So what do we do with this?
“Junior, it’s going to be a sacrifice to send you to Western Washington University. If you were to agree to study accounting and get a job at Deloitte or KPMG, we would do it. But the CPA passage rate for Western students is below 82.9%, and we can’t afford to send you to Wisconsin. So, I’m going to need you to stay at the shop and apprentice with me.”
Is that how that conversation is supposed to go? I understand the point that others have made about attending a mid-tier private law school (Seattle U, for example) and loading up six-figures of debt based on the assumption that you will be in the top 3% of your class and land a job at Perkins Coie. Completely agree with that. But attending a directional state university like Western W. is doable for in-staters. Annual in-state tuition is $7,761. COA, per the school, is just over $29,000, which includes a conservative $15,000 / yr. for housing and meals, a figure that can be reduced while living in Bellingham with roommates. I’m sorry … we know too many families who aren’t wealthy by any measure who make that work.
There’s data and then there’s using the data to make real-life decisions. Life involves risk. Going into the trades involves risk. Staying put in your coastal PNW hometown that has been economically depressed for going on 40 years involves risk. At some point, if you want to be successful, you have to believe you can make the cut and take some risk. Like Darrell says, sitting on your biscuit too afraid to risk it is the definition of soft. And some people don’t have the luxury of soft.
We’re talking about accounting here. Those kids find jobs. The competition to hire them in-house after just a few years at an audit firm is incredibly fierce, a fact I know from first-hand experience. And the audit firms themselves are struggling to hire accounting kids out of school. The independent audit partner tells this to our audit committee all the time.