Starting back in the 1970s, Americans got into the bad habit of assuming that going to college was a “no brainer.” People were told that just getting a college degree would open up the doors to a successful life. Cost? Don’t worry about it! Uncle Sam will let you borrow the money, and it’s “good debt.”
That mindset led to lots of bad decisions. Many students coasted through college, learning little but piling up debt.
In today’s Martin Center article, Laurence Peterson offers a lot of sound advice on how to get more value for less money.
He writes, “Too many students blindly assume a college education will produce a degree creating professional career options. Unfortunately, nothing is farther from the truth. Many college degrees do not provide graduates with skills that are valued and needed in the workplace. Instead, recent graduates often must undergo expensive postgraduate education to become employable. Even then, many graduate degrees have negative ROIs. Economists say the future of work is not about college degrees but job skills.”
Peterson suggests that students choose a major right away (even though at some schools, they’re encouraged to wait a year) and to choose one that is apt to lead to career skills. They can also take an extra course each semester at no added cost and therefore graduate early.
Smart students will look for “industry-vetted” programs. Peterson explains, “A relatively new concept involves industry-vetted courses and certificate programs, where the curriculum has been reviewed, critiqued, and approved in advance by hiring managers. Such programs provide graduates with many skills related to their degrees that have value in the workplace and often lead directly to employment, sometimes even before graduation.”
To those points, I would add that it’s a mistake to assume that the more “prestigious” school is necessarily better.