LOL. 1. you learn how to be good with public speaking, interact with females, live on your own, deal with social situations, more pressure, etc...also learn from other cultures, languages, and tons of other stuff that you can't really quantify. 2. you learn how to study and gather the confidence to understand current events. Then you are able to talk with "important" people about almost anything. well-rounded helps when you talk. 3. you at least have many possibilities to find your passion; a job that you don't totally hate. if you are unhappy, good luck with other aspects in life. $100,000 isn't that much compared to a lifetime of being an anti-social, uncomfortable clown who can't talk to anyone.... i've seen many dumb millionaires who cheat on their wife, drink heavily, and are 250 lbs......we all have different metrics. of course go to college. enjoy, and just keep going forward. hey, if life ends up being bad......well, too bad for you. but it's your fault, not the fact that you went to college and took out loans. be accountable.
I did not go to college, I learned a Trade. by the time people in my age group finished college I already had a nice head start. I had a home and a good amount of savings. And real life experience.
You obviously have not gone to college, if the above is what you think most take from the experience....
nah, i have a master's degree. You obviously are not smart enough to know if someone has gone to college. That's too bad. it's clear you have not reached a high degree of consciousness. no worries, the world will still be ok with your failed trading account.
Most interestingly, the guy I had lunch with is a PhD in materials science. The more, ahem, problematic of his 2 children took a few classes at a local community college. He said he was impressed with the level of the material his son was being taught. If it's a few hundred dollars for each class at a community college, and a college degree isn't getting you anything (except if you're Harvard, Stanford, etc.), why not fill in the gaps with community college coursework? People only want to know if you have a college degree. And the community college curriculum isn't all bad.
The best case for College is the networking. Say you are going to school for computer programming. You get an idea for a software program, so you network with a business major a finance/accounting major, and a marketing major. You guys pool your resources together and create a company. Its very hard for someone after college to do this because not many people after college with not only work for free, but pool some of their own money into a company to get it started.
All these things help but in the end it all depends on the amount of money in the economy unless you pitch abroad. I have been trying to sell my ideas to the Middle East and America now. I have given up on England it has no future.
This is a myth for the 95%. Sure, you are correct, but only at top tier schools- if you are lucky--- the others are party central for the most part. You can network on line much easier and with a much broader base than you ever could at college. surf PS altucher rips apart business school and MBA's http://www.jamesaltucher.com/is-business-school-never-a-good-option-or-only-sometimes-if-so-when/
Reddit started that way, but I haven't heard of a hell of a lot of others. My lunchtime friend also said he felt the best value in college was giving the kids time to mature. Point well taken. An 18 year old isn't ready to handle the real stuff, and shouldn't you being having a little more fun as a teenager? Anyway, the maturity point was a good one, but for $100,000? I think the kid should stay home, watch the free online coursework provided by top schools (like MIT), and go to human development camp for, say, 4 months a year. Learn how to be yourself, interact with others your age, check in with a shrink at the camp to make sure there aren't major issues, and generally mature and develop for like, $40,000 - instead of $100,000 - if maturation is the point. A flakey idea? We gotta start talking about this stuff. Right now, we're "eating the seed corn" by loading up young people with debt - to be paid to some NY shyster who paid a Congressman a few tens of thousands of dollars to write a law saying student loan debt is not even dischargeable at retirement - they'll dock your social security! Nearly ANYTHING is better than what we have now.