The question is a bit more complex than either author is painting it. It depends on several factors:
1) What you want (or think you want) to do with your life?
2) What degree you want to pursue? and how far are you willing to take it?
3) Are you going for an MRS degree?
4) Once you get out into the field how good are you are your job, and what kind of job you get first?

My bachelors degree was next to useless and it was in Engineering, the most revered of all bachelors (or so I was told). I made more money as an EMT. The masters made an incalculable difference, but for some reason Spelling thinks these should be excluded. My bachelor's degree was the second most expensive investment I have ever had (house being the first) and it was little other than a two use TP reserve. I met my wife and best friends there but a six figure bill for a dating service and social network is a bit freaking steep.

"probably prepares you to earn less money than people who started working right out of high school and started their own businesses." I don't think it's fair to compare the two. If your an entrepreneur the whole game changes completely but then you can use college as networking and then the right liberal arts degree can make you piles of cash. Someone with these skills can use almost anything to make piles of cash.

I went to a 4-year university right out of high school, and I would do things completely differently if I had them to do over again. I grew up in the middle of Booneyville, Iowa and went to an Iowa public university because there was no way in freaking hell I could afford to pay out-of-state tuition. But I would say the experience added up to the equivalent of four more years of high school. I didn't get a big-city living experience, or an experience much different than my previous 18 years, and any overseas study was completely out of the question for financial reasons.

Looking back, what I really needed more than anything back then was to get a job, move out, establilsh some financial independence, and get out from under my parents' thumb. Maybe go live in a city with a college I would want to attend at some point and work on a degree later. I had been out of college for a number of years before I was doing any kind of work that required a degree anyway.

And speaking of which, I was completely inept (at the tender age of 18) when it came to figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. My dad was a carpenter and my mom worked sporadic secretarial type jobs. (There aren't that many employment opportunities in the middle of Booneyville.) I had no clue whatsoever what kinds of career options were available - our guidance counselor was good for helping you fill out financial aid forms (none of which I qualified for) and not much else. So I picked accounting, because all I wanted was to not be broke anymore. Well, accounting sucks, quite frankly. I ended up going back to school later in life and getting a degree in something else so I could finally get a job that didn't make me want to stick a fork in my own ear.

Yes, I would definitely do things differently. I know there are lots of people in the world who would kill or die for the educational opportunities I had. I feel like an ungrateful brat for looking back and viewing most of it as a waste of time and money. But that's the way I feel about it anyway, so oh well.

Depends on what the next step is...working for NASA a grad degree is a plus, starting a business, a degree is not necessary, like Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates or John Carmack.

I got a diploma from a community college in a 2 year program, then I went to university for 3 years and took whatever courses sounded interesting, because I knew a general BA wasn't worth much in the working world. I ended up majoring in Economics, which I found really interesting, who knows why.

I wanted to get a good general education, learn how to learn, challenge myself, and to a certain degree, be able to prove to myself (and others)that I'm not a dumb blonde with big tits (which of course I'm not!).

I don't feel the money was wasted, but since secondary education is heavily subsidized by the government up here, it didn't cost all that much when I was going to school ($1,500 per year).

I love learning new things, so I'm probably similar to Amy in that I read research papers, lots of scientific books, and use the Toronto public library system, which has the same online book ordering and shipping program as LA.

I think there's an interesting conundrum that few seem to want to discuss:

As more and more people get college degrees, each college degree holds less and less value. It used to be that only a few people went to college and thus there was a value of distinction of going to college. But now many employers (trades are a big exception) require college regardless of the fact that you learn very little necessary to perform your job well and you have to be trained to a certain degree anyway. Going to college distinguishes you in almost no way (and the costs are absurd).

I think too many people are encouraged to go to college when for many a trade school would be better.

I agree, flighty - it is beginning to resemble an elaborate and expensive exercise in jumping through hoops. Amy's observation regarding grade-grubbers is spot on, but grade-grubbing is the result of the fact that people have to jump through these hoops just so they can get a job where they won't use the information anyway.

