Yes – a College Degree Is Worth It

Posted on July 8, 2014 // Leave a Comment

Worth It? Worthless? Worth Less?  All three questions need answered as you make decisions about your future. These questions are important because confusion abounds.  Buzz Today Source: Chronicle of Higher Education   “As of April, 2014, the unemployment rate for college graduates ages 25 to 34 was 3 percent. The wage premium for people with bachelor’s degrees has been rising steadily since 1980 and now stands at 98%* …With regard to student debt, only 2% of students owe more than $100,000 while 43% of student borrowers owe $10,000 or less. College is not only still a good investment, it is the best investment you can make”.  *This means that bachelor’s degree holders have nearly twice the income of high school graduates.

The data in Buzz Today unambiguously answers the first question: Worth It? If you want to have a better chance to get hired and earn twice the income get a bachelor’s degree. The data show that people with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to get a job and, when employed, make almost twice as much on average as those with only a high school diploma. Does this data mean that you will be guaranteed a job making twice as much as you would  have made without the bachelor’s degree?  No. There are no guarantees in life. A college education is no exception.

This brings us to the issue of Worthless. College degrees are awarded in different disciplines. This means that merely getting a degree is not enough. What you learn while earning a degree and, to a much lesser extent where you learn it, matters a great deal.

So here are two scenarios that relate directly to the Worthless issue. First, if you start out to complete a bachelor’s degree and fail to complete your bachelor’s degree (which about 54 million Americans are doing today), your investment is not completely worthless but it is pretty close. The compensation difference in BUZZ Today is based on those who actually have their bachelor’s degree. Taking some courses may make you smarter but having the degree is a way for employers to decide whether you are a candidate for their open jobs. Completing the degree is very important in the job market place.

The other way that you can create a worthless (i.e. a significantly less valuable outcome) is to earn a degree where there are no jobs that require the knowledge gained during your studies. Here the professors passionately argue that an education is about more than money. I agree. Worth is a big concept than money. But for now the Worthless conversation is about the economics of your degree efforts.

The Worthless question is not about you, the school you attend nor how much smarter you are. The Worthless question is about whether an employer will pay you an attractive salary for the knowledge and shills you have. The fact is that it is possible for you to earn a degree where there are no open positions to fill. In this case there simply is no demand for the knowledge you have acquired with your bachelor’s degree. This may seem unfair, short sighted, cruel or any number of other negative descriptors. In the end it is still a fact. Employers are not going to pay for knowledge they do not need. Period.

The last item in this Worthless conversation is my advice to you. If you are truly interested in what your degree will be worth in the job market do your research on job opportunities before you enroll. To get that job market information go to O*NET and do your research. Your Future is Calling guides you on how to use that valuable data.

The last question is about Worth Less. Worthless is about employers and jobs. Worth Less is about you. Here is how to look at this question. In an earlier Learn Prosper blog titled “Careers Begin with What You Learn” I shared that two thirds of employees under 30 are still searching for the right career and intend to switch careers within two years. This data show that for a large number of our young, the choice they made has been worth less to them. What they studied failed to get them into the “right” career for them.

But the issue about Worth Less is not merely about a career. This issue is about how well the area of study in your degree program fits “who you are”. This is about degree fit with you. For example, if you are passionate about teaching a career in that field is what you want to do in life. The fact that you will earn less is not relevant to the issue of worth less. In fact, becoming a teacher when it fits “who you are” is worth more to you than becoming an investment banker where you have the potential to earn far more. In this example, becoming an investment banker is indeed worth less to you. The point is that it is not all about money.  But to keep your bachelor’s degree from becoming worth less you have to know a great deal about “who you are”. This issue is not about jobs and salaries. This is about you. To learn about how to find out “who you are” go to the first chapters of Your Future is Calling. Some work there can help you make sure that your degree is not going to be Worth Less to you. No one else; not me, not employers, not professors, not your parents matter in this part of the Worth discussion. This is about you.

Go for it. The tools and information to answer the Worth questions are available. You just need to learn where they are and how to use them.

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

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.

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

Five Things College Freshmen and Their Parents Need to Know

Posted on December 8, 2013 // Leave a Comment

Increasingly college freshmen are enrolling in majors that do not fulfill their personal passions because they think it is more important to have a high paying career. That is a mistake. This choice is not an either or. Both the freshman and the parents should be doing everything they can to have both. It’s possible. Your Future is Calling gives you a clear road map to follow.

Buzz TodaySource: Bureau of Labor Statistics” Number of Jobs Held…Results From a Longitudinal Survey”: The average person born in the latter years of the baby boom (1957 – 1964) held 11.3 jobs from age 18 to 46, according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey was of 9,964 men and women who were ages 14 to 22 when first interviewed in 1979 and ages 45 to 53 when interviewed most recently in 2010 – 2011. Both high school and college graduates were included in the research.

Here are the five things college freshmen and their parents need to know.

