Just How Hard is University to Overcome
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I think the important thing here is that no one is doing these calculations. Students aren't doing them for themselves, and guidance counselors certainly aren't doing them. It's almost criminal. Guidance counselors simply cite that "you'll earn more over time with a degree" and try to get the student in to the most prestigious college they can. High Schools keep track of how many of their graduates are going on to university and it's a feather in your cap if you're doing better than average.
We need to work with young people and support initiatives like Mike Rowe's :
http://profoundlydisconnected.com/ -
@Mike-Davis I like Mike Rowe, didn't know he had a foundation though!
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I must say, if i had not gone to college and racked up debt and started investing at 18 instead of 28, id be retired at 40 as a millionaire. Just a couple hundred dollars a month for ten years adds up quickly, even at the average of 8%.
Making up for that time means i have to put thousands away each month now, which is just about impossible.
Then again, try telling that to an 18 year old kid.
Also, when and why is college so expensive now? As recently as the mid 90s you could go to a state university for like a thousand dollars per quarter, max. Now it is ten times that much. Are kids getting ten times the value? I highly doubt it. -
@momurda said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
Then again, try telling that to an 18 year old kid.
I did once. I told my cousin when he got an inheritance available to him at 18 that he needed to skip college and put the money into retirement immediately. It was enough for him to retire at 65 without putting away another penny for the rest of his life. It was a guarantee of retirement. It would have meant freedom and no stress. He put it into college instead and didn't have quite enough to gradate. And ended up not even finishing college so it was extra bad.
So no luck telling the 18 year old.
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But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
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Colleges are more expensive now because no one is holding them accountable to their value. Look at the cost difference between community college and some private 4 year schools. College can be done for less, but their is no motivation on the part of private schools to do it.
Imagine if they didn't have endless streams of unsecured loans that can never be defaulted on. They would look at each student and figure out the earning potential of the student and then decide if they would be able to pay back the loan. That would be a game changer.
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@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
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@Mike-Davis said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
Colleges are more expensive now because no one is holding them accountable to their value. Look at the cost difference between community college and some private 4 year schools. College can be done for less, but their is no motivation on the part of private schools to do it.
Imagine if they didn't have endless streams of unsecured loans that can never be defaulted on. They would look at each student and figure out the earning potential of the student and then decide if they would be able to pay back the loan. That would be a game changer.
Yep, supply and demand.. the demand is up, so they can charge anything they want!
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@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
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@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
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@Mike-Davis said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
Colleges are more expensive now because no one is holding them accountable to their value.
Just another way of saying that their customers are not discriminating. If the students were looking for value, the colleges would have to deliver. Since the students don't care, the colleges are not going to.
In Scott Adams' terms, the colleges have tapped into the "stupid rich" segment where value has no purpose.
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@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
I have given the same opportunity to about 20 high schoolers at this point. None of them have wanted to stick it through the initial 6 weeks let alone 3 years of internship.
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@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
How is that not fare, though? I started in IT even younger without that advantage. NTG is always trying to bring in people around that age and none will do it. There is no shortage of opportunities for kids that age, just a lack of kids (and their parents) that care. Several students that wanted to do it were blocked by parents - I've found over the years that few people try to sabotage kids' careers like parents.
If he was given some special advantage, that would be different. But other than being allowed to do it, he didn't have that.
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@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
I have given the same opportunity to about 20 high schoolers at this point. None of them have wanted to stick it through the initial 6 weeks let alone 3 years of internship.
Granted 3 years is a bit extreme but. He on his own made the decision after talking to Scott and a few others that college was a waste of time and he was sticking with IT to be able to just join the work force when he was 18. Now he is a PBX engineer. You can talk to a bunch of our PBX customers as they are very happy with him, cause I may or may not be slightly biased. But he was also hired on an outside Engineer's approval as I didn't want to make an internal decision because of that.
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@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
I have given the same opportunity to about 20 high schoolers at this point. None of them have wanted to stick it through the initial 6 weeks let alone 3 years of internship.
And we've reached out to schools to inform them of the opportunities. So many kids just don't want to do it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
I have given the same opportunity to about 20 high schoolers at this point. None of them have wanted to stick it through the initial 6 weeks let alone 3 years of internship.
And we've reached out to schools to inform them of the opportunities. So many kids just don't want to do it.
