Not just the cost of college is relevant here. The increasing competiveness of many career track entry level jobs with increasing minimum educational credentials means that preprofessional considerations force themselves into college and related choices (like major) for more young people than before.
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The author also overlooks that one doesnt need college to engage in intellectual pursuits-libraries and online courses, for free or minimal cost, are available to the curious
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I think this is right, but I wish a few more kids and families had an open mind about the details.
Like, there are still many different paths a college-educated person can follow after graduation that will make college a âgood investmentâ. If you decide on a path in HS and it works out for you, great. But if you donât know yet, or you change your mind in college, that can also be fine. Indeed, many people change career paths later, and that can also be fine.
That doesnât mean it is all random and meaningless until you decide. I think a good college education can mean expanding your general knowledge, building up your math and logic skills, building up your reading, critical analysis, and writing skills, and so on.
But again, I also agree college is part of your life, and just living your life for its own sake and not for what it will do for you in the future is important too.
So all these things can be balanced. And how they are balanced can vary by kid, and then some of those kids can change over time. And none of that is necessarily inconsistent with college being worth the cost.
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I wish the author would interview unemployed kids who went for leisure, living in their parentsâ basement and see if they agree.
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This is probably where the privilege of having well connected wealthy parents comes in â the kid who would otherwise struggle to find a suitable career track job may be more likely to get there starting with helpful parental connections and other advantages.
The article gives two examples, one is âcoffee and conversation about anythingâ which sounds like normal socializing, of course students go to the movies and talk afterwards. And my tutors organized drinks parties too (with wine, since the drinking age is 18).
But the second is âthe Great Questionsprogram, built around intense discussion of a diverse array of âtransformativeâ books.â That sounds a lot like work to me, in fact it is a college class. If students are going to take this class then presumably they are either taking one fewer class in something else, or taking on additional work. That shouldnât be conflated with âleisureâ activities.
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Interestingly, I know kids who went to college with a focused career plan who also ended up moving back in with their parents. This happened for various reasons including the kid not succeeding in their program the way they hoped, and cyclical or secular trends making their target job market a hard one.
I think all this underscores how life is not always nearly as predictable as we would like. We would like to believe if we do A, then B, then C will surely follow. But often it does not work out like that, and then we have to regroup and find another path.
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Kind of. Is a SVP at Aetna going to help their son or daughter get a job processing insurance claims? And their kid is going to be motivated doing that when they chose leisure over pre-professional?
Connections may help get a job but unless the kid is actually motivated to do the work, itâs not going to benefit them.
This is literally my dream - and why I dragged my PhD out to a full eight and half years (would have happily held out longer, but my dept started dropping not so subtle hints that it was time for me to finish up). That was probably as close as Iâll ever come to living that dream 
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Just be glad youâre not subject to universal mandatory military service.
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I know some grown kids living off their parents, but not any that went to college (no matter whether they went for leisure per this life of the mind definition or for vocational career track.) I know some employed grown kids living at home and some unemployed grown kids who never went to college living at home, but I donât know any unemployed college grads living at home. My own kids are 22 and 19 so we know a lot of college grads and kids who didnât go to college both.
This! And not just at school. Think about all the folks whose companies down-sized or just went under. Plans are great but life gets in the way.
While itâs important to know what getting to C involves, there is something to be said for doing what you love, doing it well, and staying open to what is available as a result. It may mean that you need to add a few classes to make what you love marketable, but thats vastly different from just slogging.
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This is all fine but itâs all about the percentages. Certain majors pay better. It doesnt mean if you majored in XYZ you will find a better job but it may increase the likelihood you will be employed with a good income assuming your grades are good in a normal economic environment.
Whenever you read about people unable to pay back student loans, they never mention what they studied, what their GPA was, or if they completed any internships.
There was a study that almost half of Americans felt that students didnt understand the financial risks of student loans. Maybe before taking on any student loans, colleges should make a more concerted effort to lay out the real world statistics so that students understand that post-graduation, this is what has happened, this is the average salary and how many people get jobs. And maybe theyâll still pursue a life of leisure but at least they are educated about the potential consequences.
Itâs not a coincedence that the most popular major is business.
