So this is one of those million dollar questions many of our clients that are parents, are thinking of daily when they have teenagers who soon will go off to college, either state schools or private institutions.
The big question is this!, is it worth the money to send my child to a state school for 25.000 dollars a year, or a private for profit school that costs 40.000+ a year for up to 4 years.
So we see that text books have gone up 800% in 40 years time and the medium wage when taking inflation into consideration has gone up 200%.
So the cost of going off to college in the US in 2021 is just insane.
We can see from stats in the past that it has paid off to go to college up to around the 2010, but after the financial crisis in 2008-2011, we can see that the majority of the college graduates from the year 2008-2012 are making less than 40.000 USD a year.
So in the past we saw that a college degree gave you on an average 30.000 USD more per working year from the age of 32 until your retired compared if you only had GED or a high-school diploma.
This has not been the case since 2010, so 2004 was the last year it actually was worth the money taking a business or a law degree, because a lot of jobs got lost in the financial crisis and they never came back!.
So here we have to figure out what the future holds for coming college student.
The scary thing right now is that for profit colleges have switched their teaching into the online format, but are not offering any discounts towards the student.
So it is scary that for profit schools like IVY league schools like Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Yale and many others that have anywhere from 10 to 49 billion dollars in assets will not even lower the tuition cost by half for online learning in a the worst pandemic since 1918 so over 100 years.
So the greed that the for profit schools are showing in this crisis, is just borderline ridiculous to us normal business people.
So from a business standpoint, as business advisers we would not send kids to college in the next 5 years time.
Rather get them into the workforce by different apprentice programs.
If you can have your kid living for free at home for a few years and let them learn a trade profession that would be the best option for families that does not have a lot of money put aside for higher education, and where the student needs to take on high interest loans with a long-term payment plan.
The one exception would be going to MED SCHOOL to become a doctor of some kind.
But a business or a law degree, not to speak about any kind of art degree will not help you land a proper job these days.
Digging yourself into a 100.000 USD debt at the age of 24 knowing that the average salary is 40.000 or less per year as a college graduate is scary regardless of what financial parameters we would be looking at to justify that debt ratio to income.
So the best advice would be to hold off on higher learing, speciallt if you do not have a full college fund that will give you a full debt free ride for 4 years.
Or if you can get scholarships and grants to cover 75% or more of these four years of higher learning.
If you are one of the lucky ones that you have a full college fund waiting for you, do not waist that opportunity on studying something that you have no chance of making a living on in the future.
So if we are goanna recommend a few programs to read that would be nursing ,dentist, doctor and something to do with mental health since we are goanna need a lot of mental help in the world, once the worst of this COVID-19 crisis is somewhat over in the end of next year 2021 or early 2022.
So sorry to burst some bubbles , but right now unless you are picking the right program or you are one of the lucky ones with a college fund, put off college for a few years.
Many plumbers are looking for apprentices since the average age of a plumber is high in the US.
And you can make 120.000 USD a year, as a plumber if you are willing to go out on emergency calls in the evenings, on weekends and even night time.
Where you can easily charge 100-200 dollars an hour.
If you start to work as a plumber, try and find work in an affluent area where the plumbing prices are higher than in low income neighborhoods.
So if you do not want to go into debt and you are willing to learn a trade and work a full days of hard work with your body, you can avoid going into debt and you can also live a good life.
There is always that option that you go to college when you are 30 years of age and you have worked for a good 10 years time and saved up money so you do not have to go into debt.
There are a few upsides to going to college at the age of 30 and that is that you are (hopefully) more mature and you do not waist your time on parties and young adult bullshit , when the cost is 25-45.000 dollars a year to attend.
It is very difficult to have that conversation with a 18-20 Year olds, due to that the brain is not fully developed until around 27 years of age.
So you parents that keep emailing on this topic for next year or for the next few years, here is our answer to that question.
It very much comes down to the dollar, can you do it without student loans and other debts.
So take care out there.
Mrlifeadvise.