I'm not sure what the answer is, though. Hardly anyone has the start-up capital or experience needed to start their own businesses and become self-employed right out of high school. So, if you want to live indoors, eat food, and GET some work experience, you have to get a job, which in turn usually means dealing with H.R. departments, which are uniquely designed to keep you from getting a job. They usually start out by requiring a degree, right at the top of the page, and won't consider you without one. All of this is designed to weed out and screen applicants, for the sole purpose of making their own lives easier.

I changed career fields (law enforcement to computer science. I've never had a computer spit on me, and you don't have to wear gloves to search for files) and decided to go back to college to learn about computing. I figure my degree got me into the interview room, and past that it's all about personality, performance, and perseverance.

I love alliteration.

"I think too many people are encouraged to go to college when for many a trade school would be better." Unfortunately where I went to high school going to a trade school was seen as the ultimate failure. This is munmentaly stupid for the simple reason that any electrician will make a hell of a lot more than most BA in English. You can be both happy and successful without a degree but this "Harvard or Bust" attitude has lead to bachelor degrees having the same weight as a general high school diploma, trade high schools are different.

"All of this is designed to weed out and screen applicants, for the sole purpose of making their own lives easier." I disagree, weeding out applicants is their job. HR is supposed to look through piles of resumes based on the hiring managers (the person who actually needs help) requirements and handing over those that fit the bill. If they could fill slots with high school grads and pay them less than college grads they would. The mistaken assumption by most people (not just HR) is that having a college degree makes you generally more qualified.

Going to a small midwestern college town for school was a great experience. I don't regret it at all, regardless of the costs.

I started college with the idea of becoming a high school teacher, then halfway through reset my sights on graduate school as prep for college teaching. It worked.

My wife has a bachelor's in music and a nursing certificate from Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

Thing of it is, I made less money as a college teacher with years of experience than some of my students did with BS degrees right out of college. My wife made less than I did. People who entered the job market with BAs didn't make so much as those with BSs, usually. For example, my son has a BA in philosophy from a tony private college, and he is grubbing by on an entry-level journalism job. His wife, also with a BA from the same college, is a Starbucks manager, looking for more interesting (not necessarily more lucrative) work.

But you know what? We appreciate a whole lot of things we wouldn't have known about without college, and things we already knew about, we appreciate in richer ways. We have good conversations. We enjoy our lives. We would all like to be filthy rich, but we've seen what it takes to get that way, and we'd rather not. It takes too much time away from appreciating what we've already got.

So far, I have "invested" 48K into education. If nothing more, at least I got my current job from learning a few things from one class I took. I am taking it really slow, in the hopes of creating my own business. With about five years into a BA in Computer Information Systems and a few attempts at some software engineering projects on the side, it seems that someone would need more of an entrepreneurial mindset (if they want to make the real money) least they just become another (highly educated) but disgruntled employee still wondering why they can't afford that Benz.

The Rich Dad Poor Dad books have great insight into the dynamics of making money.

For 12 years I have had a two hour commute to work (each way!), and have spent much of that time listening to books on tape gleaned from local libraries. A wonderful aspect of library systems these days is that many are linked, and can be accessed over the internet. Books, audio books, videos and music CDs can all be searched for and located in these internet library systems, and shipped to the library of your choice for free (or for a very small fee).

Over the years I have listened to over 600 books on tape, and consider it to be time well spent. (If anyone is interested in seeing my "best of the best" book list, drop me a note and I'll be happy to send it to you.)

I got my first job, when I was 12 years old, babysitting for the parents in my neighborhood, and parleyed my earnings into my own phone (which, at the time, cost $15/month) that I kept until I got out of high school. I got my first "real" job as a waitress at a greasy spoon across the street from my high school; worked the morning rush before school, and then after school, the late lunch/early supper crowd. Temped a lot, various office and factory jobs. Went to a vo-tech school when I got a job as an electrician's apprentice for a couple of years, but didn't get my E-2 because I suck royally at math, I just couldn't get a hold of the square root thing. I can wire in series and in parallel, though. Then I spent a few years at the post office (and believe me, that job sucks so bad I totally understand "going postal" - cliches are based in reality), and shoveling horseshit and giving riding lessons on the side. Sang in a rock band, read tarot cards over the phone and in person, some housekeeping, corporate and private. Right now, I'm an office manager for a biotech company, and am making actually more than enough so that if BF and I ever break up, I can still keep myself and my daughters in our house, with a car, and relatively well-fed and clothed. I like what I'm doing now, but if I ever win the lottery I'm going to start up a riding stable/recording studio combo. And invest in this company. o_O

> I've never had a computer spit
> on me, and you don't have to
> wear gloves to search for files

Well, maybe that the way it is with your system, but over here....

