Is College Really Right For You or Your Kids?

Kids are priceless joys to be cherished.  Priceless, dumb, cherish-able joys.  Once they jump through some hoops we give them a high school diploma and shove them out the door to jump through more hoops and get a coveted college degree.  An undergraduate college degree is almost worthless these days with everyone and their mother getting one.  After you’ve been out of college for a couple years you realize nobody cares about your degree.  They want to know about your experience.  A degree sets you up for a future…. a future life of debt.  Boom! Shots fired.  You should consider skipping college.

"OMG Mr. Burrito Bowl You Can’t Be Serious?!"-A mom, probably.

Listen, most kids have no idea what they want to do when they grow up.  Sending them off to college right out of high school is akin to sending them out into the woods on a cold night with a stack of $100 bills and a lighter and telling them to figure out how to survive.

Some kids are smart and will become doctors or lawyers or used car salesmen or some other smart person title and they know their destiny from the word go.   Those kids should go to college.

Some kids are like me and haven’t the foggiest idea what they want to be when they grow up.  Those kids, dummies as we’re sometimes called, go to college and rack up a bunch of student loan debt and are then shat into the workforce with eyes wide and not a clue how to begin to pay off the mountain of debt.  Then they find out that the manager of Payless doesn’t care about their art degree and they’ll have to work most weekends.

Are You a Dummy? 

If you’re one of those kids who doesn’t know what you want to study in college, another option to consider is learning a trade.

I now work in the building industry as a project manager. Just about every skill required for building a house can pay between $50-80K per year and almost none of them require a college degree.  People who become plumbers, for instance, go through plumbing school and on-the-job training.  They get paid well to be an apprentice and once they graduate they already have a job lined up where they can make $40+ per hour. Plus they have the added benefit of not racking up a huge amount of student loan debt.

If your goal is early retirement, skipping college for a high paying job in the building industry can get you there years faster than a traditional route.  Instead of being a 22-year-old college graduate with $100,000 of negative net worth, you could be a 22-year-old  with $100,000 of positive net worth. Also you’d have four years of experience as a plumber.

If your goal is to get to your FI number as quickly as possible, then learning a trade essentially gives you a $200,000 head start.  You’ll  be making more money than most college graduates are able to walk into right out of college.  In most cases, the number will turn out to be much larger than just $200,000.

Eventually having a college degree will surpass a trade job in earning potential.    The ceiling on a business degree is much higher than the ceiling for being a plumber, unless you start your own plumbing business. If you want to work in an office until you’re 65, then college is probably the best choice.  If you’re thinking about retiring early, but you aren’t a computer wizard, you’d be hard pressed to find a faster route than learning a trade.

The Upside of Skipping College

Right now the supply of skilled laborers is not even close to meeting the demand.  Nearly every day I talk with electricians, plumbers, HVAC guys and carpenters who can’t find enough good workers.

Even in a recession, pipes still leak, power still goes out and AC units still malfunction.

Meanwhile, college grads complain they have a degree but nobody will hire them.  They have no real world experience.  I was once one of those recent college grads.  Back in 2010 I had a business degree and was fortunate to land a job selling shoes for $10/hr.   I graduated from college in 2009 with a near flawless 2.7 GPA and nobody cared that I had a degree.  They simply weren’t hiring if you didn’t have experience. I felt fortunate to get a sales job working part-time just to get my foot in the door.  I realize I sound like I’m eighty-seven and bitter, but those are the facts.  The snow was just real deep in those days. Know what I mean?

“We got paid two nickels every three months and we were glad for the work!”- Me, as an old man, reliving my post college job search

America has just celebrated her longest Bull run in history.  Young folks in the workforce now don’t know what it’s like to search for a job during a recession.  Maybe that’s why I’m such an advocate of saving money.  I’ve been there, empty wallet in hand, when nobody was hiring.

The Downside of Skipping College

Don’t get me wrong, skipping college would mean missing out on a plethora of benefits.  It’s easier to make friends in college, some of which will stay with you for life.  There’s also the benefit to being forced to put your head down and study even when you don’t want to…… I mean, I assume.  I can’t honestly say I have a ton of experience in this category, but i’m sure it’s not NOT helpful.

You may not remember what you learned in college algebra but you remember the amount of focus and hard work it took to understand it…Or pretend to understand it, as it were.

I think you also learn a lot in college that you can’t place on any one thing.  For example,  as a kid you’d come home from school everyday and your mom would ask what you learned. You’d say “Nothing.”  At the end of the year, all those days learning nothing ended with you being able to divide triple digit numbers.

Earning a college degree is a great back up in case you ever get tired of hammering nails or fixing leaky pipes.  Being a builder can be awesome when you’re thirty.  When you’re sixty you might not feel as excited to be carrying beams and balancing on trusses.

If you aren’t going to save your money and retire early then I’d suggest going to college and getting a formal education.  You don’t want to be in your late fifties and have no other option but to keep hammering nails.

Mom!! What should I DO with my life?!

Learning a trade gives you an idea of what you may want to do.  It also gives you an idea of what you may NOT want to do.  If you hate manual labor, doing it for a couple of years might not be such a bad thing. It would give you a chance to figure out what you actually want to do.

It would be far better to go this route rather than heading off to college immediately after high school and getting a degree in a field you don’t want to work in. That’s if you manage to stick with one degree path.  It’s absurd how many students end up changing their majors at least once during their college career.  This results in thousands of dollars wasted taking classes that don’t even help with a degree.

If you don’t know what you want to do after high school, consider taking some time off to learn a trade.  For many people college is an unnecessary waste of time and money.  Being 22 years old and in massive amounts of debt from a degree that is essentially worthless is a stressful way to begin adulthood.

Today I have a job that has little to do with the degree I received.  I was aware enough to be conscious of debt, even in college.  Because of this my student loan burden was much smaller than most of my peers.  Still, a trade school would have been a much smarter choice financially.

Can I Interest You in a Compromise?

If you aren’t sure what to do with your life, a good middle ground would be to hold off on college for a year or two after high school.  Get your feet wet in the working world and see what life is like without a college degree.  It might fit your personality perfectly and you’ll never look back.  On the other hand, it might scare you into studying your ass off and becoming a doctor.

I’d also like to re-iterate, I’m not saying people should just willy-nilly skip college and instead start applying at the gas station.  I’m specifically talking about learning a trade such as a plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc.

I’m not saying everyone should skip college, but everyone should at least explore if college is right for them. There are enough good reasons to forego college that every person should stop and think before blindly following everyone else.  There may be better ways to reach financial independence and lead a life of freedom.

Thanks for reading this!  I think you’ll really like one of these articles, too.

Six Heroic Ways I Lowered My Student Loan Burden

Pay off Your Credit Card, Kid

Saying Goodbye to the D.I.N.K. Days

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