#1 College is often viewed as the place where our sons and daughters go to “find themselves”. This a part of the mission of our colleges and universities and it should be. But the truth is that many of us spend most of our lives trying to “find ourselves”. There are scientific ways to help the freshman accelerate this personal development, to help they find out “who they are”. Among online instruments I recommend these in particular: O*NET Interest Profiler, Strong Interest Inventory, the Gallup SF-34 Strengths Finder and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator All of these personal assessments can be done online for less than $100 (O*NET Profiler is free). They are well worth the investment of the freshman’s time and money.

#2 College freshmen are faced with many complex decisions as they set the course for their life. Many of those decisions, including immediate ones like the university they decide to attend, the major(s) they study and the careers they ultimately go into depend on “who they are”. It is one of the most important things they (and their parents) need to know to make good decisions.

#3 In college, and in careers after graduation, the freshman will compete against others and some will make better decisions because they have a good idea about “who they are” from the start. Your freshman needs to have every possible advantage in these life competitions.

#4 Career choices are important to consider early in the education process. Earning power is strongly related to the career chosen and there are lots of sources of excellent data that shows exactly what various careers pay. Three I recommend on this important topic include: O*NET, Occupational Employment Statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor and for California residents interested in a community college, there is the very detailed Salary Surfer.

#5 Many freshmen start out with majors that do not lead to good career choices. It is what I call the Major – Major – Major decision. This costs time and can lead to huge student debt. It is important to consider the choice of college major as the first step in the life career decisions. The earlier the freshman can know about what motivates them the better will be the education choices.

The bottom line is that the freshman year is the first big step to the life of an adult in our society. Cost, quality, the college of choice, the major are all important decisions for the freshman. It is not easy. The press is telling the story about today’s college experience. Business Week reported: “Stress Takes Its Toll on College Students”

But even with all of these factors one thing is very clear. The freshman will live every day of their life with “who they are”. What science tells us is that this does not fundamentally change over the course of an entire lifetime. We are who we are. On the other hand, what the BUZZ Today clearly tells us is that the freshman will change jobs – many times. What the freshman has to get right is knowing what motivates them, not how they can make the most money possible in their first job after graduation.

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How to Avoid the Worst Outcome: “I Hate My Job”

Posted on November 30, 2013 // Leave a Comment

If you hate your job you’re not alone. Seventy percent of Americans actively dislike their job or are not excited about what they are doing with their lives. That is pretty sad. Many solutions today focus on fixing the job with such things as access to catered meals, a ping pong table or free massages.

Buzz Today Source: CNBC/Gallup: Just 30 percent of employees are engaged and inspired at work, according to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace Report, which surveyed more than 150,000 full- and part-time workers during 2012. A little more than half of workers (52 percent) have a perpetual case of the Mondays—they’re present, but not particularly excited about their job. The remaining 18 percent are actively disengaged, roaming the halls spreading discontent.

Google is often cited as the icon for the happy work environment. 84 percent of the Google workforce has a high level of job satisfaction, one of the highest percentages in the Fortune 500. It helps that the average salary at Google is $107,000 per year. But money, free gourmet food, kindergartens and gyms and free time to work on personal projects is not the only story at Google. Google invests lots of effort to make sure that they hire right people in the first place.

Unless you already work for Google their work place solution is not available to you. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have good options available. You have to change what you do at the beginning, not after you have a degree and begin to look for a job. The forty five year old with a college education who ends up with a degree and a job they (you) hate, most often takes the traditional path to education.

That traditional path begins with the way education decisions are made in our society today. The example here does not describe 100% of the cases but it is true for the majority. And it is likely it will be true for you unless you do something about it before enrolling in a degree program. The first education decision is typically the selection of a college/university to attend. The assumption is: “If I enroll in the most selective university possible I will have the best chance for career success”. This critical assumption is wrong. When it comes to your pay, what you study in college is more important than where you go to school.

Once enrolled in the university of choice, enrolled students try to figure out what to study – a sequence I call Major – Major – Major in my book “Your Future is Calling.” And it is here where the “I Hate My Job” trap begins to snap shut. Desperate and running out of student loans, the typical student will feel an urge to just get a degree and then look for a job. The last question being asked is whether the degree/job fits what I call “who they are”. The result is the forty five year old with a big mortgage, auto loans, kids in school, family obligations and a decreasing number of options to deal with the sad fact that they hate the job they ended up taking.

It’s no wonder so many hate their jobs. Often the job taken is the desperation decision at the end of a string of choices that started at the wrong point in the first place. To avoid this sad state of affairs you need to reverse the sequence.

Rather than beginning with the decision to attend a specific college or university, a better path is to begin with understanding “who you are” in the first place. From there, the best sequence is to select a career based on the match between “who you are” and future career prospects. The selection of a major to prepare you for the career that fits “who you are” is next. Last comes the choice of the university with the best major – tuition cost combination.

In the end, your goal is to immensely improve the odds that as a forty-five year old your state of mind is not “I hate my job”. You want to be able to say what the vast majority of employees at Google say, namely “I love my job”. There are actually people in the world who say that everyday. Your main goal should be to become one of them.

Oh, by the way, there’s an outcome at least tied for worst with “I hate my job”. It’s having huge student debt, a worthless degree and no job at all. My advice is to avoid this outcome at all costs. Work conditions at Google cannot help you here. Only you, and the decisions you make today, can produce the better outcome. GO FOR IT!

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