So why is there demand for education if it's so unnecessary? Because make no mistake: employers do want smart employees. You don't want to hire someone to whom you have to explain something three times before he or she gets it. Or worse, you don't want to hire someone who will never be able to grasp that thing, due to inferior reasoning ability. As a result, a college degree has become a proxy for determining whether a job applicant has a minimum level of intelligence necessary to perform a job. But with many private college educations exceeding $120,000 these days, that's a pretty expensive means for identifying adequate intelligence.
Is college a good idea? It can be, for a host of reasons. Education, in and of itself, can be a good thing (as long as it's not indoctrination, as mine was). It can be a stepping stone for a life of independence. It's a great place to meet people, and especially smart people, if one happens to be smart.
But many of those goals can be met in other ways, and I certainly would never go into major debt for a college education! If only employers would come up with another way to hire people...
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
The school year will be winding up soon, so high school seniors are planning their futures. And the default for many students is university.
Now university is worth it if you’re aiming for a specific job. And learning is certainly a worthy endeavour on its own. Nevertheless, I worry that we’re pushing so many kids into the university stream without giving them other options.
It seems that every parent yearns for that university degree for their child, but I know many credentialed twenty-somethings currently working in Chapters or fast food joints. Not too many jobs exist for History majors or Sociology majors or English literature majors. And meanwhile the kids have spent close to $100,000, and foregone the income they could have earned some other way.
It’s that other way that Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy from the TV series, wants people to start thinking seriously about. Dirty jobs can be incredibly rewarding, physically fun, and get us back in touch with the world around us. We live our lives with iPhones and Blackberries, trying to keep connected to each other. But in the meantime we’ve lost touch with the physical side of life; we don’t use our brawn, thinking the brain is all that matters.
And we forget that the brain is actually involved in many dirty jobs. In one video I recently watched of Mike Rowe, he was working on a sheep farm when it came time to castrate the male lambs. The farmer showed him how to do it: you stick the testicles between your teeth and let ‘er rip.
Rowe was appalled. He knew the correct and humane way to do it (based on research he did on his Blackberry) was to put an elastic band around said body part until it swelled up and fell off on its own.
The farmer invited him to do it, and so he banded the lamb. The lamb soon became immobilized with pain and fell down, panting. On the other hand, the lamb who had undergone the bite and rip procedure was already trotting off with his companions, as if nothing had happened.
And Rowe realized that much of what he knew about the world was wrong. He called that moment a turning point. What we have done, he says, is to assume that the people that work in front of computers are smart, while the people who do the real work out in the world are dumb. And in reality, it’s the people who do the real work who actually often understand the world better.
What we need, Rowe says, is a PR campaign for manual labour. We need a PR campaign that says hard work is actually beneficial, and fun, and rewarding. To climb into bed at the end of a day feeling as if you have done a good day’s work isn’t something to be ashamed of; it’s something to be proud of.
Our society seems to believe that hard work is something that one must avoid at all costs. We must have cushy jobs that are inside, in front of a computer screen, accompanied by tons of meetings. For most university students, that is what their futures will be. For many that will be a good life. But not for all.
Our high school students need to know that a life of manual, skilled labour is something that can be very rewarding psychologically, physically, and financially. It isn’t something to steer clear of. And maybe if we began to praise those dirty jobs more, we’d get back to our roots of what’s really important, and we’d stop being such pretentious snobs. It’s worth a try.
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A little while ago I started a firestorm when I wrote about planning my daughter's future--and how we should consider a career choice that would make it easier to stay home with kids, should she choose to do that.
It made me think back to my own decision to stay at home, which was definitely NOT something I thought I would be doing. And then I read this article called "Why I'm at Home" by an educated woman whose journey sounds identical to mine. Heather Koerner writes,
I'm sure it started in my own day care experience. After attending a group day care for much of my childhood, I took different jobs during my college breaks as a child care worker and nanny. Though most of my co-workers were nice, sweet ladies who tried to make the day pleasant for kids, I still began to see that there was something unique and special about a parent's love that a child care worker could never duplicate. Even with my one-on-one time as a nanny, I saw that, as much as I cared about my job, it was still that — a job.
But what about me, I would wonder. I'm a well-adjusted, productive member of society and I came through day care just fine. What's the problem?
I thought about that — hard. Then the answer came to me in three little words: in spite of. Day care had not made my childhood happy. My childhood was happy in spite of my time in day care. It was my parents' individual attention each night and on weekends that helped me to thrive. It wasn't that the days were always bad, but that my parents' love was always best.
I started to ask myself the hard questions: Who is going to raise my child someday? Will the nights and weekends be enough?
Her whole article is really worth reading, but I thought I'd take her example and tell you all my journey.