As of last March, the LAPL will charge you a dollar if you place a hold from another branch but don't bother to come by and pick up the book.

Offtopic- Props to London and Paris for interrupting the Olympic parades.

But the torch is in California now... I hope the San Francisco interruptions are even more colorful and instructive. After all, we're Americans... The Big Boys... We taught the world how this whole "freedom" think is done.

Dunno kids, I have a BA in History, and I program computers at a company that throws rockets at the sky. THE most important thing is you cannot get here without a degree in something. It is a prereq. If you have other expreiences and coursework, then the degree doesn't need to be in the field for computers... for engineering, it does. It really, really depends on the field.

BUT and however... is this all about making money? I made a career pitstop in professional photography for 10 years, and for that I didn't need a degree. I would have stayed right there too, had it not been for my responsibilities to my family. So I went and figured out how to make that career change to somthing I was good at with programming. I couldn't have gotten IN to that program w/o a degree though. It was prereq. So I changed from the low paying job that I loved, to a well compensated job that is a well compensated JOB. I know a couple of people who think this is a complete waste of talent, and I tend to agree. But often when you are in the middle of life, you can't just suddenly change. My ex and the state in particular don't care what job I have, only how much money... but I would never make this much as a photographer, unless I was setting the world on fire.

So, at some levels this is all abouthow much you chose to make, and at others the minimum heighth requirement for the ride.

IMPORTANTLY, when you are fresh out of highschool, you are by far in the easiest position to go to college. If you start working right away, you start out on that life, maybe you start a family... and suddenly it's just NEVER the right time to afford, or go to college, and then... you can never step in the same river twice...

"... is this all about making money?"

To an extent, yes - if financial independence is important to you. I knew I didn't want to be a grown woman and have to ask some man for an allowance! And although I've never been interested in having that Benz, or living in a place any nicer than what I have now, I wanted to be able to go places and do things and not have to be pinching pennies all the time.

But once you get past the point where money isn't a problem, it's (for me at least) more about being challenged and busy, solving problems, learning new things, and not being bored at work. (And working someplace where you don't get treated like crap.)

Taking classes in subjects you find interesting and want to learn more about is always worthwhile, as long as you are really learning something in the class that you couldn't learn simply by checking a book out of the library. Otherwise why spend the money?

But most people go to college so they can make decent money someday. I just don't see the point in going through that (not to mention, the whole ridiculous binge drinking college environment, which just prolongs adolescence and is a whole 'nother rant) if you have no idea what you want to pursue. And I think the best way to learn what you want to pursue is to get a cheap pad with a few roommates and work different jobs until you find something you want to stick with. You will be working at entry-level jobs, but people who already have degrees have to spend time in those jobs, too.

Something about this line really irritated me: "If you start working right away, you start out on that life, maybe you start a family... and suddenly it's just NEVER the right time to afford, or go to college, and then... " Nothing personal, SwissArmyD, but what absolute nonsense. You don't just "start a family" without *deciding* to start a family, unless you are too dumb to use birth control.

Also, this line was used on me all the time by people trying to herd me into college, and I was scared into believing them. But I went back to school in my late 30's for another degree (since it was such a waste of time my first time through, because it wasn't where I should have been in the first place), so that is proof that you can do it at any age. Don't ever tell ME there is only one time in your life that it's best to do something. Or that you ever have to decide what you want to do "for the rest of your life." Sometimes the standard old college model seems a better fit for bygone days - you know, back when people actually (giggle) worked for the same company their entire lives.

