Opinion: Delay going to college, grow up first (USA TODAY College)

College Confidential Community
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<p>When I graduated from college I was so clueless as to what I was supposed to do next that I stuck around campus for another two years. I saw college as a safe haven from “adult life” and, to be brutally honest, I really wasn’t ready to face that new life yet. Those two years allowed me to delay the inevitable. Granted, I applied to a few graduate programs, and took on some odd jobs, but for the most part I was still in the ‘student mode’, largely sheltered from real life, and in need of much more growing up.</p>

<p>We’ve gotten this idea that graduating from college is our doorway into adulthood. However, as the author states in the following article, “true signs of adulthood are being financially independent, but more importantly, being able to make deliberate choices that you are happy with.” I possessed neither of these qualities after graduation and, I trust, the same is true (or will be true) for many of you.</p>

<p>[Opinion:</a> Delay going to college, grow up first | USA TODAY College](<a href=“USA Today Educate - Teacher & Student Resources & Guides”>USA Today Educate - Teacher & Student Resources & Guides)</p>

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<p>Lots of people have done this, sometimes with good results. One thing that’s true about education, though - it gets tougher to commit to it full time as your life progresses. Backpacking around Europe would be no problem, but if (as a high school grad) you are lucky enough to land a decent job, it’s tough to quit. You end up with car payments, a lease, maybe even a family. The hurdles to bailing out of all that and morphing into a starving student can get insurmountable.</p>

<p>Example: I knew a very smart young techie who was sharp enough to get some good gigs straight out of high school. He augmented his education with some excellent certifications. And, he was really good at what he did. I tried (unsuccessfully) to hire him a few times. While one might say he’s proof that college isn’t best for everyone, you could also make the argument that in the long run he would hit a ceiling. He’d likely never be a CIO or CTO, and might miss out on major data architecture opportunities (for example) without the theoretical background a good college would provide. He was doing so well financially (and drove a fancy truck, etc.) that going four years without significant income would be unthinkable. At least in his case he WAS doing very well, and earning a salary comparable to most college grads. But, armed with a degree from CMU, Stanford, or MIT, he might have done twice as well.</p>

<p>I guess if I were going to take the approach of working for a few years before undergrad school, I’d focus on saving money and avoiding locking in costs like auto payments, long-term leases, etc. Used properly, that time could help not only with maturation and career planning, but also with building up some tuition money.</p>

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<p>The problem with that approach is financial aid. If you only take a couple of years off, and don’t get married, you’re still a dependent, and tied to your parents for financial aid. You will still have EFC based on their income and savings, but also on anything you’ve saved up AND your own annual income, but if you go back to school full time, you don’t have that income anymore, so you better have enough saved up to cover the full cost of your first year. Then you can get aid your second year (hopefully).</p>

<p>For those who don’t really know what they want to do, it might not be a bad idea, and might save money in the long run, as they won’t waste money figuring out what they want to do. But those who have a sense of what they want to do, and are prepared to declare their major on their applications, that year or two off could be a mistake.</p>

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<p>In addition to what CTS said, how is someone even supposed to get a job that pays enough to live outside their parents’ home and “grow up” without a college degree…? The author uses as an example her mother’s life in the 1970s. This isn’t the 1970s anymore.</p>

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<p>I don’t really have much in common with most people at my university. Most of them are still in the alcohol/420/far-left politics/rebel against parents/etc. stage and it’s pretty depressing. It’s not even an age thing. Some of these people are 27 years old and still living life like Beavis & Butthead.</p>

<p>When I bring up topics like small business ideas or or what their career plans are, their eyes kind of glaze over because I’m not talking about Lady Gaga or 420. This is at a “top” California public university known for its engineering, not some joke school.</p>

<p>I definitely wish more people went to college when they felt they were ready or that it’s necessary rather than simply enrolling the day they finish high school in order to extend their adolescence for 4-6 more years.</p>

<p>It’s ironic because I slacked off in high school, screwed around with dead-end income techniques for a couple years, learned quickly how badly life can suck if you don’t have a plan. I went to a community college then transferred, and now have a near-perfect GPA at a great university and already work part-time in my field(s).</p>

<p>Sadly a lot of my peers are basically where I was at age 19, except they’re incurring many tens of thousands of dollars of debt for majors which do not even remotely correlate to their career plans. Say what you will about the social experience or living up to family traditions, etc., but from the lifelong job satisfaction perspective, it’s possibly just a more expensive version of playing video games and working at McDonalds until you truly know what you want to do.</p>

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<p>Everyone’s case is different. Gap years can be put to good use, but at the same time, if you’ve got a full ride offer to a top college, it’s kind of nuts to turn that down. You could end up working and when you go back, there goes your grant funds because EFC has gone up. </p>

<p>If there is an epidemic about people not being able to figure out their interests, what can I say, high school guidance probably failed them. That’s probably what needs improvement. When I saw the list of majors the first time, I didn’t know what half of them were, much less data like median starting salary, is advanced degree needed, internships.</p>

