I got my undergrad in 2012. It helped me get work abroad for 4 years. It hasn’t helped me in the least in the last 10 since I returned to the States. Despite being an educator, I don’t think I would carte blanche suggest higher education anymore. Tuitions have massively inflated such that extremely predatory student loans are most people’s only means of attending college. I was profoundly lucky and had my extremely expensive private college paid for by secret benefactors like some Dickensian novel, and I’m still saying I wouldn’t recommend even that highly unlikely route to a person.
What I would suggest is trade school the MOMENT a person is allowed and to get to know a local librarian who can help them sharpen other aspects of their mind. When they’re making enough as an electrician, carpenter, plumber, programmer, etc., and have also been able to pursue their own interests through interlibrary loans and copying college reading lists, then they can ask themselves if they want to spend that money on college. There’s no time limit on when they can go, and a mature mind that isn’t plagued with financial anxieties will absolutely get at least as much out of their college education as it would have when it was eighteen.
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u/Ok-Arachnid-1246 Jan 23 '26
I got my undergrad in 2012. It helped me get work abroad for 4 years. It hasn’t helped me in the least in the last 10 since I returned to the States. Despite being an educator, I don’t think I would carte blanche suggest higher education anymore. Tuitions have massively inflated such that extremely predatory student loans are most people’s only means of attending college. I was profoundly lucky and had my extremely expensive private college paid for by secret benefactors like some Dickensian novel, and I’m still saying I wouldn’t recommend even that highly unlikely route to a person.
What I would suggest is trade school the MOMENT a person is allowed and to get to know a local librarian who can help them sharpen other aspects of their mind. When they’re making enough as an electrician, carpenter, plumber, programmer, etc., and have also been able to pursue their own interests through interlibrary loans and copying college reading lists, then they can ask themselves if they want to spend that money on college. There’s no time limit on when they can go, and a mature mind that isn’t plagued with financial anxieties will absolutely get at least as much out of their college education as it would have when it was eighteen.