Most of them are told from before they can remember that they need to go to college. My parents actually regret telling all of us kids that now, after seeing the major problems it causes.
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@travisdh1 said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
I have given the same opportunity to about 20 high schoolers at this point. None of them have wanted to stick it through the initial 6 weeks let alone 3 years of internship.
And we've reached out to schools to inform them of the opportunities. So many kids just don't want to do it.
Most of them are told from before they can remember that they need to go to college. My parents actually regret telling all of us kids that now, after seeing the major problems it causes.
I've had parents say flat out to me that they'd only consider their kids a success if they had degrees and didn't care about their happiness or careers. I've literally had someone's mother say that she's rather her kid have a degree and be jobless forever than to have a great career without a degree.
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@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Minion-Queen said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@Dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
But, I ALSO told a fourteen year old the same thing and he listened. He didn't just listen to "dont' just go to college", he also listened to "don't wait until you are 18 to start your career." He jumped on it immediately at 14 and has been doing IT since then and is now 18. He now has a strong resume, tons of experience and is a non-entry level IT pro at just 18 years old while his friends that want to go into IT but demand to go to college and still three months away from entering college and then need four to six years until they will enter the work force. He won't just have 4-6 years jump on them in this case, but 8-10 years! Eight years longer career is enormous! And making money all that time, never going into any debt or wasting money where it isn't needed.
There is little chance, with that amount of a lead, that any amount of education can ever help his classmates to catch up. It's an insurmountable lead. It is likely going to be six to eight years FROM NOW before the kids in college are hoping to find a job like he has TODAY. That's insane.
Oh, and that's @Mike-Ralston
Would that be the job he has at NTG?
Yup it would.
Him having that job isn't quite the same - the owners are his parents. That being said, being a shop like NTG you probably have a better shot at getting a shot being that young, the larger MSPs would probably usher someone that young right out the door.
How is that not fare, though? I started in IT even younger without that advantage. NTG is always trying to bring in people around that age and none will do it. There is no shortage of opportunities for kids that age, just a lack of kids (and their parents) that care. Several students that wanted to do it were blocked by parents - I've found over the years that few people try to sabotage kids' careers like parents.
If he was given some special advantage, that would be different. But other than being allowed to do it, he didn't have that.
If you think I was in some way declaring it wasn't fair, then we had a communication malfunction.
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Fare meaning " a good comparison". But I think that it is only because he didn't get opportunities that weren't offered, open and turned down by many others looking to work the same career.
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So, some anecdotal evidence that doesn't substantiate anything but is interesting to discuss....
After this thread, @DustinB3403 and I were at a bar and ended up discussing this topic with the bartender. What makes her interesting is that she was the very first person that we had the discussion with (which is important as this is not cherry picking but only not statistically meaningful), and that her case was far, far more dramatically bad than any reasonably considered scenario... by orders of magnitude.
In her case...
- BS Degree in a technical field that requires a degree by law (giving her the best possible chance of the degree paying off for her, vastly beyond fields where degrees are optional.)
- Did half of her education at an excellent, incredibly low cost community college (same one that Dustin and I attended.)
- Loans came out to roughly $100,000 USD (slightly more)
- Her job in her field (which she got immediately) pays $13/hr USD (same as working in a Texas gas station.)
- She is located in New York, one of the highest tax states with medium cost of living (higher than where in Texas you can make $13 running the till at said gas station.)
- Her loans are from three different places with the lowest interest rate being 9.6% and the highest being just over 10%. Vastly higher than we considered for a reasonable range here. We had only said 4.3 - 8.8%. But this is much higher than even the top of our suggested range.
- She did not manage to graduate until she was 25, which I hear is common today, meaning that the time impact of the degree is seven years rather than four.
So things that are important is that her loan is bigger than we assumed would normally happen, the added increase to earnings is thus far a negative one (she earns far less than she would if she didn't use her degree to do her job which she proves by working a second job that pays more and doesn't use the degree and she could have been doing seven years earlier), and the interest rate is more than double the rate that we had assumed.
This one anecdotal account puts her at not just missing average, but missing it by an insane margin. It's only one case, but it was the first one that we ran across to even discuss and the level to which it suggests that the numbers we have above are very conservative is significant (because we assumed this interest rate wasn't even plausible let alone that it would happen three times without exception!)