My earliest memories are of lying on a cot in a day care, with a teacher rubbing my back. I loved that teacher. I was scared of everyone else (even the other kids), but that teacher (I believe she was an immigrant from Romania who didn't speak much English) loved me and I loved her. She was the only good thing about day care. I remember crying until she would hold my hand. I remember hiding in corners. I remember being forced to eat cheese (I HATE cheese).
I was in day care because my father had left us and my mother had to work. She had looked into becoming a foster parent to see if that could give us enough money so she could stay home, and it didn't. So she hated to leave me behind, and she marched off to work.
I grew up with a single, professional mother who worked hard to provide. The rest of my relatives (most of whom are women; we don't do boys in my family) also are very well educated, most with at least a Master's degree. My aunt had worked part time as a doctor, with a nanny the other half of the time. My role models were not stay at home moms.
So I always assumed I would be a professor. I would work part-time, write amazing papers, and still have summers off and time with the kids.
I pursued higher education, and did well. I earned scholarships. I kept wracking up degrees (I have three). We married in our fourth year of university, because we knew there was no point in waiting; we both would be in school for years. And I was earning enough money in graduate scholarships and research positions that we didn't really need to wait.
My husband was from a blue collar family. His mom had stayed home, and that was all he knew. I always felt sorry for her that she didn't have more opportunities (I thought of her as a "stay at home mom" then, as a category, not really as the mom I know now). I was enlightened. I could take on the world, and the kids would fit right in!
Keith wasn't so sure, but he held back his reservations because how can you argue against a woman working? That would be sexist.
And so it was that I started applying for Ph.D. positions in Toronto, where Keith would be doing his residency in pediatrics. I won another scholarship. I was on the right track.
Then one day I had to deliver a presentation to my Master's class about a certain sociologist. I couldn't understand a word this guy was talking about. It was all so vague, and airy fairy, and convuluted, but I had to present it, so I did the best I could.
At the end of the presentation everyone applauded. I got 100%. The professor said that was the best he'd ever seen; that I just made Baudrillard come to life and explained him so well.
AND I STILL HAD ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT.
Excuse the term, but there is no other adequate substitute: I had BS'ed my way through. And everyone thought it was great.
It became clear to me that the professor didn't know what this guy was talking about, either (even though the professor was a specialist in this particular guy). And I thought to myself: do I really want to spend my life in academia, pretending the whole time?
Five minutes after that presentation I called Keith and said, "let's get pregnant instead."
And so ended my academic career.
We did get pregnant, and we moved to Toronto. I was so sick with Rebecca. Have you ever just prayed to throw up? I prayed that prayer straight for nine months and I never did. With Katie I could throw up like clockwork, every morning at 8:30, and felt so much better. It is way worse to not throw up than to throw up.
But in the meantime, even though I had decided to have kids and I had decided not to pursue a Ph.D., I hadn't really decided anything else. My future was still open.
And in Toronto, I had a job working with a consultant company doing their graphic design and databases. It paid fairly well, but it was a half hour subway ride away.
After doing this for three months (during which I had become indispensable), I sat on the subway one morning, praying not to puke before I got off (at which point I would begin the prayer again that I would indeed puke), and I asked myself, "why am I doing this? Why am I going on a subway an hour a day when I feel horrible?" We didn't really need the money. And I felt lousy.
So I quit. And was promptly hired to work from home by the same company, which I did for the next five years, off an on, just on little projects.
Then Rebecca was born, and I started going out to parks with her, and playing with her, and having a grand old time. And I realized, I don't want to go to work. I want to stay right where I am.
My commitment to being a stay at home mom came gradually. It wasn't something I ever thought I'd do. I was following the path I was told I should follow: I was getting an education, I was working, I was making something of myself. And even though it was silly, I never questioned it until a breaking point came, and then I realized, "I don't have to do this. No one is making me do this except for me."
So we decided not to buy a car. We didn't buy a house. We shopped at thrift stores and didn't go out to eat very much. We saved as much as we could, and then we moved to a cheaper city, where Keith's family was, as soon as we could get out of Toronto. HIs classmates were buying homes and cars and everything expensive, and we were living in a small apartment. But we had a great time, and the lack of money didn't really bother us at all.
I would occasionally chat with his female colleagues about the problems they were having with their nannies, who didn't like to stay after 6, and who didn't like to do housework. Why couldn't these women mop the floors and care for the kids and get dinner ready? Was that too much to ask?
And I would listen and wonder what planet they were on, because I didn't have time to do most of that, either. I spent a lot of the time out with my kids, because the apartment was small. She was asking the nanny to stop playing with the kids and clean the house all day. And then I just stopped listening.
I'm like Heather, who wrote that first article. I'm okay in spite of the day care, not because of it. But I don't want my kids to grow up and be okay in spite of anything. I want to give them the best, and the best is me. They need their mom.
