Financial Freedom: Education and training
, Funny about Money started a series on making your way toward financial freedom, the state where you find yourself independent of the day job and free to do what you want to do with your life. We identified several components in this project, all of them having to do with personal finance.
Today, let’s start with the first of those: Education
furnishes your mind. Broad reading, writing, thought, and discussion make you a wiser person and cultivate your ability to think logically, to recognize flim-flam, and to make good decisions. For that reason, a good undergraduate degree in the liberal arts is useful—maybe even indispensable—to anyone who hopes to take a leadership role in industry, government, education, and the law. Those of us who aspire to high-powered careers in any of those need a strong undergraduate degree in the liberal arts followed by a graduate or professional degree in business, law, science, or technology.
Some graduate degrees are scams and should be avoided. A master of fine arts in writing, for example, will leave you fully unemployable while teaching you nothing that you wouldn’t have learned by spending the same amount of time applying your bottom to the seat of your desk chair. Graduate degrees in vague new pushmi-pullyu programs with no real entry requirements, such as Arizona State University’s “master of liberal studies,” are similarly suspect: if you want a degree in the liberal arts, take the GRE and get yourself into a solid program such as English, history, or mathematics.
are useful in that they provide high-level vocational training for young people whose cast of mind is not especially academic. Often the resulting job opportunities are better paid, at least at the entry level, than a bachelor’s degree in the liberal or fine arts will generate. Over time, however, people with bachelor’s degrees in subjects like business, education, and technology may need master’s degrees or professional certifications to move up in their trades.
On the college level, vocational training—which defines a large number of undergraduate and graduate-level programs—will set you up to get a job, assuming jobs in your major are available by the time you graduate. includes degree programs in business, nursing, medicine, engineering, computer sciences, graphic arts, education, and journalism, to name a few. It must be remembered that none of these guarantees high-paying work. To the contrary, some, such as journalism and education, pretty much guarantee their graduates low pay. Some, such as accountancy, provide entrée to trades that make a good living but that may bore the pants off you.
Sometimes this has to do with the student’s level of maturity—some should delay college until they are focused enough to profit from it. Having to earn a living for a while speeds maturity and creates a much better college student. Others are more likely to succeed in the trades than in low-level white-collar jobs; in the case of young people who are not interested in school or who find study painfully difficult and discouraging, a short stint in a community college and a decent apprenticeship may be a smarter strategy. A person with skills in the trades is likely to earn as much as or more than an ill-educated college graduate. Remember that most millionaires in the United States are owners of businesses that provide services like pest control and plumbing. The beauty of the trades is that the work can’t easily be offshored. Even though some of these jobs pay little more than minimum wage, an ambitious young person can learn the trade well and then build his or her own business. Once you’re hiring someone else for minimum wage, you’re in a position to make a good living.
Choose wisely and choose well: consider first what you really A young person who’s savvy to personal finance or an older but wiser person who’s going back to school can find ways to minimize the damage. The idea should be to avoid a heavy burden of student loans, which can saddle a young person for years—even, possibly, for the rest of one’s life.
One obvious strategy that many people overlook is simply to But have you priced apartments lately? Lower-division courses at community colleges are usually staffed with professionals who are dedicated to teaching, in contrast to universities, which often foist the scutwork courses onto exploited graduate students, underpaid junior faculty distracted by the grinding quest to attain tenure, or senior faculty more interested in their research than in teaching.
It’s important to be sure that courses you take in a community college will transfer to the university of your choice. Many state universities have articulation programs with local colleges, and some state legislatures have mandated that their universities accept credit from community colleges; however, these rules may not apply to out-of-state colleges.
If you’re an excellent student but can’t afford an expensive private college, seek “ Ivy League public schools ,” such as Michigan or Berkeley. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a state that hosts one of these institutions, by all means try to get in. Savings can be huge, and the quality of education is good. If you have to go out of state, consider living and working there for a year or two to establish residency before enrolling—most state schools require a local driver’s license and evidence that you or (if you’re still a minor) your parents have paid state taxes.
Whether you go to a community college or an in-state university, offer you the chance either to take on full-time work temporarily, racking up some savings for the following school year, or to speed your way toward graduation by taking coursework. Two summer sessions of six credits adds up to twelve credits, the equivalent of a full semester. In your lower-division years, consider a community college for summer school—just be sure, before you sign up, that your university will accept transfer credits for the classes you take.
An alternative to work-study is . Most institutions provide a tuition waiver for employees. Pay, especially in public schools, is usually abysmal, but it should cover studenty lodging and help pay the other bills. Jobs not considered part of a work-study program may have rigid hours that preclude attending certain classes. However, schools are famously flexible (it’s part of political correctness), and so you often can obtain work on campus that will allow time to take your courses. Pay, though poor, is usually better than student work, and you get a full range of benefits.
Look for scholarships, fellowships, and grants to help underwrite the cost of college or vocational training. A surprising amount of free money goes unused, simply because people are unaware of the opportunities. Some are offered by local groups, service clubs, communities, and churches and are so specific that even candidates who qualify for them don’t think of looking for them. Check websites that aggregate information on scholarships, and ask at college and public library reference desks for leads to funding opportunities.
Some students , such as the guy who realized he could make a profit buying back students’ used books for more than the bookstore paid for them and then reselling them for less than the bookstore charged. Find a need and fill it: this requires some ingenuity, but a microbusiness run out of a dorm room or an apartment can go a long way toward defraying the cost of education.
