Investment Broker and Financial Commentator Peter Schiff put out a devastatingly painful video this week titled "Is a college degree worth the cost? You decide." Schiff rails against the myth that the college degree is a necessity:
President Obama promotes the myth that everyone must go to college. That if you don't go, your life will be ruined -- that you will end up waiting tables, or trapped in some other mundane occupation. The truth is, even with a college degree, you may still end up waiting tables, you'll just begin your "career" four or five years later, tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Schiff wanders around Bourbon Street in New Orleans and asks young adults whether they went to college, what major they had, and what they do now. Invariably they work as waiters, bartenders, bouncers, hucksters, and pedicab drivers.
Schiff puts out the video as an inquiry into what kind of job a college education gets you today in America. Certainly one can quibble with his survey size, and whether his sample is representative of college students at large. However when college prices have skyrocketed to the point that four years of tuition at a State institution can cost over $100,000 dollars then making that investment is a serious sober decision.
Any adult over the age of thirty will tell you that life has a way of changing your plans. We can go to college with a great plan - but half of incoming students will not graduate. Those that do rarely start working in the fields they anticipate. So long as a college degree is perceived to be the requisite to a middle class lifestyle or greater - there will be no shortage of college bound students.
Buyer Beware
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