I know some women will make different choices, but I guess my question is this: are they really your choices? I never really understood that staying at home was a valid choice. I never even really made it; I drifted into it, little by little. It was only in retrospect that I am passionate about it. I did what I was supposed to do, and didn't think twice about it. Is that really a choice?
When women sign up for a postgraduate degree, are they making a true choice for themselves, or are they doing what is expected of them? When they go back to work after the baby comes, is it a true choice, or have they never really thought that maybe there is an alternative?
It sounds silly, but I never saw the alternative. I always thought I'd get a Ph.D. because that's what you're supposed to do. So I'd encourage young women everywhere: MAKE A CHOICE. A real choice. Recognize that you could honestly do either: you could have a career, or you could stay at home. They both are legitimate. (I know some Christians argue the career isn't, but just let that go for a minute for the sake of argument).
They are not both presented as legitimate in our education system or in many of our families. Instead, it's assumed that women will work, will make a ton of money, will make a name for themselves. And thus, staying at home isn't really a choice.
But it is. It is your life. What do you want to do with it? Or more importantly, what is God calling you to do with it? Wrestle it out. I'm not going to tell you what to do, because I believe God can do that when you go to Him. All I'm going to say is that you have permission to make a choice. You do not HAVE to pursue a career. You do not HAVE to pursue a ton of education. You can choose, either way, to go the way that God wants you to go.
Are you open to leaving it in His hands, and maybe bucking the tide? I hope you are. It was so freeing once I said, I can make my own path in my life. And I'm so glad I did.
I have been thinking a lot lately that the majority of my main parenting role is behind me. And I find myself mourning the loss, a little bit.
You see, last week my husband took my daughter out driving for the first time (and she did quite well!). She's turning 16 this week, and she'll be out of the house in two years.
I've found myself waking up in the middle night, dreams of my girls as toddlers (and of the baby boy that I lost) dancing on the edges of my brain. It's really hitting me that they will be launching out on their own soon.
And so perhaps it's been natural that I've been thinking and praying about what to launch them to. Now perhaps the title of my post is not a fair one, for I do feel that children should decide their own future, and not necessarily do what their parents tell them. But at the same time, our job is to advise, and so I am thinking about how to advise them.
When I was growing up, we were so focused on "what you want to be", by which we meant "what job you want to have", as if that was all there was to life. You had to settle on a career, and then other things would fit in around it.
In retrospect, I find that extremely silly. I married a doctor, and we have seen family members and friends also go into medicine, with its at least eight years of training, and nonstop studying and stress, and then find out that they just don't like doing call and being away from their families so much. And so they try to work part-time, or cut back, and find it's really difficult. But how do you give up on a career you spent eight years training for--eight hard years?
What matters to you as an adult is not what career you have as much as the kind of life you have, and where you want to spend your time. Some careers demand much more of you than others. They may also pay more, and let you have a certain material lifestyle, but they eat you up and spit you out, too.
Planning your life based on what career you're suited for, then, doesn't necessarily make you happy or fulfilled. It is so much more important to figure out what your values are, and where you want to spend your time, and what kind of family you will want, and only THEN figure out what job you want. Because for most of us, family will come before job.
Unfortunately, schools and universities spend almost no time talking about how you will build a family and all their time instead preparing kids for entrance tests and pushing them towards certain careers. But what if kids don't want those careers?
And so, coming from a highly educated family, I have begun to ask if I really want my children to be as highly educated--or, if so, what the purpose of education really is. And what do I want to advise them to do?
I'm raising girls, and so my advice list is very different than if I were raising boys. This doesn't seem fair I know, but I think it is reality. Most women want to stay home with their children. Most men do not. When they take surveys of working people and ask, "would you rather work less so that you can have more time with family?", the vast majority of women say yes. The vast majority of men say no. If most working women are unsatisfied, should this not count for something? Should we start asking about why and how we push girls into certain careers, then?
Of course it would be nice if everyone could work less, but practically it doesn't work that way usually. Someone has to make the money, and someone has to stay with the kids, and it's just easier if one person does one thing and the other does the other. I've known couples who have each worked half time, and that's great, too. But it's not that common.
And if most women want to stay home with their kids, and if we agree that a parent at home is superior to day care, then surely this must influence how we raise our girls?
Therefore, I'm considering these factors:
1. My daughters may have to provide for themselves for a time, or perhaps forever if they don't marry. Even if they do marry, they may have to support that husband while he's in training (I did), or be the sole support during times of unemployment or illness. Also, not to be pessimistic, but many women marry believing their husbands will love them forever, only to be abandoned. Therefore, they must have a skill that they could use to make an income. They must be trained in something that they enjoy, that they are suited for, and that matches their Christian values in some way.