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<p>Those offers can be deferred a year, if you ask. My son took a gap year and was given the opportunity to start his $15,000 merit scholarship a year later. He also had a private scholarship that agreed to escrow his funds for a year.</p>

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<p>I used to work in a corporate customer service (engineering) job doing high-level support. I didn’t have a college degree. Neither did two other guys that I was working for. I finished my degrees, paid for by our employer. One of the other guys finished his degree by correspondence, got his masters from a local school (that was really weak) to get a nice promotion. The third guy never finished his degree. He eventually became the project leader of a group with probably around $50 million in sales and I see him from time to time in the office.</p>

<p>Most people don’t have college degrees but they do survive. Some even thrive. Yes, you can get your degree or degrees later on and sometimes someone else will pay for them.</p>

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<p>The problem starts with the guidance counselors, and with ranking of high schools based on the number of students that go straight to college.</p>

<p>A percentage of students should go straight to college - those who know what they want to do. The others should work, and perhaps go to community college to work on core requirements, until they have a better idea what they want to do. Their absence from the 4-year campuses might allowed the schools to offer the classes their students need to progress toward their degrees, rather than remedial classes because a significant portion of their incoming class isn’t ready for college level work.</p>

<p>BCEagle - did you have a sense of what you wanted to do when you started your job? If not, did you have a better idea once you were there, but before you started working on your degree? It is great that your employer paid for your education, but that is often reserved to larger employers, and the majority of people work for smaller companies. And in the current economy, there are plenty of more mature adults available to fill those positions that do have tuition reimbursement. </p>

<p>Discoinferno - you are right, at a community college or state college in particular, you will see a significant difference between the fresh-out-of-HS students and those who are returning to school, and sometimes at the more expensive private schools as well. Some of your younger classmates don’t fit that profile, but they are probably outnumbered by the others (as are you). I agree, for many of that larger group, they might benefit from waiting, but our society has stacked everything in favor of sending them early. Meanwhile we don’t have nearly enough going into trades (where some of them could do really well, and make good money due to shortages). It’s kind of like the lottery - they’ve all been sold on the idea that they could be the one that breaks the bank with their degree. That and the fact that they don’t realize the cost, because they’re not the ones getting the bills.</p>

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<p>No. But a combination of hacking, programming and studying math on my own, and working since I was 14 seemed to be pretty attractive to at least one employer out there. I didn’t really look for the job - a friend that graduated gave my name to a headhunter and they contacted me, put together a resume for me and got me an interview at a local industrial manufacturing company. I interviewed with the group manager, project manager and technical lead. The technical lead gave me one verbal test, I answered it and I had the job.</p>

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<p>I was working so hard and spending time working out that I didn’t think all that much about what I wanted to do long-term.</p>

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<p>I worked for several employers, large and small and they provided education benefits. There were some good tax benefits to do so up until around the mid- to late-1990s. I also started a company with a friend doing consulting work which was a ton of fun.</p>

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<p>We have a company moving into town that will be doing nano-manufacturing. They are going to making carbon nanotube fibers to make things like clothes, tape, etc. What’s interesting is that there is a university twenty-two miles away that just finished putting up a building for nano-manufacturing research and I believe that they will have a program for engineering.</p>

<p>I’d guess that there isn’t a lot of expertise out there in this area. Having skills in high-demand in the latest technologies should improve the odds of finding work. I would assume that there will be many jobs that just require a high-school diploma or technical certificate or associates degree.</p>

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<p>@Lorem Sorry I wasn’t more clear, was thinking of grant funding not scholarships. For those that delay college to start working, EFC goes up, grant $ goes down. In my case that would amount to having to set aside an entire year’s salary, not counting living expenses, just to make up for it. Not a very practical alternative.</p>

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<p>I joined the Coast Guard right after high school and 4 years later I was married with a child and a car payment. I got a good job after I got out and here I am 7 years later making over $40 an hour. I started going to community college a couple of years ago and just transferred to UC Berkeley. I am doing MUCH better academically now than I would have had I went to college right after high school, but I now have way more financial responsibilities ( 2 kids 2 cars and a mortgage). Fortunately I am able to work and go to school full time so I kind of get to have my cake and eat it too, but I do agree that the more one achieves without college it gets progressively harder to walk away and go back to school. I have been able to develops a passion for learning that I did not have before and without this passion I would have never considered going to college.</p>

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<p>That’s a great story.</p>

<p>I went back too but my wife did help push me to finish and then get an advanced degree and she had more stress taking care of the kids when I wasn’t around (in-laws helped too).</p>

<p>I found college work to be easy after working full-time for a while.</p>

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<p>Going back a couple of decades, college was not supposed to be career-focused, unless you were doing nursing or engineering or accounting, for instance. The idea was that you learned about yourself at college, not before college. Going in “undecided” was fine. The recession and the level of debt for college has changed some of this, admittedly, but still, I don’t think that figuring out a career goal is an adequate reason for delay in attending.</p>

