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    What To Consider if You're Considering College — Taking Action
    What To Consider if You're Considering College — Taking Action
    What To Consider if You're Considering College — Taking Action
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    What To Consider if You're Considering College — Taking Action

    By Bill Morrison and Ken S. Coates

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    About this ebook

    Going to college used to be a passport to future success, but that's no longer the case. For some students, it's still a good choice that leads to a successful career after graduation, but for many their degrees are worthless pieces of paper. Choose the wrong program and graduation is more likely to lead to disillusionment and debt than a steady paycheque.

    Yet parents, guidance counselors, and politicians still push higher education as if it's the only option for building a secure future. In this book, Ken S. Coates and Bill Morrison set out to explore the many educational opportunities and career paths open to Canadian high-school students and those in their twenties. This book is designed to help young adults decide whether to pursue a degree, enrol for skills training, or investigate one of the many other options that are available.

    In this special excerpt, we consider the world outside academia and some real-world options, such as: 1. Volunteering as a Launch Pad, 2. Travel: Discover the World, 3. Entrepreneurship: Why Wait to Be Your Own Boss? 4. Give Work a Chance, and 5. Apprenticeship and the Skilled Trades. This book will help you consider all the options in a clear, rational way.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDundurn
    Release dateMay 23, 2015
    ISBN9781459730168
    What To Consider if You're Considering College — Taking Action

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      Book preview

      What To Consider if You're Considering College — Taking Action - Bill Morrison

      Columbia

      Introduction

      So you’re thinking of going to college.

      STOP! Stop right now before reading any further. Ask yourself three crucial questions:

      • Why?

      • Why?

      • Why?

      If you are wondering why we ask this question three times, it’s because it is so vital for your future.

      For those of you just finishing your secondary education, choosing your path after high school is one of the most important decisions you will ever make, perhaps the most important. It’s crazy to make it without giving it serious thought. It’s equally foolish to make it based solely on what other people want you to do, or think you should do. For better or worse, your decision will shape your future in dramatic ways. You need to think long and hard about it. That’s what we want to talk to you about.

      Going to college can be a good choice. But it’s not a good choice for all high school graduates. For some, it can be disastrous — leading to debt, disillusionment, and failure. College is not the only good option open to you. Have you considered

      • Technical college?

      • Two-year colleges?

      • Starting a business?

      • Working for a year or two?

      • Traveling or volunteering?

      • An apprenticeship?

      If you’re listening to the general chatter — particularly from parents, guidance counselors, and politicians — you may believe that college is your only option. It isn’t. For some of you, going to college will be a terrific choice that launches you on a path to happiness and prosperity. For others, it will be an absolutely wrong choice. Many students find out too late that they’ve made a bad decision, and end up back home by Christmas or the spring, poorer and sadder for the experience. Others will slog unhappily to the graduation finish line — only then to discover that they are ill-prepared for the world of work.

      Of course your parents are ambitious for you. They want you to get a job indoors in a comfy office. Their Google and Apple fantasy is as strong as yours, unless you are Ivy League material, in which case they dream of you pulling down a six-figure starting salary from a Wall Street financial institution. Appreciate what your parents have in mind. They don’t want you to end up working outside an office doing a job that involves physical labor — unless, of course, you are working on some climate change, artistic, environmental, or similarly prestigious project. And, let’s be honest, your parents also want you out of the house, preferably before you are thirty, with the money you need to launch yourself into a good life.

      For those of you who already have an undergraduate degree or who find yourselves feeling insecure about your current situation, you may be wondering what to do next. Perhaps the job you were dreaming of hasn’t materialized. You fought through to graduate with a law degree and can’t find a job. Not what you planned for, right? You wanted to be a teacher, but there are so many unemployed teachers in their twenties that it’s impossible to find a teaching job. And if you find a position in one of the country’s cash-starved schools, you find yourself with a low-paying job in difficult conditions. Perhaps you are working in a Starbucks, not a high school. This wasn’t why you borrowed $100,000, why your parents saved for years and fought hard to get you into a prestigious college, or why you spent four years there.

      Should you return to college to get a different, or advanced, degree? Should you go to a technical institution or a community college and qualify for working in a trade? Something must be done: you are on the good side of thirty (but not by much) and your parents are hinting that they’d like to downsize their house. The choices you made after high school have not worked out as you’d hoped. Obviously, you cannot unmake them, but you are young enough to make a new choice.

      Regardless of how you’ve come to this decision point, now is the time to make smart, informed choices. This book will help you make the choice that best suits you; it also will help you prepare to meet the demands of the workforce of today and the next twenty-five years.

      An Uncertain Future

      The future is as uncertain as it has been at any time in the last 150 years. People do not have a clue about what’s to come, though many make money pretending they do. Twenty years ago, the main things that now define your life — smartphones, Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, sexting, on-demand videos, iTunes, eBay, and illegal downloads — simply did not exist. Twenty years from now, who knows? Right now, China is on track to become the world’s largest economy. The United States, the world’s greatest economic power for the entire lifetime of your grandparents and parents, finds itself on shaky ground. You can still see signs of the American dream around you — but don’t for a second believe that Donald Trump is much more than a public relations illusion. Realize too, that despite the self-image of a country that fancies every person can be a billionaire, people such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Zuckerman are very few in number. You might end up like them, but then you might win the lottery too — the odds are about the same.

      The challenges are everywhere. India is on the rise, and the Philippines and Vietnam may not be far behind. Europe, once solid and reliable, is torn by financial crises and social tension. If you think the American job market for young adults is tough these days, you should see how limited the prospects are for your contemporaries in countries such as Spain and Greece.

      In this unstable environment, how do you prepare for a successful future? Join the knowledge economy? Those who talk about it don’t really know if a college degree will give you a good career. That huge demand for skilled trades in the supposedly revitalized manufacturing economy? Don’t count on it. Most of the manufacturing coming back to the United States is either high technology–based or non-union or both. The coming flood of retirements that will create hundreds of openings for young people? Not with middle-class jobs disappearing so fast and the value of pensions collapsing. Far too many grandparents are heading back into the workforce instead of enjoying the leisurely retirement they had planned. At least, the experts say, the service economy will remain strong — but will it? And if it does, how many high-paying jobs do you expect to find in the restaurant, hotel, car rental, and tourism industries? Look at the minimum wages in the different states. Yes, Seattle is talking about $15 an hour, but the federal minimum wage as of this writing is $7.25 an hour, and many service jobs don’t pay much more than that. Many young people think it’s cool to be a barista, and perhaps it is: we aren’t experts on cool. Starbucks pays $9 to $12 an hour, depending on location. You want a career as a barista? We don’t knock the job; someone has to do it, but will it be you? Can you live on your own for $10 an hour? Look at house prices and imagine how far $20,000 a year will take you. Things are worse in other sectors

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