Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:my two kids are at T10 colleges.

we're full pay and I told them both, there's a decent chance that - financially - we would have better off getting you both a Chick Fil A franchise in a medium market city.

but life is about more than ROI. do you want to be a manager at a Chick Fil A? if not, then it's not worth it, even if it's a smarter deal. and college means more than career placement - it's the passions you form, the people you meet, the experiences. So we're paying a (factually) dumb amount of money every day youre at college. We ask you take it seriously and make the most of it. Go to office hours. Read the books. Meet allll the people. Go on the ski trip. The social connections and the development of your own interests are what will make this worth it.

Chick-fil-A franchises are crazy competitive. You need to have leadership and other experience. They don't want investors; they want managers. Is your kid working at a Chick-fil-A now to get some experience, or are they beneath that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bizzare post. What do you do for living? Where did your kids go to college and grad school? What jobs do they have?

One can only assume OP has taken their own advice and their kids are plumbers and pipefitters.

Not a terrible thing, in fact. In doing college research and reading the news, I have more than once wished DC had interest in and aptitude for a lucrative trade.

Anonymous wrote:The original post is the "dumbification" or whatever.

What is this nonsense - is this a foreign psyop - telling Americans that education is "dumb" and don't get one?

Anonymous wrote:Who on DCUM is graduating with six figures of debt? I don’t know anyone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:my two kids are at T10 colleges.

we're full pay and I told them both, there's a decent chance that - financially - we would have better off getting you both a Chick Fil A franchise in a medium market city.

but life is about more than ROI. do you want to be a manager at a Chick Fil A? if not, then it's not worth it, even if it's a smarter deal. and college means more than career placement - it's the passions you form, the people you meet, the experiences. So we're paying a (factually) dumb amount of money every day youre at college. We ask you take it seriously and make the most of it. Go to office hours. Read the books. Meet allll the people. Go on the ski trip. The social connections and the development of your own interests are what will make this worth it.

Chick-fil-A franchises are crazy competitive. You need to have leadership and other experience. They don't want investors; they want managers. Is your kid working at a Chick-fil-A now to get some experience, or are they beneath that?

they both worked there in HS, which is why I used the example. anyway. as I said, they're both in college now.

It's not a bad path to gain management experience there first, then you spot them the 10% down payment to become a franchisee. From there, they can buy more.

Nah, they have to have a high NW to even be considered. The 10% is the tip of the iceberg - they are looking for someone who can float the store while draining their assets in a bad year - like Covid.

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop looking at a degree as an automatic "upward mobility" button and start looking at it as a high-risk capital allocation. The data is clear. we have a massive surplus of low-value degrees and a labor market that is already starting to discount them. Unless your child is attending a top-tier target school where the institutional prestige acts as a hedge against mediocrity, they are likely walking into an underemployment trap. Johnny from State U is graduating with six-figure debt into a world that doesn't need another generalist with a "Business Administration" degree. We’ve flooded the market with credentials, and in doing so, we've rendered the mid-tier degree effectively worthless for anything other than basic administrative work. but no problem….at least they recorded their fair share of TikTok dances in their SEC sororities….
The "dumbification" of American higher ed is the quiet crisis no one on this board wants to admit. To keep the tuition checks flowing, universities have traded academic rigor for "student satisfaction" andt grade inflation. We are producing a workforce that can follow a rubric but lacks the cognitive stamina for first-principles thinking or problem-solving. While parents are busy comparing "Little Ivies," their kids are losing the ability to synthesize complex information without a digital crutch. We’ve turned college into a four-year delay of adulthood where students learn to navigate bureaucracy instead of mastering a competitive skill.
If you think the ROI is bad now, calculate the impact of AI over the next four years. If your kid is a freshman today, they will enter a 2030 job market where agentic AI has already cannibalized the majority of entry-level white-collar tasks. The "junior analyst" or "entry-level coordinator" roles that used to be the traditional starting point for college grads are being automated out of existence. We are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to train kids for roles that a $20 monthly subscription will do better and faster by the time they graduate. If your child isn't in the top 5% of their field or pursuing a specialized technical trade, you aren't buying them a future…… you're buying them a very expensive seat at a table that is being removed from the room….

Anyway…..keep it up….

Anonymous wrote:We need to stop looking at a degree as an automatic "upward mobility" button and start looking at it as a high-risk capital allocation. The data is clear. we have a massive surplus of low-value degrees and a labor market that is already starting to discount them. Unless your child is attending a top-tier target school where the institutional prestige acts as a hedge against mediocrity, they are likely walking into an underemployment trap. Johnny from State U is graduating with six-figure debt into a world that doesn't need another generalist with a "Business Administration" degree. We’ve flooded the market with credentials, and in doing so, we've rendered the mid-tier degree effectively worthless for anything other than basic administrative work. but no problem….at least they recorded their fair share of TikTok dances in their SEC sororities….
The "dumbification" of American higher ed is the quiet crisis no one on this board wants to admit. To keep the tuition checks flowing, universities have traded academic rigor for "student satisfaction" andt grade inflation. We are producing a workforce that can follow a rubric but lacks the cognitive stamina for first-principles thinking or problem-solving. While parents are busy comparing "Little Ivies," their kids are losing the ability to synthesize complex information without a digital crutch. We’ve turned college into a four-year delay of adulthood where students learn to navigate bureaucracy instead of mastering a competitive skill.
If you think the ROI is bad now, calculate the impact of AI over the next four years. If your kid is a freshman today, they will enter a 2030 job market where agentic AI has already cannibalized the majority of entry-level white-collar tasks. The "junior analyst" or "entry-level coordinator" roles that used to be the traditional starting point for college grads are being automated out of existence. We are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to train kids for roles that a $20 monthly subscription will do better and faster by the time they graduate. If your child isn't in the top 5% of their field or pursuing a specialized technical trade, you aren't buying them a future…… you're buying them a very expensive seat at a table that is being removed from the room….

Anyway…..keep it up….