<p>That said, I think a broader questioning needs to happen about “college for everyone.” A BA has become the new high school diploma, and this phenomenon is causing a lot of suffering, and debt. I wish that alternatives were presented: carpentry or cabinet-making, wilderness hiking, service work in this country or abroad, and so on. Community colleges have great certificate programs. I know college grads who go to CC after the BA.</p>

<p>If career is the main point of college for so many people, many could do better getting an associates or certificate at the local CC, honestly. At a much lower cost.</p>

<p>As for growing up, this generation is getting a bad rap. It’s all about the economy. Hard to be independent when jobs are hard to come by, especially jobs that pay the rent and the loan.</p>

<p>Interesting that high schools are ranked according to the number of students going to college. That explains a lot.</p>

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<p>Those costs may be going up.</p>

<p>Son sent me a note telling me something about his department at school. I went to look at the state budget for UMass. They had about a $56 million deficit which they closed with $28 million in fee hikes and $26 million in budget cuts (I might have those numbers reversed). That makes for about an 8% fee hike and a drop in quality - son’s note to me was evidence of that. I imagine that this is happening all over the country where state budgets are tight. Most of the deficit was due to the cutoff of stimulus funding from the Federal Government so students were living on borrowed time.</p>

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<p>Regarding Community College - at least here in Virginia, there’s the often-overlooked option to take two years in CC, and then, (with qualifying GPA), guaranteed transfer to a number of 4-year colleges, including UVA, W&M, and VT. </p>

<p>This is seen as a financial strategy, as CC is far less expensive than these options – but it can also help provide more of a transition from high-school to college, allowing kids to live at home, hold a job, etc. I don’t think it really changes the math on career choices, however - you’re just as likely to pick a major too early in CC as you are in a 4-year school.</p>

<p>As to the reference article, in my experience, no matter how rational and mature the rationale for a gap year or two between high school and college, I’d estimate 80-90 percent of those who deferred did not go on to college, at least in any meaningful way. </p>

<p>Those that do almost always had a fixed and finite plan - deferred entry at a college, and a plan for that year, like missionary work. Taking a year off to work at the Gap part-time - even if the goal was to “save for college”, almost invariably, led to another year and then another, and ultimately a case of “dream deferred, dream denied.”</p>

<p>There are certainly other options to meaningful careers - trade schools, military service, etc. My own career path certainly saw a lot of false starts - trade school, work, community college, work, military - eventually I found something I liked and made a reasonable career of it. There’s no single formula for success. </p>

<p>By the way, I see a lot of college graduates doing the same thing - taking a year or two after graduation to have some fun before they begin their careers - they say things like “I have my whole life to work, I’m going to have some fun first.” That sounds reasonable - but I know too many baristas who are discovering that for most employers:</p>

<p>A 4-year-degree, followed by 4 years of unemployment/underemployment = nothing.</p>

<p>With a track record like that, no one cares what school you went to, what your major was - it’s meaningless, because you don’t have a work history.</p>

<p>Being 28, sharing an apartment with 3 other people, working part-time as a minimum-wage retail clerk, one paycheck away from the street, just doesn’t sound that “fun” to me …</p>

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<p>Maybe that wouldn’t be fun, but it could be motivation to step it up and do more. Of course, if that struggling took place years sooner, you could be in a much better and more stable position by age 28. From what I’ve seen, many parents don’t EVER want their darlings to struggle- not even the tiniest bit. The more that parents provide, the less young people are inclined to provide for themselves.</p>

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<p>I agree with this article. I am 23 now, starting as a freshman for the second time, but I actually started college back 4 years ago when I was 19. I had to leave college at the end of the first semester because of surgeries I had to get, and the recovery periods of those surgeries took a while as well as being on the waiting list for the surgeries. I look back at my 19 year old self and I see a guy who was not really ready for college. Yes I was determined and all, but i’ve never been more motivated and determined about education and college life like I am now. I am a lot smarter now and know exactly what I want to do. This article is true, you really do have to grow up before going to college.</p>

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<p>I’m afraid of putting off college because I might just talk myself into never going.</p>

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<p>Personally, taking a year off was the best decision I ever made. I wanted to take a year off right after high school, but parents and guidance counselors pushed me to go. Bottom line was I just wasn<code>t ready. I didn</code>t know enough about myself and what I wanted from life to have a clue what direction to go in. As a result, I chose an almost random major and I just didn<code>t see myself going into this, which kind of made school a joke. I think taking a year off and working full time gave me a much better sense of what I want. And to be honest, the fact that it would have been hard to support just me, let alone children one day, on my pay check gave me a glimpse of what the real world is. It made me realize that I should chose a major with a career in mind and work hard at it. I think I</code>d still be wasting time in classes that I don`t care about without that year.</p>