How to Ignore the Noise and Make the College Choices Right for You

Posted on September 8, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Control what you can control and forget about the rest of the noise in the higher education debate. Is college too expensive?  Yes. Is college worth it? Yes, if you chose wisely. Can you wind up with $150,000 of debt and no job. Yes, if you chose poorly. Here we explore what you can control to get a better outcome for you while the pundits argue about policy and politics.

Buzz TodayThe Tuition is Too Damn High: Source: The Washington Post. “The Tuition is Too Damn High” is a 10 part series that ran in Wonkblog over two weeks exploring the causes and consequences of – and potential fixes for the skyrocketing costs of higher education. In spite of this general conclusion, the series concludes: “Why College is Still Worth It.” So does college raise incomes? Is it investment good enough to make widely accessible? Yes, it is. Period. Even the widely read Megan McArdle quotes James Heckman, the Nobel Prize – winning economist in Newsweek that “Even with these high prices, you’re finding a high return for individuals who are bright and motivated. If your not college ready, then the answer is no, it’s not worth it.”

The advice the experts quoted in Buzz Today here is wise advice consistent with what I am recommending to you. For you to avoid crushing student debt and end up unemployed you have to make good choices before you go back to school. It is only through these wise choices that you can earn a return on your education investment.

It seems like sound advice. The trick is “how do you do that?” Unfortunately the intense debate among the policy makers and the politicians (Is government aid actually making college more expensive?)  about the issues is of little help for the very personal choices you need to make today.

As Heckman, the Nobel Prize economist implies, you have to begin with yourself. In Your Future is Calling, I give you specific tools to do just that. For now, here are a few tips to take away from this post.

1. Make sure you have the motivation you need to do the work. Simply getting a piece of paper (a degree) is a fool’s goal. In the end, what you can do with you talent and skills from your education will determine your success. After the first interview for a job, nobody cares about the piece of paper (degree) hanging on your home office wall.

2. Do your homework. This means that you must know “who you are”. Once you know the important things about what you are good at and what motivates you (see Buzz Today), you need hard data on jobs and employment opportunities. Here I direct you to objective government data about jobs and income in the US economy. The site O*NET provides the data. Your Future is Calling shows you how to use this important data base to your personal advantage.

Start today. The choices are yours.

Filed Under: Adult learning, Career, College degrees, Debt // Tagged: , , , , , ,

How Employment Links to Career Choices

Posted on July 28, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Change Career – millions are considering it and there are millions of things to consider. Where to begin?

What is changing is the world around you. At your core you are changing very little. Scientists know that by the time you reach adulthood your brain is wired by your experiences.You are who you are. The first challenge is to match who you are with the new opportunities and make the best choice that fits you. There are lots of career choices, many with very attractive salaries and growth opportunities.The US Department of Labor lists almost a thousand in America alone.

Buzz TodaySource: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 195,000 in June (2013) and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.6%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Source: What Color is Your Parachute? In March 2012 4,356,000 people found work and there were 3,737,000 job vacancies waiting to be filled. That is a total of 8,093,000 employment opportunities.

So, contrary to what some are saying, the problem is not a lack of employment opportunities. What is confusing is that every month the popular press focuses on the unemployment rate and the net new jobs created in the last month. Recently the new jobs number has been around 180,000 per month. But what is more important to the career change decision, is the fact that every month American companies recruit and hire millions of new employees, not merely a few hundred thousand reported as new jobs.This adds up. Over a year’s time this means that there are actually tens of millions of opportunities to find a job in a new career.

The real challenge for the career changer is to decide the key question: Which of these tens of millions of opportunities do I go after? And even more important – how do I decide? Here are some suggestions to help guide you onto the right path.

Think of a career as what you DO with your life.The key to making the right choice is to make sure that what you do matches who you are as a person. Many go through life trying to figure out what they want to do “when they grow up”. They are looking for purpose and from that personal happiness. Sadly millions never find their answer. The career changer has a unique opportunity to link their doing with their being and from that develop purpose and happiness.

Who you are is fixed. You can learn new skills but in the end none of us get to fundamentally change who we are as an adult. So the first thing the career changer has to do is find out who they are. There are very good scientific instruments to help them do just that. Many are listed in my book “Your Future is Calling.” It is a place to begin.

Once the career changer has an objective read on who they are, they need to look at good information on the doing part of the career choices. Here again, there is good objective information available on the specific career choices available. The very comprehensive web site O*NET provides excellent information on a host of critical career factors including what someone in that career actually does every day. This is the source of information on the doing part of the career choices.

The last pieces of the puzzle are to decide on what to learn and where to learn it for the new career.There are thousands of education programs at community colleges and four year institutions to develop the skills required to qualify for new career opportunities. Once the career that matches who you are is selected, course catalogs, course descriptions and costs are available at college web sites. In addition, the Department of Education maintains a comprehensive site of information about college programs and costs on a site called College Navigator. At this point the main challenge for the career changer is to select the major and the college that is the best buy for the career chosen.

At the beginning, a career change decision feels overwhelming mainly, because it is.There are millions of things to consider. The good news is that the range of choices narrows quickly when the match between who you are and what you do is made at the beginning. There is still a lot of data to look at and evaluate but all of that is relatively straight forward with a good road map. See “Your Future is Calling” for details on how to do this part of the career change decision.

