How is this path designed for someone who wishes to pursue a dream after college? And by dreams I mean one of the “one out of a million” ones like being a famous musician, actor, designer, author, on screen personality… the ones where you can’t really go to school for it or if there is schooling for its its not something you could fall back on if you fail. Let’s say you want to be a famous musician but you want to go to college for a business or tech degree. However, that requires immediate grad schooling or work experience, right? Could you go off chasing your dreams and come back if you fail? And let’s say if you go to an acting, art, or fashion design school. If you fail to make a comfortable living out of all that, you’re pretty much stuck with a degree in something that makes no money right? It seems like the spectrum is 0 to 100 if you’re trying to make big bucks chasing a pipe dream.
No, the spectrum’s not 0 to 100.
I’ve TA’ed classes at Columbia, which has the well-known School of General Studies - a school for non-traditional students who have had breaks of at least 2 years before going to (or returning to) college. One huge group of students in GS are artists, musicians, and other performers who have had varying levels of success in their artistic fields before returning to start or finish their bachelor’s degrees. Another huge group were military veterans who returned to start or finish their bachelor’s degree. Some were successful (or failures, or somewhere in between) in starting or working in businesses before deciding to return or start college. I actually also played with an orchestra made up of medical campus students, and there were sooo many med/dental/nursing students who were musicians for several years before deciding to return to med/dental/nursing school. Some of them had even gotten graduate degrees in music. Our conductor had been an orchestra conductor before he decided he wanted to be a doctor.
The thing is…college isn’t going anywhere. Grad school isn’t going anywhere, either. The other thing is that most jobs don’t require a specific major, and even for the ones that prefer majors, there are plenty of jobs that prefer “useless” majors like English, psychology, history, sociology, biology, chemistry, etc.
If you’re a violin virtuoso and are given the opportunity to tour with a symphony orchestra for 2 years, there’s nothing preventing you from doing that and then returning to college at 20. If you’re a promising ballerina, there’s no reason you can’t dance until your mid-20s and then get a bachelor’s degree later. If you’re an Olympic-level athlete, it’s probably in your best interests to use your youth while you can and return to college later to get a BA. The same thing is true of grad school - if after college you have the opportunity to join an orchestra or pursue an acting career or dance on Broadway, doing that for a few years before grad school is totally fine.
And there are many people with degrees in studio art, music, drama, and dance who have gainful employment post-college (including in non-art fields). People change careers ALL the time. And you can learn something, even from failure.
So of course, you can chase your dreams and return after failing (or succeeding). You just have to plan well to make sure that you don’t get yourself in ridiculous debt, so you can live off ramen noodles 3-deep in a studio apartment if necessary while trying to make those dreams come true. Students who rack up $60K in debt at a fancy private school aren’t well-positioned to make a go at a highly competitive, low-paying career.
There are more ways to do life than you can even think of. Your life will be a path of twists and turns, side trails, circles, back steps, and on. When you are young and have low responsibilities these chase your dreams plans are easier than when you have a spouse, kids, house, etc. Your path, your choices.