Five Things You Need to Know to Determine: “Is College Worth It?”

Posted on January 31, 2014 // Leave a Comment

Not needed. High debt. No Job. Too costly. These are all things people are saying these days in answer to the question: “Is College Worth It?”. The two extreme answers are ALWAYS and NEVER (see BUZZ Today here). Neither of these answers is correct. If always and never are incorrect, the answer must lie somewhere in between these two absolutes. Indeed it does, which leads to the real question you should be asking which is: “When is College Worth It?” It is the answer to this question which will help you make better decisions for yourself and your children.

Buzz TodaySource: Alen Weiss, The Fallacy of College. “College not only isn’t for everybody, it might not be for anybody.” In contrast: Source: Time, December 2013, Gallup Poll – Majority of Americans Think College Education Is ‘Very Important’. The Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans consider a college education to be “very important,” up from 36 percent in 1978. Only six percent of respondents said college education was “not too important.”

First Thing You Need to Know Any college degree that traps you in a life of misery is not “Worth It” no matter how much or how little you spend to earn that degree. Misery is about you. It is not about college or even jobs. You have to begin with “who you are”. The decisions you make about college majors, careers and specific universities all must be linked to you and what fulfills you as an individual. This is the starting place for your college decisions that I talk about in Your Future is Calling.

Second Thing You Need to Know  One of the things that significantly increases the cost of college is the tradition of using the college to “find yourself”. This might have been an option in the good old days. It is the best option today. Going to a campus for five or six years is just too expensive today. There are much more efficient ways to get answers to this critical question. Degree Accelerator and Caliper assessment.are proven online instruments to efficiently get at the “who you are” question.

Third Thing You Need to Know The career you pick as well as the college you pick have significant impact on your earning power. But what is traditionally done is to pick a college or university and then figure out what to study. This is what I call Major – Major – Major in Your Future is Calling.  The Major – Major – Major decision is one of the main reasons the average number of credits of college graduates is on average over 10% more than than required for graduation. This excess both delays earning income and increases student debt.

Fourth Thing You Need to Know The vast majority of students pay only about one half of the list price of tuition, yet 54% of the potential students judge a college’s expense by sticker price alone without considering aid that could be offered. If you pay double the cost for tuition it makes every degree less likely to be “Worth It” from a financial point of view.

Fifth Thing You Need to Know Beyond getting the best discount. In college language this is stated in terms of grants and merit scholarships. In addition there additional way that the total cost of the education can be reduced

– Enroll in a community college to get a low cost education for your first two year general education requirement.

– Test out competency with CLEP testing from the non-profit College Board.

– Earn credit for prior learning assessment for life experience from CAEL and Learning Counts.

In summary, the five things that you can do to increase the answer YES to the question: “When is College Worth It?” are listed in summary here:

Use modern tools to determine “who you are”. Use data available on O*NET or Bureau of Labor Statistics to select a career before taking your first class. Learn what the average grants and merit scholarship awards are at the college you plan to attend. Know the facts on tuition costs and negotiate. Further reduce costs by avoiding Major – Major – Major. Finally further reduce costs through the approaches listed in detail in the Fifth item listed above.

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Loans for School – How to Keep Your Student Debt Low

Posted on August 24, 2013 // Leave a Comment

The President is right, money you spend on your education is the best investment you will ever make. It is also true that excessive student debt can make paying back the cost of that education a painful burden. But there are alternatives. The best way to get your education and keep your student debt low is to not take on the school loans in the first place. Sounds too easy you say? It’s easier than you think – if you know the facts.

In Buzz Today you can see the way the press is dealing with the challenges of getting an education today. It is a fact that tuition costs can outstrip your paycheck…if you don’t do something different. The old approach of simply enrolling in any college, showing up and taking out piles of student loans will bury you in debt. Buzz Today Source: NPR Obama says higher education is the best investment young people can make in their future, but with tuition costs outstripping paychecks, many families face an unpleasant choice between a heavy debt load or skipping college altogether.

What you need to do is ignore the battle between colleges and the politicians over the rapidly rising cost of college tuition. There isn’t anything you can do about that. Just for the record, I agree with those who say that the rising college tuition is excessive and out of control.

What you can do is take actions that serve your needs even as these political battles rage around us. Here are some tips I talk about in Your Future is Calling. They will help you keep the cost of that important education down, eliminating your need to take on crushing student debt in the first place.

1. The reduction in tuition paid on average is actually about 45% below the tuition price published on the college WEG site. For information on the actual tuition paid at all but a handful of American universities go to the government site COLLEGENavigator. On this site you can see what students enrolled at you favorite college actually paid. You should not pay more. You will if you do not have these facts.

2. The first two years of college curriculum cover what educators call the “General Education”(gen ed) core. Regional accrediting bodies in American require these courses. Notice what these requirements are called – general education. What this means is that how individual colleges fulfill these requirements are general, that is, about the same in every college. This means that you can take these requirements about anywhere, including at a low cost community college, and then transfer those credits to the college of your all important area of concentration. Not every college will accept credits from just any school, but many do. The facts you need to know are which colleges will accept what transfer credits from what source. You need to ask. Don’t just enroll.

3. Many college students incur excess debt through what I call Major, Major, Major. This happens when you enroll in college, take high cost gen ed, randomly select a major, decide its not for you, then select a second major and even a third major. Every time you do this you take longer to graduate and in so doing, increase your student debt. To avoid this, you need the facts about what career fits “who you are”. The career choices are detailed on O*NET

The President is right that an education is the most important thing you can do for yourself and your loved ones. But the Buzz Today insert states a false choice. There are alternatives to high debt or no degree. You just have to have the facts to make the right choices before you incur student debt.

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Controlling Student Debt – First Make Sure Tuition Cost Is Right

Posted on March 14, 2013 // Leave a Comment

College debt is a topic we have been exploring in the last several posts.  The idea that the amount of debt you have when you get your degree is very dependent on the costs you take on at the beginning of your schooling.  Tuition is by far your biggest cost.  Buzz TodaySource:   Jobs.aol.com The annual tuition (Harvard University MBA) is $51,200 and it is severely discounted for at least half the students. In fact, Harvard’s average fellowship support per MBA student was $29,843 last year, essentially a 58.3 percent discount on that annual tuition.

The question you have to be asking is, “how do you control the tuition cost in the first place?”   For every college or university you are considering you must know what the true cost of tuition is.  In BUZZ Today here, we can see what the tuition costs truly are at one of the most prestigious programs in American higher education.  The degree is an MBA from Harvard University.

What the BUZZ data tells us, is that the “list” price of the degree is $51,200 per year.  By list price we mean the price published on the university web site for a year of enrollment in the program.  Every university has a published list price for their tuition.  It is this list tuition that is quoted when referring to the degrees being offered.  If you do nothing, this list price is what you will pay when you enroll.  This is true for every degree from every university.  The point is that what you actually end up paying is entirely dependent on what you do or don’t do.

The debt control comes in with the second half of the BUZZ data.  The actual (discounted) tuition cost for the students enrolled in the Harvard MBA in 2012 is shown to have been, on average $29,843.  This results in $29,843 less debt a student would have to repay after graduation.

The bottom line is that even in the hugely prestigious Harvard University MBA the average actual tuition price paid is 58.3% less than the list tuition price.

No matter where you decide to go to school it is very important that you take full advantage of the discounted versus list tuition cost at every university you are considering.  For detailed information on the list versus discounted tuition for every American higher education institution see Chapter 9 in my book Your Future Is Calling.

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