2. At the same time, they should not train for a skill that would, if practiced, make it virtually impossible for them to stay home with their children. They should not spend years and years in training for something that they would, by nature of the job, have to quit if they wanted to stay home with their children. Therefore, dentistry, medicine, even teaching aren't necessarily high on the list.
3. Instead, we should steer towards jobs which are flexible and which allow part-time or even at-home work. Things like pharmacy, accounting, optometry, nursing, counseling, speech therapy, clinical psychologist, etc. etc. are closer to what they might do, because all of those jobs have part-time options (you could work a few nights a week if the family needed the income, or you could work from home).
4. University should be seen as a place to make good friends that will likely be lifelong, and so university should thus be chosen based on the type of student that is there far more than the quality of the particular program, since in the long run, who one marries and who one's friends are are of infinite more importance. For instance, I'm looking at universities for my daughter, and we're concentrating on cities with amazing churches for college & career groups, that offer shuttle services for church. We're looking at universities with strong Christian groups on campus. We're looking at places close enough that she could come home occasionally.
5. Any higher education should not assume an inordinate amount of debt, because then you have to devote your first decade of working to paying off that debt, rather than saving for a house so that it's easier to stay home with kids.
6. Entrepreneurial skills are extremely undertaught in schools, and necessary in life. Probably the best option my girls have is to figure out some sort of business they could do from home, so steering them in that direction is another thing I'm doing. We're looking at what skills the kids have, and what interests they have, that could turn into a business (after all, that's what I've done with my writing and speaking).
How would this differ for boys? Because a boy likely won't choose to stay at home as readily as a girl will want to, he could go into other careers like medicine more easily. But the other things are pretty much the same.
One last thing: it pains me to say that I am steering my girls away from certain educational opportunities, simply because they are girls. But my girls also agree. The number one thing they want in life is to marry and have kids. Most girls are the same way. And yet schools, and many parents, tend to turn to these girls and "pooh pooh" these desires and tell them they should aim for the sky anyway in terms of careers.
If my daughter honestly felt called to be a doctor, I would of course encourage her, because how do I know God isn't calling her to that? But since neither feels that calling (perhaps because they see how hard their dad works), I'd rather steer them towards a career goal that will mesh with their desires for a family, and their calling as mothers, which I still believe is different from a calling for fathers. I don't see men wrestling with the question of whether or not to work the way women do. It's time that culture admitted this and helped girls make smarter choices, before they wind up $200,000 in debt to train for a career they ultimately don't want.
I have seven years of university behind me, and while I don't exactly regret those years, I also didn't really use that education in what I'm doing now, and I'm not sure how useful much of it was. I met some amazing people (and married one of them), and I learned how to write. But I have learned much more since leaving university (I didn't realize how anti-truth universities really are until I got there and learned that "everything is relative"), and I know so much more about history and culture and literature and life just in my own reading than I ever learned at university. I had so many friends in the Ph.D. programs at those universities, and of them all, I can tell you that the men are still working in their fields, while all the women, with the exception of one, are not. They stopped working to stay home with their kids, and then found they couldn't keep up with the research demands a career in academia had.
I think we push women far too quickly into career decisions without giving enough thought to what kind of life they really want to lead. If a girl wants to stay home, is that so wrong? And should that not be factored in?
And so I am here, thinking about what will happen when my baby is a mother, because, at 16, she is closer to her years of having babies than I am to those years past. This is a strange position to be in--I am closer to my grandchildren as babies than I am to my children as babies, most likely. And so I look ahead, and pray, and plan.
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
As the academic year opens, our centres of higher learning are filled with idealistic young people who yearn to “make a difference” in this world. Some will become teachers, or social workers, or public defenders. Others will work in international development, or health care, or even politics. These are all very worthy pursuits.
However, they are not the only worthy pursuits. When we think of “public good”, we naturally turn to professions which aren’t supposed to make a profit. And yet many who have not laboured for the government or for charities have also improved our world.
Think of the person who invented bicycle helmets, or car seats or air bags. Did they not make the world a better place? What about the new drugs that reduce blood pressure, slow the onset of MS, or control seizures? Have they not increased the sum of happiness in the world?
Last year, Norman Borlaug passed away. He is estimated to have saved more lives than any other human being in history, and yet you’ve likely never heard of him. He researched and discovered out how to create high yield, disease resistant crops, increasing the yield in places like India and Pakistan fivefold. His research launched the modern “Green Revolution”, and prevented the population bomb that was widely forecasted in the 1960s from exploding. Because of his new farming techniques, larger populations could thrive. And yet he was not employed by the government. He did not take politics or social work in university. He took forestry and plant pathology, and he worked for Dupont before moving to a Foundation.