Humm,
Well I went to school, worked, got married and had kids all at the same time. It took me fifteen years to complete my 218 hours of school. However, I don’t see how I would become a successful oil finder with out it.
I sent both kids to school out of state. One took six and ½ years to finish, he finished back here, and the other is in school. The one that finished just successfully landed a $85 K computer job.
I would say it depends on what you study. Pick something hard.
Vlad, I am not sure why a ms in engineering wouldn’t be rolling in doe. Location?

Nothing personal, SwissArmyD, but what absolute nonsense. You don't just "start a family" without *deciding* to start a family, unless you are too dumb to use birth control.

Steady on, Pirate Jo!

I didn't read SwissArmy's comment as nonsense at all!

I thought the reasonable point was that you don't always realize what even deciding to start a family can make it harder to do later on?

Teenagers just aren't famously brilliant at thinking several steps in advance!

Gog, where did you go to school?

I'm surprised no one mentioned military services. Naval Nuclear Power School is pretty tough, and thousands go to college on the GI Bill and various other schemes. The services will, indeed, wake you up, and show you the difference between "duty" and a "job". Lately I've been sad I'm not still on subs; that's the last time I knew, and I mean knew, what I was doing at any moment. There's a peculiar comfort in that. And the new Virginia class sounds sweet.

"Vlad, I am not sure why a ms in engineering wouldn’t be rolling in doe." No I'm quite comfortable even at an "entry-level" (I don't think that's what it is but that's what they call it) position. The complaint wasn't about the MS it was the BS that was a waste.

"I would say it depends on what you study. Pick something hard." One caveat make sure it's something applicable that you can do with a BS. The core engineering disciplines are fine but Biomed you NEED the MS or your grunt labor, also check the industry reputation for your school. Everyone I have talked to in industry said that those with my BS were great thinker but when they actually had to apply it shit usually caught fire. My class valedictorian had a melt down at a basic lab final.

"Don't ever tell ME there is only one time in your life that it's best to do something." No but there are times when career hopping and going back to school are easier and times when they are harder. Let's use this example, your planning on going back to school but put it off till one of your relatives gets sick (which you have no control over). So now you have to take care of them or at least support the process while trying to focus on school. Can it be done, yup but it's easier when you have less responsibility.

Anti-discrimination lawsuits show that a company cannot write down and give an employment test unless the test has been shown to be non-discriminatory in effect (doesn't screen out blacks, Asians, Indians, women (and so on) at a different effective rate than white males). This is an impossible standard in practice. So, tests are not written down, and interviewers talk about whatever they want.

This poses a problem for employers. How can they select people who will do the best after being hired? With no other way to choose, they first select people who have degrees, and then they highly weight "experience".

Choosing employees this way is very chancy, and many fail. The fact that a failing employee has a good degree is a defense against the mistake of hiring that person. "He had a great degree, he should have done better." Hiring a person without a degree gives no defense later, and is rarely done.

Too bad if you become an expert by self-study. You need the document that says you are good, even if it doesn't bring any special applicable knowledge to the job being applied for.

Schools then turn this around in their claims and advertising. They observe that having a degree is an entry into the corporate, highly paid world. The degree gets the applicant through the door, and those applicants go on to earn more money. But, I haven't seen any evidence that the information taught has anything to do with this.

Even highly technical college degrees, such as Business Administration and Computer Science, are not guaranteed to provide the knowledge that the applicant acually uses in his first jobs. There is aa mad rush to learn the applicable knowledge within the first months of practice.

That is why medicine, a profession where the knowledge and practice truly matter, right from the start, is effectively taught under an apprentice system for many years.

*Gog, where did you go to school?*
No way, Crid. International Men of Mystery don't reveal their Alma Mater.
Too much of a chance my GPA could get into the press, and then it'd be good-bye to all the respect and admiration I've so carefully built up on Amy's blog.

"than people who started working right out of high school and started their own businesses"

Maybe. But how many people are really prepared to do this, right out of High School?

Ooo, film school! I never knew. Want to do some hot splicing for me, Amy?

