19
Things That All High School Students Should Be Told Before They Go To College
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Don't you wish that someone
had told you the truth before you went to college? Don't you wish that
someone had told you that college has become a giant money making scam that is
designed to drain as much money out of students and parents as possible?
Yes, college can be a profitable endeavor if you pick your field of study
wisely, if you can get someone else to pay for at least some of it and if you
can actually get a good job in that field when you graduate. But most
high school students are never told to weigh the pros and the cons before they
run off to college. The typical high school student is simply told to get
into the "best school" that he or she can and to take out whatever
loans are "necessary" to pay for that education. Our high
school students are assured that those student loans will be paid back easily
once they get "good jobs" following graduation. But the truth
is that there are some other things that high school students should be told
before they go off to college as well. They should be told that student
loan debt can cripple them financially for decades. They should be told
that the quality of education at most
If we would
just be honest with our high school students ahead of time, it would save many
of them a whole lot of pain later.
Higher
education is not necessarily a bad thing. But these days when it comes to
higher education the goal should be to get as much for your money as you
possibly can. You don't want to end up spending four years of your life
and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree in "art
history" or "political science".
If you are
going to get a college degree, choose a field that will actually advance your
career and try to spend as little as you can. Unless you have wealthy
parents who can pay for it all, the goal should be to make as big of a profit
on your education as possible.
Unfortunately,
most young Americans are not told the truth and they end up falling for the scam
and many of them end up as debt slaves for
decades.
The
following are 19 things that all high school students should be told before
they go to college....
#1 A college
education has become insanely expensive. Over the past 30 years, the cost
of college tuition in the
#2 As costs have risen, so has student borrowing. Sadly,
#3 Unless you have a wealthy parent, there are some schools
that should be avoided like the plague. In the
#4 Our parents and our grandparents paid far less for their
college educations than we do today. Back in 1952, a full year of tuition
at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is over $35,000.
#5 The college textbook industry has become a gigantic money
making scam. It is now common for many college textbooks to be priced
well above $100, and overall the cost of college textbooks has tripled over the
past decade.
#6 At the end of your education, your diploma will likely come
with a debt burden which will hang around your neck for many years to
come. In 2010, the average student loan debt burden at graduation was $25,250.
#7 Student loan debt is one of the greatest debt bubbles the
#8 Americans now
owe more on their student loans than they do on their credit cards. In
fact, the total amount of student loan debt in the
#9 People that
pursue advanced degrees can pile up absolutely enormous amounts of student loan
debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of
#10 The student loan default rate in the
#11 All over
America, websites are connecting young college students desperate for college
cash with "sugar daddies" that are willing to make a
"contribution" to college education in exchange for some
"companionship". The following is from a Huffington
Post article about this disturbing trend....
On a Sunday morning in late May,
Taylor, a 22-year-old student at
Once in
#12 Once you start college, there is a very good chance that you
will not finish. Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent
of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor's
degree within four years.
#13 At most
-"After
two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning;
after four years, 36% showed little change."
-"Students
also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades
ago"
-"35%
of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone."
-"50%
said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than
20 pages"
-"32%
never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages
per week."
#14 The good news is that you will have more free time in
college than you have ever had before. One survey found that
#15 You are probably not going to be able to find a good job
when you graduate. Last year, a staggering 53 percent of all
#16 After you leave college, you are much more likely to get a
crappy job than you are to get a good paying professional job. The
following is an excerpt from a
recent CNBC article....
In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters,
waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists,
chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or
payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000).
More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives
than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).
#17 If you think that you will be able to "beat the
odds" and land the job of your dreams once you graduate from college,
perhaps you should consider these numbers....
-In the
-In the
-In the
#18 College does a
very poor job of preparing people for the "real world". In
fact, one poll found that 70%
of all college graduates wish that they had spent more time
preparing for the "real world" while they were still in school.
#19 Once you
graduate from college, there is a really good chance that you will be moving
back home with Mom and Dad. One recent poll discovered that 29 percent
of all Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are still living with
their parents.
So what do
you think about the state of college education in