Filed Under: Adult learning, Career, College degrees // Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

How To Determine If College Can Help You and Improve Your Life

Posted on July 9, 2013 // Leave a Comment

College is not for everyone. The question for you is whether college can help you have a better life.   Successful billionaires who dropped out of college are a popular topic these days. But these are less than a dozen people out of the tens of millions of us mere mortals trying to figure out how to create a fulfilling life for ourselves – what I call in Your Future is Calling, doing what fits who you are.  The odds are overwhelming that learning and earning a degree will improve your chances of having a better life.

Let’s look at scientific research for answers that can help you improve your life.       Buzz Today Source:  American Economic Review:  …estimate the returns to schooling by contrasting the wage rates of identical twins with different schooling levels.  The research takes monozygotic twins (from the same egg) which means that the twins are genetically identical and have similar family backgrounds.  What the researchers found was that an additional year of schooling increases wages by 12-16%.

The challenge you face is to determine the best course of action for yourself, not what has worked for someone else, including the billionaires cited above.  One way for you to think about this is to ask yourself if you are likely to become a  billionaire by not going to college.  Here I am not talking about winning the lottery.  Winning the lottery is a chance outcome not a plan.

On the other hand, you can make the odds of success work in your favor.  Here I am sharing three pieces of research that show how, on average, learning substantially improves your earning power.

Improve Your Life Item #1   The Twins research cited in BUZZ Today shows that for each year of schooling wages are increased 12-16%.  This is a truly amazing opportunity and is highly consistent with the data we see in Item #2 below.

Improve Your Life Item #2  For the American population as a whole, holders of bachelor’s degrees make 1.97 times the wages of a high school graduate.  This spread has actually grown over the past forty years.  The ratio was 1.44 in 1978.  What this means, is that a college degree has become even more important not less than important over the years.  You can see this data for yourself on page 13 of my book Your Future is Calling.   What you will also see is that the multiplier stays through recessions as well as good times.  Note also that the 1.97 for a four year bachelor degree is very consistent with the twins research in Improve Your Life Item #1 above.

Improve Your Life Item #3   The California Community System, with 112 campuses, are collecting data about the financial success of their graduates.  Details for 266 degrees and certificates are listed in tables at SalarySurfer.  The important information in this data is that it shows what the graduating students were earning 2 years before their schooling, then the wages of these same graduates earned 2 years and 5 years after graduation. As an example, graduates with a two year paramedic degree the data is:
2 years before:   $19,510
2 years after       $52,774
5 years after       $64,298
Under any scenario, these results represent a significant improvement in the lives of these graduates.

Some are able to improve their lives without formal education but for the vast majority of Americans, an education vastly increases the chances for an improved life.  It is up to you to determine which of the hundreds of careers best fits who you are.

Filed Under: Adult learning, Career, College degrees // Tagged: , , , ,

Five Important Items You Need To Know About College

Posted on July 7, 2013 // Leave a Comment

The college you pick is one of the most important decisions of your career but it needs to be last not first. This is backward from the way that most students decide. Most pick the college first.  Here is how you can make this decision work for you.
     Buzz TodaySource:  COLLEGENavigator      The list and actual tuition cost for every accredited American college and university is available online in a searchable data base.  Data elements include: Tuition, Fees, and Estimated Student Expenses,  Financial Aid, Net Price, Graduation and Retention Rates. All are available in great detail.  The site is maintained by the US Department of Education.

Important Item #1     Colleges compete to enroll students.   Harvard University has the luxury of rejecting about 95% of the applicants.  But the good news is that you were not going to be able to go to Harvard even if you were accepted.  There are literally thousands of other universities.  From that long list you can find a college that fits who you are but you need to do your homework before you get into serious discussions with any of them. Being assertive can save you tens of thousands of dollars in the cost of your degree.  My advice is to do your homework before you engage them in an enrollment conversation.

Important Item #2      Professors are very smart, well educated subject matter experts but they know little about what career is best for you.  The most important education decision you have to make is not about classes and majors.  The most important decision is to make sure that you select a career that fits you.  Some people go through their entire life trying to figure out what they need to do to be satisfied in their professional life.  It is far better to face this important choice before you get your degree, not after.

Important Item #3      Online education is at least as good, if not better than traditional higher education.  A Department of Education research project “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning” states: “A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning….The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”  The Implication for you is that you do not have to give up a quality degree to attend an online college.

Important Item #4    Credits do not automatically transfer even when earned from an accredited university.  The college that you plan to attend determines what  parts of your past education apply to their degree.  This is one reason why selecting the right college is so important.

Important Item #5    Some employers recruit for young graduating students exclusively only at the most prestigious universities.  But this characteristic of hiring applies most to on campus visit by company recruiters looking at recent graduates with no work experience. In this case, the prestige of the college is a way to deal with the fact that the graduates have little or no work experience.

The right experience trumps the credentials of the college.  Once you have been out in the work force for a period of time, the college you attended (attend) is much less important than it is for traditional college undergraduate with no work experience.  Look at a sample of job postings.  Software bots are making the initial screening of resumes and job applicants.  The bots function by matching key words in your resume with key words in the job description.  I have never seen the name of a college listed in the key words of a job posting.   Once you have work experience, where you went to college is much less important than what you studied and your work experiences.

Don’t get me wrong.  What college you decide to attend is an important decision but it needs to be made last, not as the traditional first as I explain in Your Future is Calling.   Start your search by deciding on what you want to study to position yourself for the career that fits who you are.

Filed Under: Adult learning, Career, College degrees // Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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