I’m of two minds about what a degree is worth, much like the thread itself. On one hand, rightly or wrongly, a college degree is a credential that opens a lot of doors that you would be hard-pressed to get through without that piece of paper. On the other hand, a lot of degrees (things like art history, philosophy, anything that ends in -Studies, etc.) have very poor payback compared with going to trade school or getting a job right out of high school. If you went straight to say, Walmart, and worked there for four years, at 22 yrs old you’d have four years work experience, some savings, and probably a promotion. That’s a lot better situation than being 22 with an art history degree, little or no experience, and owing $40,000 in student loans.

Myself, I got through college on GI Bill and working nights in the local post office (yes Flynne, mine was a snakepit too) and got a degree in engineering. Compared to my old buddies back in the P.O., I make about double their salary now. It took six years of the engineering grind in college (while working full time), 26 years working (with a year unemployed), five job changes and four moves to get to this salary, and my job is never secure. Meanwhile, the old P.O. buddies are presently counting down the days to retiring as they hit age 55 with 30 yrs service. Did college pay off for me? Well, nowhere near a million bucks more, maybe half that at best (assuming I live long enough to earn it). However, my electrician friend earns nearly as much as me and a master plumber acquaintance earns more, so even a degree like engineering doesn’t look like such a good investment compared to that. Higher education is a good thing, but I think it’s really oversold.

Personally, I found undergrad to be completely useless. Law School, on the other hand, kicked all kinds of ass.

The best thing that ever happened to my college aged kids was when a certain amount of funds were turned over to them and then they realized that their buying decisions were their own responsibility.
If they they screwed around and didn't study, they were paying the price...out of their own money, not some mysterious never ending stream of income out of mommy and daddy.
There was at least $150k spent on each of my children before they went to college. And if you factor into that donations to the schools that they attendend, it was a lot more. But they never were particularly motivated until they saw the investment in their eduation as their own.
All of this was very removed from my life, as I had to put myself through school.
But I do believe that when students have some skin in the game, their own money is being invested in tuition and they understand that, they take the whole situation more seriously.
Undergrad is fucking expensive...and grad school is even worse.
My personal views are that a university education is a 90% a rip off. Student learn next to nothing and fuck around for 4 years. But, it is the cost of entry into a graduate school which could make a difference to their overall earning potential.
What numerical value do you put on a Harvard Law School or Wharton business degree? And you can't get into either school without a good undergraduate degree. So you have to pay just to get into the graduate program.
Of course, all of this is based on the pathetic fact that without a degree from a major graduate school, you have no chance for entry into the awesome first job which will define your career and future earning potential forever.

"Undergrad is fucking expensive...and grad school is even worse. " My grad degree cost me a fraction of what undergrad cost. But I was someones personal slave, still had to pay for classes and got a stipend that kept me in Ramen Noodles and little else.

"you have no chance for entry into the awesome first job which will define your career and future earning potential forever." That depends on the field. In engineering getting into some rinky dink firm and shining with a mediocre college degree will get you far further than an MIT degree and poor performance. You would think that MIT and poor performance is an oxy moron but theory and application are very different animals.

er, so Pirate Jo, I think my comment hit Jody the right way and you the wrong... the meaning was more simple. It's easy to make course corrections when life is less complicated, when fewer people have calls on your time and energy. It is also easier when you are only deciding for yourself. Once you do start the family, and by this I define as getting hitched or having a very committed significant other, you are now part of a unit, or a team if you will. Now your decisions affect more than just you. That significant other ALSO has dreams and agendas. Compromises are had, and so forth. One of those compromises is often when to have kids.

As complexity builds, decisions get more difficult. NOT impossible, but more difficult. When I made my own career change from photography to programming, there was a lot of sacrifice involved. I was working the 60hr week and going to school. Couple that with a wife and kid, and it was more difficult than it would have been when I was young and single. Since it was the next career change, it was necessary at the time, and who knows there may be another at some time in my career.

The point is that foundationally, it's easy to do school when you are young and single, harder as your lifetime piles up. YMMV natch.

I think you and Jody are right, SwissArmyD - I did take that a little too personally. Sorry if I came across like a harpy.

College was the last place I should have gone when I was 18. I feel very strongly about that. I think it was a waste of four years in the middle of East Bumfuck (two hours from where I grew up) that kept me FROM growing, changing, maturing, and becoming an adult. (Sorry, Gog - not sure where you went to college, but if you are looking for new experiences at college you should probably try to make it a different experience than what you've already been having for 18 years, and that was my situation.)

