College is pretty damn expensive these days. Is it a cost effective use of the money? or would that money be better spent in other ways, travelling or starting a business.
My understanding is that college traditionally served 4 main purposes:
1 Vocational training for a job
2 To become a more rounded human being-"liberal arts"
3 As a halfway house between home and on your own
4 To provide status; college educated being presumably higher than non college.
It seems to me that these days it's pretty much all about job training. The economy seems to be tanking, and jobs have been and are getting shipped overseas.
At a State University one might get 4 years for as little as 50-60k, all expenses included. A lot of other schools one is looking at 100k or more, for the privilege of being unemployed and back at home after 4 years.
What if you took 100k and started a business, or decided to educate yourself by going online and to the library (if you had the discipline to do it yourself), and saved the tuition money. Or what if you did what a lot of young people in other countries do, which is to travel and work for a few years, then go to school. You'd know a lot better what you wanted to do.
As far as the social aspects, i think it's great to have that opportunity, but it's pretty expensive. Of course, many jobs require that piece of paper, even though it's often said that the book learning isn't much use in the real world. Really, I think that a lot of the pressure to go to college is a scam, a way for banks and others to make money from loans and textbooks, and i think parents and high school students should do an objective cost-benefit analysis and let go of the myth that if one does not go to college, one is not an educated person.
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