When my mother bought our first microwave back in 1983 it cost $500. Our current microwave is larger and cost half of that, despite inflation. The companies who were able to produce cheap microwaves have made this world a better place, too. The companies who created flame retardant clothing, or refrigerators, or even certain cars have also made our world safer.
Perhaps we should stop thinking of “public service” as something which one can only do if one works in typical “caring” fields. After all, has not Thomas Edison done as much to help the world as your average teacher, if not more? Have not the cell phone companies, which have allowed African countries conduct business, even in the absence of landlines, done as much good for that continent as the NGOs?
I am not arguing against NGOs. I’ve worked for some myself, and I plan to keep on doing so. It is just that we create a false dichotomy that goes something like this: profit is bad, nonprofit is good. If you want to change the world, you must do so in the nonprofit sector.
I don’t believe it. I think the business world needs just as many idealistic young people as the nonprofit world does. Many technological advances done by business, and motivated by profit, have made this world a better place. But even if the product itself is not revolutionary, is not the entrepreneur who starts a cement company that employs two hundred, or a businessperson who starts a plumbing company that is reliable and honest, also contributing to our world?
Kudos to young people who want to leave their mark in a positive way. We need more people like you. It’s just that we need you everywhere, and not only in the typically caring professions. So if you’re unsure of what you should do, consider Science or Business or the trades along with social work. They’re worthwhile pursuits, too, and we could use people with big hearts and big plans everywhere.
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My friend Terry sometimes writes Monday Musings, but it's not Monday, so I thought I'd write a "Thursday Thoughts" and fill you in on some of the things I've recently saved to my Delicious folder to read again soon.
1. Do you all need some encouragement today? Then pull up a coffee and read these posts--some funny, some poignant, but all will make you feel better about life:
2. The Future of Education: I don't know what education will look like in twenty years, but I know it won't look like it does now. It's too expensive, and it's not working. Kids aren't learning enough in school, and university, at least liberal arts programs, doesn't provide enough bang for its buck. My daughter takes online high school courses and earns credits for them, and I can just imagine how much money the school board is saving by not having a physical classroom. I'm sure we're moving in that direction.
But in the meantime, here are two articles that I found interesting together: First, Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds asks if higher education's bubble is about to burst. I say yes. And second, here's a guy who has millions of YouTube hits for his 10 minute educational videos on just about every subject. He really teaches. And it's not through a college. I love education, but the thought that it has to be delivered today exactly the way it was 200 years ago is crazy. And too expensive. This guy proves it.
3. A liberal writes about howpeace activists may have blood on their hands. Interesting historical perspective. Some stuff there I didn't know about the 1930s. And it's interesting given that the author of this article isn't a "right winger".
I tend to agree with this. I find it amazing how many Christians, for instance, wear Che Guevera T-shirts, seemingly not caring that the guy murdered Christians. Just because he did it for communism, it somehow makes it okay. But do Christians realize that all communist regimes have targeted Christians? Do Christians realize that right now China does just that? Why is it that we don't hold people to account for making excuses for foreign governments who do horrible things?
I'm all for helping the poor and for social justice, but I think God calls us to do that on an individual basis. He doesn't ask government to enforce it, because then government becomes tyrranical. We should all be giving to others. We should all be helping those in need. Perhaps if we were busy do that, we'd stop silly political squabbling and actually fix the world.
4. Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder. My husband was away last week for work, and it reminded me why I so appreciate him. The fire alarm started to beep with a low battery warning, and do you think the girls and I could figure out where the battery went? After researching it on the web, I found where the battery case was supposed to be--and then couldn't open it. After much prying we finally got it open (with three of us balancing on a chair, not smart), and removed that horrid battery.
And the thing kept beeping. It's wired in electrically, so it beeps if there's no battery, too. I don't get that. If it's wired in electrically, why does it need a battery? So I had to go out and buy another nine volt, and then we tried to put it back in. And we did. And it kept beeping. We were doing it wrong. So Katie tried it. And I tried it. And Becca tried it again. Still beeping.
Then Becca figured out a miraculous way to disconnect the whole thing from the electrical system, and so the fire alarm now sits on my husband's bedside table, waiting for him to come home.
That same day I had a phone call from my bank telling me my credit card had been hijacked. And we can't get the window in our laundry room closed because the little mechanism for holding it shut is broken. And it was freezing and raining that day.
So I want my husband home! At least he can close a window and fix a battery.
5. Abigail Adams. We visited the homes of John and Abigail Adams when we visited Massachusetts a year ago, and I just finished reading a biography on Abigail Adams last week. It was really interesting. Not riveting, but interesting to see how tough her life was. They were separated so much, she and John, while he was a politician and she was caring for their farm.