Speaking of dorm rooms and apartments, Textbooks are so expensive that some colleges are seriously considering abandoning books altogether and having students use websites. This is a recipe for further dumbing-down of America’s already dumbed down educational system, but that’s another topic… Consider ways to keep at least some of the wool on your back.
First and foremost: . Amazon.com is almost invariably cheaper than college bookstores. Try to get your books used, and sell them back through Amazon, using the bookstore’s repurchasing program as your last resort. Look online for sellers and buyers; some online outfits offer a better deal than either Amazon or the bookstore.
A cheaper but less convenient alternative is to It’s extremely annoying. Faculty know about and dislike the cost of textbooks. If the professor didn’t think you needed the book for the course, he or she wouldn’t have put it on the syllabus! This strategy flags you in the professor’s mind as someone who’s in school for a rubber-stamp degree and who doesn’t care about the course, its content, or its value. It starts you off on the wrong foot: avoid!
Starting off on the right foot, though, is what adequate education or vocational training will do for you. Even if you have to go back to school later in life to obtain the training you need, a degree, a certificate, or an apprenticeship will help you to earn enough to position yourself for your future of financial independence.
As my son stumbles toward the finish line after 5 years of college, I’m banking on any college degree is better than no college degree. Heck, I have a degree is History that I’ve never used and I’m still glad I have it. I hope his degree in Drama (yes, Drama) will serve him as well!
Immediate post-graduate plans? Travel around the country in an RV with a friend. LOL – You can only guide them so much! If that actually happens, hopefully he’ll gain lots of story ideas for his eventual fame and fortune in Tinsel Town.
I think two years in community college is the best advice of all!
My biggest pet-peeve is books. A new edition is put out every couple of years with relatively few changes and a hefty price. My son had to buy a new Chemistry book but after the return-date was past, the instructor told the students they didn’t need it. Other books were barely used at all.
My son finished up this past semester with a Power Plant Tech AAS degree, now if only there were jobs out there ($25-$35/hr possible.). At least, he’s debt free.
Cheers to 2010!
@ Leah: That is just shocking! The students in your son’s class should have gone to the departmental chair and complained…there’s no excuse for making students buy an expensive textbook and then not using it. If nothing else, the chair may have been able to put some pressure on the bookstore to take it back.
Often adjunct faculty at community colleges are unaware that campus bookstores have exploitive policies, such as refusing to take unused books back after a certain date. The instructor may not have known that revising the course in midstream would cost the students so much.
The book situation is very complicated now. New editions come out every two years for many books, so the book becomes worthless very quickly.
Also, many depts have custom texts, which have no value outside the institution. This is a money-maker for the dept. Before you start screaming, realize that this pays for things like xeroxing exams for students in this era of budget cuts.
Of course, one of the reasons that new editions have to be done every couple of years IS the used-book business, which cuts the publisher and author out of the transaction. Publishers have to change the books so that buyers will be forced to buy from the publisher, not from the chain of middlemen and campus bookstores that are sucking the life out of the textbook publishing business.
Textbooks are surprisingly profitable. I still earn a small royalty on the Essential Feature , even though it’s long out of date. Writing a text that gets widely accepted for those monster lower-division courses that fill gen-ed requirements all over the country can go a long way toward funding your retirement. However, if it drops off the market after two or three years because all the copies are being recirculated in campus bookstores, then you’ll be trying to live on Social Security.
That said, there’s really little excuse to charge $80 for a freshman comp book — that’s the price of a new copy of Seyler’s Read, Reason, Write . Exc-y-ooze me??? This thing is an ordinary paperback, with no arcane knowledge and no expensive graphics. True, they probably had to pay reprint fees for some (but I’ll bet not all) of the 100 or so short articles they reproduced (some of them are in the public domain). I’ve done anthologies…it doesn’t cost 80 bucks a copy to buy reprint rights for stuff like this. No question about it: some textbooks (not all) rip off the student.
I just graduated from college last May, and actually, a lot of professors put the book on the syllabus and never intended to use it. They did so because they were required to by the department, not because they had personally selected the text or built their lesson plans around them. On one or two occasions they would actually tell the class that the book was just for supplemental reference and everything we would need to know would be in the lectures, but swore us to secrecy on that because they were /supposed/ to tell us to give our money to the university bookstore.
@ Tamara: Congratulations on your accomplishment, and congrats on getting a job, even if it is hourly. And welcome to the ranks of the laboring class.
Hmmm… I would question the ethics of both sides there. If it is true the department required a text for no other reason than to enrich the bookstore (but I doubt that…how does the bookstore benefit when it has not only to return students’ money but pay to ship the unused books back to the publisher?), then obviously that’s unethical. If the professor is asking students to buy a required text and then telling them, , to return it and get a refund because he has some other idea about how the course should be run, that’s a bit stinky, too.
If the department requires a specific text, there’s probably a reason for it, and that reason would have more to do with academic rigor and integrity and less to do with some sort of sweetheart deal with the campus bookstore. So when a professor writes a syllabus that says she’s requiring the text (syllabi generally have to be filed with the department, and many departmental chairs review them each semester) when in fact she has no intention of using it, she’s undermining the program’s integrity and she’s lying to her colleagues.
The undermining goes further than is evident on the surface. Every few years, accredited schools undergo audits and reviews by their regional and national accrediting organizations. These reviews invariably include rigorous demands that the school show how it evaluates the quality and effectiveness of its own programs and the achievement of its students. Course syllabi are submitted as part of this process. So, if professors routinely are ignoring the requirements printed in their syllabi, then they are deceiving the accrediting agencies — oh, let’s be fair: they’re
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