My first thought is, no.  Why would someone want to pay big dollars for a degree from an online and/or national college?  It’s like a cookie cutter university…

The idea seems foreign to me…with community colleges and public universities available, why would anyone coose the technical college route?

• Heald College (Non-profit)
• University of Phoenix (Profit)
• ITT Technical Insitute

I did find some dirt on Phoenix here & here, but are ITT and Heald legitimate?  Also, I know U of Phoenix has a big office in downtown Honolulu.  I’ve also slightly recall reading that UoP stocks are actually doing quite well.

What do you think about them?

I missed a deal on slickdeals.net for “premium online access” to US News & World Report’s Best Colleges 2007…but in looking through the forums at slickdeals.net, I found a poster who linked up a couple ranking pages from The Washington Monthly.

The site states:

Welcome to The Washington Monthly College Rankings. Unlike other college guides, such as U.S. News and World Report, this guide asks not what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country. It’s a guide for all Americans who are concerned about our institutions of higher learning. Are our colleges making good use of our tax dollars? Are they producing graduates who can keep our nation competitive in a changing world? Are they, in short, doing well by doing good? This is the guide that tells you.

Interesting…

HOWEVER, I am a little leery since the site has a link that is titled, “Report: Is Our Students Learning?”   I’m no grammar expert by any means, but shouldn’t the title be, “Reports:  Are Our Students Learning?”

Ah, anyway if you want to look up some of your favorite universities or ones that you might be considering, check out this link.  Here is a direct link to the rankings, so you can by pass the grammar problem.

Is the world coming to an end?  Sort of like Phillip Morris advocating quitting smoking, but with a little less flare.  Practical money skills doesn’t mean you have to give up plastic.  In fact, with a combination of practical money skills and plastic, you could stretch each dollar even further.

Click here to visit the Visa site.

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So I was curious, everyone talks about the price of a college education, but ever wondered what the cost is to be educated through a lifetime? Having gone to private schooling from K-12 and then a public state university, my education costed a little more than attending a public school.

K-8, small Catholic school: ~$1,000.00/year (averaged over 9 years) + $2,000.00 for summer fun/school.
9-12, a different Catholic school: $4,000.00/year + $1,500.00 for summer school.
College, state university (removed my scholarship): $2,000.00/year (averaged over 5 years) + $1,200.00 for summer school.

Total? $39,700.00 for my total education. Not adjusted for inflation.

That’s a pretty penny. Now if I consider my scholarship, my total education costs drop to: $15,700.00. I hope my kids can get a scholarship! (I don’t have any, but if I do in the future)

Having a degree is supposed to increase your earnings through your lifetime by one million dollars. Not bad right? Well, not if you graduate with a six digit loan. In an article on USAToday.com, a graduate student, Palazzolo, graduates from Rutger’s University with $116,000 in loans. Absurd!

Another example taken from the article:

Angela Schneider, 26, graduated last year from Simmons College in Boston with a master’s degree in social work and $118,000 in student loans. To make her monthly payments of $800, Schneider has taken on a part-time job providing in-school therapy in addition to her full-time position as a medical social worker. She’s living on a tight budget that allows her $70 a month for entertainment. 

Granted these folks are graduating with a Masters, but still. $70 monthly entertainment budget?! For how long?

And finally:

Routsong decided to return to school to get her master’s degree as a nurse practitioner. She looked into nursing programs at several community colleges. All had two- to three-year waiting lists. She entered an accelerated program at the University of San Diego, a private school, that will enable her to get a master’s in three years. She’s borrowed $65,000 and expects her loans to top $165,000 by the time she graduates. 

Her student debt, she says, occupies a place in the recesses of her mind.

That last line just gets me. It occupies a place in the recesses of her mind? Like an afterthought, when it should be one of the main issues BEFORE deciding what to pursue. If it doesn’t make sense, like in this case, to me it doesn’t, then I think you have to formulate another game plan. If this is really what she wants to do, then there are others ways to do it. I’m not saying it’s easy to find other ways, like getting your company to help pay for some of the expenses, but it’s possible.

USAToday.com Blogs has some interesting comments…One day, I hope my blog has this much reader interest! Hah.

Bottomline: “Go to the best school (with the best program of study you’re interested in) that you can AFFORD.”

So I’ve thought about this some more…does college pay? From my personal stand point, I definitely think it does. My friends that have a college degree are financially much better off than my friends that don’t. Let me summarize some of what I see…

Friend 1
4yr College Degree, spent 2 years at community college, 2 years at regular
College cost: ~$10,000
BA Management Info Systems
~$65,000/yr

Friend 2
4yr College Degree
College cost: ~$60,000
BA Education
~$40,000/yr

Friend 3
2yr Associates Degree
College cost: ~$10,000
Graphics Design
~$12/hr (~$24,000/yr)

Friend 4
No degree, attended some college
College cost: ~$2,000
~$9.00/hr

Friend 5
4yr College Degree
College cost: ~$10,000
BA Human Resources
~$70,000/yr

Friend 6
4yr College Degree
College cost: ~$10,000
BA Management Info Systems
~$55,000/yr

Friend 7
4yr College Degree
College cost: ~$10,000
BA Management Info Systems
~$45,000/yr

Friend 8
4yr College Degree
College cost: ~$10,000
BA Management Info Systems
~$70,000/yr

Friend 9
4yr College Degree
College cost: ~$60,000
BS Computer Science
~$90,000/yr

You can clearly see that having a degree seems to have meant better jobs. Of course, my oberservations are skewed since most of my friends finished college…And most of them are from the same college! The kicker is, we’re all satisfied with life…for the most part, the ones that are making more are often still dealing with the same money issues as those who are making less to some degree…no pun intended.

Some related links:

Don’t get over-educated @ MightyBargainHunter.com.
College - A Financial Decision That Changed My Life.
Is College a Worthless Investment?

I don’t think so, but apparently it is something to consider. Everyone knows Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft just in case you didn’t know, never finished college. Steve Jobs founder of Apple Computers never graduated from college. Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation never finished college either! So what does this mean? Should we just skip an expense that can easily add up to at least $100k to work or pursue a trade? Maybe take some classes on the side? I don’t know.

When I was deciding between colleges, not going to college was never an option. I ended up choosing my state university over an Ivy university. It saved me a ton of money, in fact I made some. I wrote about my decision earlier.

I would like to argue that Bill, Steve, and Larry are naturally gifted, just like pro athletes that have some natural born skill. With the combination of skill, drive, and some timing, they made things happen. The path they took to success is much different than most of the general population, so I would say they are exceptions. What about the rest of us?

This MSNBC.com article, Five Reasons To Skip College, says:

Reasons to skip college. Is higher education a good idea?
1. You’ll be losing four working years
2. You won’t necessarily earn less money
3. In fact, you could make more money
4. You can learn outside a classroom
5. Plenty of other people did fine 

I can’t disagree more. Since much of life is about risk minimization, the fact that you have a college degree does in fact minimize the risk that you will not have work, and does maximize your potential to make more. I especially hate reason #5.

But then again, if you have the drive and the ideas, why not skip college? I can’t really argue against that either, but it’s risky. What do you think? If you had a choice, would you go to school again? What about if your kids decided they didn’t want to go to college? Let’s say as the parent you believed they had what it takes to make it without the college degree. What if they were really good at sports, would you let them skip college?

In my senior year of high school, I was faced with one of the single, most important decisions of my life, where to go to college–a local state university plus full scholarship or ivy league university with no financial aid. No matter how much I tried to contemplate what would have happened if I made the other decision, I’ll never know for sure.

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