This whole idea that we are to spend our lives under the same roof as our husbands at all times is really quite a luxury. When travel was so difficult in earlier times, men often spent weeks and months away from home. In other parts of the world, people travel for work. Last week, two of my friends left for tours of duty in Afghanistan. Again, it made me grateful for my husband and for the blessing of living with him, under the same ceiling. Even if said ceiling is temporarily missing a smoke detector.
She also reminded me how productive women had to be in other eras. You worked or things just didn't get done--and there was so much to get done. She spent so much time in correspondence, and planning parties (which she detested), and caring for her family, even once her children were grown. She made the most of her time on earth.
And even though I'm Canadian, I still get goosebumps when I read about John Adams' and Thomas Jefferson's death. To think they both died on the same day, 50 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. God smiled on America; there can be no other explanation.
6. I've been writing a lot about wedding nights and honeymoons lately, and it's taken me back to my own. And to tell you the truth, they weren't that great. Life is wonderful with my husband now; it wasn't then.
And I've been thinking about how sometimes we have to get over these romantic fantasies that we have, that we build up in our minds. I think I'll write a longer post about this later, but too often we women build things up in our heads so much that we're inevitably disappointed. I'm not saying that we should never want something so that we'll never be disappointed; only that too often what we want isn't realistic, or has a great chance of not actually occurring. And then how will we react? We need to learn to be grateful for what we have, and not always try to get the romantic fairytale. Ironically, that makes the fairytale more likely!
That's about all I'm thinking right now, as I desperately spend the last day I have to edit my three chapters before sending them in. Pray that I make good decisions today so that my arguments and thoughts flow clearly on the page!
What about you? What's been up with you this week?
I've had a lot of incoming links to my blog post a while ago about whether or not it makes sense to incur so much college debt.
My thinking: if you're into university for the experience, and you have the money, it may be okay. If you're in it for a specific career that requires it, okay. If you expect that you'll take liberal arts and then be able to get a good paying job, forget it.
I had an email from Marc Scheer, the author of No Sucker Left Behind, who blogs about this very thing. Here's a recent post which is fascinating:
the average college grad does not financially catch up to a same-aged high school grad until they are both aged 33. Those who have higher than average debt, lower than average salaries, or go to grad school may not catch up until they are in their 40's....
In addition, after taxes, a new college grad only earns about $5,000 more per year than a same-aged high school grad. This is why it takes so long to catch up. My book features a nifty chart that displays all of this year by year. Even at the age of 40, an average college grad is 'only' $100,000 ahead of a same-aged high school grad. That's a decent amount of money, but it's much less than people expect
.
Interesting. Find out more about his book here:
And remember: don't send your child to college unless you have the money, have a plan, feeling a calling, and have prayed A LOT!
Lots in the news lately about the crushing debt college graduates have. Here's one:
And in July, a new federal program that allows former students to cap their monthly loan payments at 15 percent of their income kicks in. The program is designed to provide relief to graduates who enter traditionally lower-paying sectors like teaching or social work. In some fields, public service loan forgiveness will be available after 10 years of payments, and graduates working in any field will have their remaining balances forgiven after 25 years.
"Graduates should look into all their options," Draut said. Income-based repayment can be a lifeline for some graduates, she said, and the 25-year limit provides light at the end of the tunnel.
Look, I don't mean to be sadistic. But if they lower the interest rates on loans students have to pay, or lower the payments that students have to pay, you CREATE MORE PROBLEMS and EXTEND THE RACKET.
The best way to get rid of the student debt problem is for students to actually feel the consequences of their debt. Then people would start to protest, fewer would go to college, we'd realize how overrated so many degrees are, and people would start businesses and become entrepreneurs again. And maybe companies would stop requiring useless degrees for a job that at one time not too long ago was done by a high school dropout. (I wrote about that here).
It's simple demand and supply. Right now there's high demand, even at ridiculous prices, because we think we need degrees, and governments will bail you out. But if we let people feel the consequences of the debt, we'd lower demand. And then prices would go down.
But if we let students off the hook, we simply increase the amounts colleges can charge, because people think "eventually my debt will be forgiven". And then more and more get into huge debt! We make the problem worse!
And if Congress starts telling banks they can't charge students who are late on their payments high fees, then the banks will start passing those costs on to everyone else.
College debt is a huge problem, but it's not a huge problem because of the banks. It is a huge problem because students are willing to take on that debt in the first place hoping to get jobs which just aren't there. If people truly did the risk/benefit analysis, we'd all be better off.
The only ones who are winning right now are the colleges which teach horribly and fail to prepare students for real life.
It's time we parents stopped shelling out $100,000 for an education that won't really get them anywhere.
