for a jump with one job move, if you're at 50k, even if you're in like a 3rd- or 4th-rate city for tech) that otherwise would have taken a couple years longer to achieve, and that degree's a hell of a long way toward paying for itself. You could probably have one in under 3 years, maybe around 2, without taking on too much stress.

[EDIT] oh and ask your employer to chip in for tuition. Can't hurt to ask.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#108

Post by scarface74 »

criddell wrote: post #54
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sympathetic to the perspective that the solution is not dealing with it. “I want to go to art school” is at the same level as “I want a pony” or “I’m gonna marry a rich girl”; it’s not originally intended as a serious life plan, and you’ll only start to see it as one if the people around you encourage it.

I don't see anything wrong with going to school for an education rather than training. Frankly, I wish there were more kids working on a liberal and fine arts education. It's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of the free-college-for-all plans being pushed by some politicians.

Why should we pay for college for an area that won’t return a positive ROI just so they can be a “better citizen of the world”?

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#109

Post by seattle_spring »

honkycat wrote: post #98
hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

> Part of the reason you go to school as a young person is that you do not have a family to feed or a house to pay off.

If you go to art school as a young person, you won't have the problem of paying off a house because you won't have a job that qualifies you for a mortgage.

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