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It depends on the kid. I know of at least one MIT graduate (whoâs very successful at what he does - no qualms there) who admits he would have found Wesleyan very difficult to navigate academically because he simply cannot read anything for pleasure or write anything that canât be summarized in a series of bullet points. This is someone who scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT.
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Why not combine both leisure and work in oneâs college experience? I was fascinated by the space program many moons ago when I was young. I liked studying all the STEM subjects. I found them exciting, and they were the path to the career that I wanted and did do.
I also played varsity ice hockey (D3) and took up sculling (i.e., rowing) during the summers I worked on campus. I also pored over the course catalog to find the humanities classes that were of interest to me. Sometimes those humanities classes didnât exactly fit into the requirements that the college had for such classes. But I went before the committee on academic performance and argued that they fit what I wanted to learn. I did that sincerely and those exceptions were always approved.
The only problem I have with the leisure aspect to college learning are those students that rack up huge amounts of debt with no prospects of repaying it. For them, maybe a path of working part time and going part time to community college would be a better path. Then, when they have saved some money, a year or two at a four-year college to finish might work out better. There is probably a myriad of other similar options that are better than living in oneâs parentsâ basement because they are swamped with college debt.
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I hear a lot about such people here on CC and in other social media, but when I dig down further it turns out that the people who have racked up the most in delinquent debt are the students who pursued online technical degrees:
Masterâs degrees in fields like computer engineering, education, English, history and math seem to have fewer outlier programs and lower borrowing amounts over all. Itâs the less mainstream programs, where vague promises of a lucrative career are easier to make, that seem to encourage irrationally large debt.
Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Graduate Schools - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
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I note some of the US colleges with the best records in placing graduates in business do not even have business as an undergraduate major.
You can also study virtually anything and go on to a top law school, if your grades are good enough and you do really well on the LSAT.
And so on.
One my favorite sayings on this sort of subject is âThere are many roads to Dublinâ. This concept was referred to in a poem, which is about a different subject, but it captures a basic dynamic that reappears in many discussions. It starts:
There are many roads to Dublin, but some will tell you no
They will tell you the one true road, if to Dublin you want to go
They will insist to you this road is the one to take, the road they show
Because they knew a man who went to Dublin a long long time ago!You must go through Kilbeggan, folk from Banagher and Tullamore will tell
So will folk from Galway, and from Athlone as well
But folk from Granard or Ballinalee will laugh at you and say to go to hell
You go through Kells or Mullingar to get to Dublin they will yell!Men from Cork and Kerry will say you go through Kildare
The Galway folk and Offaly folk will say they too pass through there
But the men from Belfast and Armagh at you will scoff and stare
When they go up to Dublin, they come down through Newry fair!That all roads lead to Dublin all men will agree
That each prefer their own the truth all men can see
We cannot walk anothersâ road, one that does, foolish is he!
At this point, Iâve seen people walk many different paths to get to âDublinâ, namely a satisfying and comfortable career and life. Unfortunately, I have also seen people go down paths they were assured would work to that end, and it has not. You can treat that as just random, cases of playing the odds that simply did not work out. But my observation is a lot of it is actually not so random, it involves how you approach life, opportunity, failure, regrouping, and so on.
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But what if you goal is not simply to make as much money as you can? Sure, you need money to pay your living expenses, but beyond that, some will value having more money, and some will not. So who cares if certain majors pay better if your goals in life are not based on collecting as much money as possible? Money is not everyoneâs goal and there is nothing wrong with that.
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Yeah, in the studies I have seen, the biggest single factors in things like student loan default rates is whether the institution was for-profit or not, and whether you actually graduated or not.
Interestingly, among private non-profits and even more so publics, four-years had lower default rates than two-years. But among for-profits, it reversed.
Publics also had a somewhat higher rate than private nonprofits, and non-selective colleges more than selective colleges.
At selective colleges, arts/humanities majors had a slightly higher default rate than STEM and business/law majors, but it is a weak effect in comparison (and again, business/law majors donât even exist as some top colleges).
So, if you do something like go to a selective four-year private college and graduate, your relative risk of default is going to be quite low regardless of what you major in. And a little higher but not much if it is a selective four-year public and you graduate.
If it is a for-profit four-year and you donât graduate? Obviously it tends not to matter so much what you majored in then either, and that is a very high risk of default situation.
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Sure, if your goal is not making the most money, then go for leisure and many kids do that.