Now I'm not against education. My kids will go to university. But they have a plan for a specific career, and we've saved the money for it. I would never let my child get a liberal arts degree on credit with no plan. That's ridiculous. And it's time we North Americans woke up to what a racket most universities are running. And it's time that Congress stopped trying to make it easier for universities to bankrupt us, which is what they're doing if they start lowering interest rates.
The only way to stop the racket is to let students feel the depths of the financial pain. It's cruel, I know. But what else are we going to do?
I'd really like to know what you think. Let's get a debate going! Maybe I'm wrong, but I do think this is getting ridiculous.
Just read an article that said that if you take the money you would spend on a four year liberal arts degree at a private university (say 30,000 a year, including tuition, books, room and board), and invested it when the child is 18,19,20 and 21, by retirement they would have $5,000,000. That's more than most liberal arts gradutes make over their lifetimes.
That made me think a lot. I want my daughter to go to university for a variety of reasons. If she ever wants to become a missionary, for instance, many mission boards require a B.A. But it does give you pause, doesn't it?
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in papers around North America. Here's this week's Reality Check:
With keen university students across the nation participating in gruesome initiation week activities this week, I decided a thought experiment on the value of higher education might be timely. Picture a bright 18-year-old who has been accepted into a high ranking liberal arts program. Instead of attending, though, she hits the job market. In twenty years, do you think there would be a difference in her earning potential from that of the typical high school grad?
I do. Sure she doesn’t have the degree, but her acceptance letter already proved her intelligence and motivation. Perhaps, then, liberal arts university graduates earn more than high school graduates simply due to self-selection. Those who are already inclined to earn more are also the ones who continue to higher education.
Certainly most high paying jobs—and especially those that are attractive to women—do require a degree. But I don’t think it’s because the job intrinsically needs the knowledge one derives from studying “Gendered Alternatives: Science Fiction and Fantasy”, or “Intimacy, Sexuality and Deviance in Early Modern Europe” (two recent courses offered at Queen’s), but because employers require a degree as an elaborate way to uncover good employees. And they assume that university grads are smarter and more motivated than high school grads.
So let’s ask a slightly different question: assuming she is hired in a corporate setting, despite her lack of degree, could she do the job as well as a university graduate?
That’s exactly the scenario educational researcher George Leef posed to several high priced lawyers: take ten students who have been accepted to Harvard Law, but imagine instead that they immediately apprenticed at a prestigious law firm. Would there be any difference in their job performance a decade later versus those who had actually graduated?
All the lawyers said no. But they went even further than that. They said those who had worked with the firm from the start would probably make better lawyers, because they had been trained specifically for the job. It’s not the education from Harvard that makes you a good employee; it’s the fact that you were accepted by Harvard in the first place.
In the 1950s a high school education was sufficient to land most white collar jobs. As more and more people attended university, though, more and more jobs began to require one, even though the skills required by jobs have not changed substantially. We’re just using the university system to vet the best employees.
I’m not sure, however, that this is even the most efficient way to sift through job applicants. Employers need employees with communication skills, problem-solving skills, and good work habits. Do university liberal arts programs even provide these? Hopefully they teach people to write well, but there’s no guarantee that a person who took four years of “Medieval Bodies: Traversing Sex and Gender in the Middle Ages” (at the prestigious Columbia University) will graduate knowing how to write memos and analyze strategic reports.
Recently I was chatting with the affable man who was installing hardwood in our dining room. Turns out he has a university degree in computers, which left him with no job prospects and major debt. So he began to install floors. There’s no training course; you just have to be good at what you do. Now he has his own business, he’s easily supporting his young family, and he’s making far more than he would have made otherwise.
This is a route that’s easily available to men. It’s harder for women for whom the trades aren’t as attractive, and I think that’s one reason the ratio of female to male in universities is now running at around three to two.
But at some point, all of us may start to realize that university is an awfully expensive and inefficient way to identify people who think on their own, write well, and work independently. Higher education still has value for its own sake. But if students’ goals are just to land a better job, perhaps there’s a better way. If we could find another route to credential people, or even just to test those essential skills, without requiring four years of a degree which costs tens of thousands of dollars, we might make life a lot easier for everyone.
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Reality Check, the book, makes great bathroom reading! A collection of 84 of my favorite columns, it's sure to keep you laughing, and make you think! Read more here.
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments on the university post, and for the emails.
I've been thinking more about university over the last few days, and one thing that I can't get over is how feminized they've become, especially the Christian universities. I found one program I really liked that combined missions and classical liberal arts, but the program was 74% female. Do I really want to send my daughters to a place that is 74% female, right at the time of their lives when they should be meeting potential mates?
I know that's a crass way of looking at education, but I can't quite get past it. Especially since many educated girls don't even use their education (I didn't particularly), but use university as a way to get more life experience and meet people. If the main people you meet are female, is that a good thing?
