A MILLION WAYS TO SUCCEED-- WITHOUT COLLEGE!

By Assoc. Prof. H. G. Unger

Part I: SKIP COLLEGE DEBTS AND EARN WHILE YOU LEARN!

Two million students drop out of four-year public colleges and universities in the U.S.  each year—deep in debt! That’s more than one-third of all college students! You don’t have to be one of them! Millions of smart young people earn while they learn—in apprenticeship programs, company training programs, or co-op education programs that pay students to learn essential skills that often pay far more than they could earn with a college degree.

Here’s why.

No matter what well-meaning friends, relatives, teachers, guidance counselors, or college reps—even parents--may say about what they believe are the advantages of college, college just as often turns into personal tragedy. It already has for 2 million students this year—just as it did for 2 million students last year and 2 million the year before that. Most not only quit college without degrees, they left without skills or education, without jobs, and deep in debt from student loans, often facing poverty. Most of them borrowed thousands of dollars to pay for their brief stays at college, and when they left, the colleges kept every penny the students had paid to go there.

The truth is millions of successful men and women—even millionaires—never attended college. George Washington never went to college. Neither did Benjamin Franklin—or, for that matter eight U.S. Presidents. In modern times, the founders of Microsoft, Facebook, and CNN all quit college, saying college had nothing practical to teach them. As you’ll see below, much of the “advice” about the benefits of college –and the big money you’ll earn with a college degree--is simply false.

More than 200 occupations pay young men and women who have no college education as much as $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 and more a year to start! Right now—as you read this—there are almost a million openings for computer support specialists to repair or show owners how to repair table-top computers. Many earn an average of $55,000 a year—without any college, and demand for their skills is growing at an average of 8% a year!

And there are a million other ways to succeed without college. Indeed, many men and women who never went to college have high paying jobs in Hollywood or on the Broadway stage, in TV studios, or even The White House or Congress! Remember: all federal, state, and municipal government facilities need and hire skilled tradespeople to keep the lights on and water flowing. So do big corporations. The homes of movie and TV stars all need care, maintenance, and repairs—and the trained personnel to provide it. To put it crudely, toilets get plugged in Beverly Hills mansions as often as in the row houses of Baltimore. And remember, too, that you don’t need a college degree to become an actor, stagehand, camera operator, or any of the hundreds of other important roles in show business.

 So a large number and variety of well-paid jobs are open in a wide variety of wonderful work places for talented young men and women who don’t want to go to college and are wise enough to choose careers they really want.

The Pitfalls of College

Every year, it costs every student at each of the more than 1,600 four-year public colleges and universities at least $10,000 to attend classes and $25,000 or more with room and board--if the student is a resident of the same state. The total goes up to $30,000 or more for non-residents. In exchange, the student gets a furnished room and meals[1], access to a library and classrooms, and recreation opportunities such as physical fitness rooms, gyms, sports, and extra-curricular activities.

           But what about education? Ironically, the money spent to go to college buys more recreation than education. According to one authoritative study,[2] the average full-time college student spends 5 hours on sports and leisure activities each weekday and only 3.5 hours on educational activities—in class and out. That’s 35 hours a week on play and 24 ½ hours on learning.

Making the picture even uglier, a normal academic year at college lasts only 30 weeks of the year, during two 15-week terms. So students spend almost $22,000 a year to spend only 30 weeks on campus and 22 weeks off campus not learning during Christmas, spring, and summer breaks.

Yet large four-year public four-year colleges add bigger, better sports and recreation facilities almost annually. By lowering admission standards, they lure as many as 2 million students they know will drop out, with each student leaving behind in the college’s cash register as much as $10,230 that had been paid for tuition and fees in college cash registers. That adds up to more than $20 billion a year the college industry collects for not educating the 2 million students who drop out. In fact, sports and entertainment are so profitable they’ve replaced education as the primary focus of many university administrations. 

Twelve state universities pay football coaches $5 million to $10 million a year each; and almost 60 pay football coaches between $1 million and $5 million a year each.[3] Those same schools pay classroom instructors an average of only $48,200 a year. That’s less than a public middle-school teacher can earn in New York.

The low salaries that four-year public colleges pay their instructors show you in advance what kind of “education” you’re going to get.

Before investing any of your own or your family’s money in a four-year state college or university, look carefully at what these figures mean for you. You could well spend more than half of every day on campus and almost six months each year off campus not learning and have nothing to show for it but thousands of dollars of debt to show for it.

Ask yourself if that’s how you want to spend the next four years of your life?

But what about the claim we’ve all seen that college graduates earn more than $32,000 a year more than those with only a high school diploma?

Well, there’s an old saying that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure,” and some colleges do just that with misleading statistics. What the earnings statistic leaves out is the 28%t of college graduates who are unemployed. It compares only employed college graduates with all high-school graduates, both employed and  unemployed. Nor does the statistic mention that the 28 percent unemployment rate among college graduates is higher than the 18.6 percent unemployment rate for college drop-outs! So, figures don’t lie, but….

What’s more, even the average income that colleges say comes with a degree is misleading. Here’s why: if one person is unemployed and earns $0, and a second earns $500 a week, while a third earns $1,000 a week, their “average earnings” are $500. But the first one earned nothing! So “average earnings” tell you nothing about these three college graduates. Nor does it tell you which jobs they’re comparing. Many jobs requiring college degrees pay far less--than jobs that need no education beyond high school. Indeed, almost one-third of workers without four-year college degrees earn more each year on average than workers with college degrees.

The average high-school teacher with a college degree earns barely $50,000 a year while half the electricians in America earn more than $56,000 a year—with no college! Social workers with college degrees earn only an average of about $45,000 a year; librarians $1,000 less. Bus drivers and subway operators earn about $60,000 a year and need only high school diploma. Transit and railroad police make an average of $74,000 a year; and half the air traffic controllers, who need only two-year associate degrees from community colleges, earn more than $125,000 a year.

So ask yourself again: Do you want to spend $100,000 or more over the next four years and accumulate $40,000 or more in debt to go to an institution that pays its football coach millions a year and its math and science instructors less than $50,000. Millions of intelligent, clear-thinking men and women do not. Ignoring seductive appeals of traditional four-year colleges and the occasional taunts of friends and classmates, they choose computer repairs, catering, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, and hundreds of other lucrative trades that they enjoy and that do not require college degrees. They not only earn substantial incomes, many often earn far more than the average college graduate with a four-year degree, and they engage in crafts and trades for which demand is often higher, often universal, and growing in scope and remuneration.

The entire nation—the entire world--needs carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters, masons, health aides, maintenance workers, housekeeping staffs, groundskeepers, and other men and women skilled in a wide variety of crafts and trades. How could our farms, our towns and cities, and our nation survive without the talents and skills of computer operators, chefs, air traffic controllers, actors, mechanics, barbers, glaziers, security guards, bank tellers, firefighters, clerks, carpenters, postal workers, railroad engineers, masons, police officers, utility lines workers, meat cutters, dental technicians, ambulance drivers, emergency medical technicians….  How could the world survive without the millions who fill these and other essential occupations? The answer is they couldn’t, and we couldn’t, and those who are thinking of filling these important occupations should be proud of the vital contributions they will make to their communities and our nation.

Part II of this series will show you where the jobs are and how to get them.

[1] Room-and-board costs can be as much as 50% less in some live-in fraternities, but social events raise those costs to levels well above costs of dormitory life.. Source of these and other statistics: National Center for Education Statistics, The College Board, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

[2] American Time Use Survey, sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

[3] Source: NCAA.