My parents held my financial dependence over my head like a giant anvil and continued to micromanage my life when I should have been out on my own, making my own decisions. If you can't do that at the age of 18 or 19 then that's all the MORE reason you should get out on your own, instead of living in the coccoon of college.

I majored in something I hated, because I just didn't know any better - if you only think you have three options and hate all of three of them, but you know you still need to earn money somehow, then you just choose one of the three options and try and stick it out. Being in college made me LESS aware of what my options were, whereas actual work experience and contact with people of all age groups would have educated me a lot more.

So I borrowed money and went into debt, thinking this college thing was something I Had To Do, and then got a job I hated making $7.00 an hour. I spent years working two jobs and was in my late 20's before I was in a senior level enough position to need the degree anyway. I finally figured out, after getting some experience at a few different companies under my belt, what I wanted to do for a living. So then I had to go back to school on savings and get another degree so I could switch careers. So your comment that it's harder to do these things later in life is totally spot on! If I'd been working and taking a slower approach toward getting my degree, I probably would have known what I wanted to do and gotten the right degree much sooner.

It's hard to look back upon years of your life and feel like you wasted your time and made the wrong choices, especially if the effects dog your heels for a long time. Of course I only have myself to blame. I was too afraid, naive, sheltered, and had too little self-esteem at the age of 18 to assert myself, gain some independence, and start owning my life. And anyway, the idea of simply moving somewhere, getting a job, and taking classes in the evening never occurred to me.

College is held up as this sacred cow - I mean, who ever heard of someone who regretted going to college??? Well, it is a huge investment of time and money, and if you are clueless and have no idea what you are doing, it's best to wait.

I'd add to the convo, but Pirate Jo's been reading my mind/almost mirroring my experiences right along, so yeah... I'm gonna hang out and watch the show!

"It's hard to look back upon years of your life and feel like you wasted your time and made the wrong choices, especially if the effects dog your heels for a long time. Of course I only have myself to blame." PirateJo

This is true, but it's not just college... when you look back, it's so much easier to see where you went wrong, or might have truned a different corner. On thing that college CAN do sometimes, is allow a person a kind of semi autonomous spot in which to mature enough to make better decisions when they are totally independant. You look back and wish you had been making your own decisions then, but you don't really know what they would have been, if they would have been better. It is possible that what you learned from the experience is what allowed you to make the correct decisions you made later. It's hard to tell.

"It's hard to look back upon years of your life and feel like you wasted your time and made the wrong choices"

My waste of time was deciding to marry a leech for 10 years, after I was all strong and independant, and sure of myself. Now I am using my college edumacation to pay that person off, as if I owe her some kind of life for what she took from mine.

You make the decisions you make at the time with what you know at hand. Sometimes that is parental or societal expectation, sometimes expereince, sometimes gut feel. Maybe you make the wrong one. The thing is, you will never be there to make that decison again, so I believe you can only learn so much from it. The next time is aways different. SO it is my feeling that you shouldn't be too severe with yourself, when looking in hindsight. If it had been that easy to see the right answer then, you would have known it...

Totally true, SwissArmyD. There is only so much you can do about the coulda shoulda woulda's, and you can cross a line from learning from your mistakes to simply beating yourself up. In all honesty, even if I had known at the age of 18 what I know now, I don't think I had the courage to do it back then. Now is a different story.

There's another thing to consider - the fact that we have the Internet now. If I wanted to move to, say, Seattle, I could hop online, apply for ten different jobs, and find a roommate and an apartment in just a couple of hours. Back then it meant trying to subscribe to a Seattle newspaper, doing everything by mail and long-distance phone calls, etc. etc. We have access to a lot more information now than we did back then.

So what if I was naive and insecure when I was a teenager? I was more a product of my upbringing and environment back then. As I got older, I grabbed hold of the reins and chose to be something different. I envy those young kids who emerge from the nest confident and savvy, but I simply wasn't one of them. Oh well!

Good luck with your situation, SwissArmyD. I don't think you will be dealing with it forever.