I saw this comment on a blog post about the dearth of males at university, and I thought it was spot on--if you have boys:
1. If you plan to attend college, save your money unless you are planning to major in something useful and pratical. That means a business/finance/accounting field, hard sciences or engineering or the professions. Otherwise, IMHO, you are better off investing that 70K or more for tuition in a home downpayment or in another value-added investment. I would also recommend the skilled trades; we do not produce near enough people who can build, repair or make things. Some of these folks make an excellent living to boot. If you insist on attending college, please consider a community college - they are often better than their more expensive, four-year counterparts, and offer a chance to reality-test your plans before committing to them fully. Lastly, I would recommend the military. I know I’d have grown up a lot quicker and better if I’d joined up as an 18-year old. I tried to join much later, but by then it was too late for me (too old). The military has very generous educational benefits, and often will send you to school FT after you have proven your worth to the service. I know a number of healthcare professionals, for example, who have receieved full-ride scholarships for getting advanced degrees in anesthesia, medicine, etc. Also, highly skilled professions such as aviation draw many of their best people from the military, whose eqpt and opportunities for training are unavailable elsewhere, except at much greater cost.
Unfortunately, girls are less likely to want to do skilled trades or go into the military. So what are we left with? An increasingly gender segregated society for people in their late teens and early twenties. I guess we're left with the local church as the place where Christians can meet, which means that we need much better College & Careers programs.
I know I should just leave my children's futures to God and not worry about it, but I do think about these things. I want to be responsible and steer them in the right direction, though ultimately it's their choice. What do you think?
I've been thinking about higher education quite a bit lately, and I'm quite nervous.
My oldest daughter tends more towards the arts. She's very good at science and math, but I think she'll want to take literature or history or something. I'm hoping to push her towards economics, which has a little bit more scientific basis, but it's difficult.
If she goes to a Christian university, chances are things will be mostly better. But not entirely. The truth is that most of academia has been taken over by an anti-capitalist agenda. Now I'm not particularly pro-conspicuous consumption. I think all of us should be living far more frugally and giving more to the Third World. But when you look at history, that which has brought the most justice and equity and health and standard of living has been capitalism.
And most of academia sees everything through the prism of gender and race oppression. So you don't study Shakespeare anymore. You study the "Queer Themes in Shakespeare".
I immersed myself in liberal university groupthink for seven years. I have two Master's degrees, one in Sociology, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. It made me anti-intellectual. It made me think people were smart as long as they used big words, even if those big words meant nothing.
I have learned far more since graduating just by reading the classics--Adam Smith, Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and of course all the literature classics. In seven years of sociology we never read anything remotely classic. We read all these new theorists who were, in my mind, likely insane.
I remember taking a class on Sociology of the Family. I thought we'd learn about the effects of divorce on children, the prevalence of abuse, the importance of parenting, etc. etc. Instead we learned that women are always oppressed in marriage, we watched a movie where female sociologists in their 60s all said that if they knew at 20 what they knew now, they would have become lesbians and had a much better life. We learned that divorce is liberating, and that women never ever lie about rape and abuse.
(Incidentally, my husband was called in to the hospital at midnight last night for another custody case disguised as an abuse case. I won't go into details, but people lie about their children being abused all the time. I don't know if that's what happened in this case, but he's seen a lot of it, so that the accuser gets sole custody and thus larger support payments. Many parents, of course, do have legitimate abuse issues; some of my close friends have to send their children off to see their abusive exes and it kills them. But let's not kid ourselves and say that all accused abusers are abusers. That's why Keith hates abuse cases; either some parent is abhorently evil and hurt their children; or the other parent is inherently evil and is lying about it. Either way there's evil all over it, and it really bothers him. Especially at midnight).
It took me several years after university to gain my mind back and my critical thinking skills back again. September 11 helped, but I was well on my way before then. That's when I started really reading, though.
And the truth is that I just don't want to shell out $40,000 or more to have my kids learn this junk. But it's so hard to avoid in schools today.
Katie, I think, will go to a Christian university so I won't worry as much. But Rebecca is brilliant. Katie is smart, but she doesn't particularly like intellectual things. Becca does. She's going to need to meet really smart people. And so she's going to need to go to a top university. And that's just hard. In the States you have choices, like Grove City College or Hillsdale. In Canada we don't.
I'm starting to wonder if university is that useful anyway. I bet job experience would be more useful than four years of studying the Queer Themes in Shakespeare or The Sociology of the Family as Seen Through the Simpson's. Or a course on Stephen King. Am I off base here?
I'm writing a column about this later this month, so I'll have to sort out my thoughts. But it does bug me. And I find myself praying about it a lot, though they're still very young.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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