Why I Can't Push My Kids Toward College

College does not equal life success.

I realize the definition of success can vary greatly from person to person, and I’m quite sure my own definition of it won’t line up with a lot of people’s. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that success means a good job and maybe some financial stability.

Having a college degree once set you above the competition when it came time to seek employment. With the workforce now flooded with college graduates, that isn’t the case anymore. According to this 2017 article from the Boston Globe, 45% of college graduates work in non-college jobs, or jobs that require no degree. A CBS news report even said 22% of college graduates wind up as low-wage earners, with up to 75% of graduates in certain fields consistently ending up in low-skill jobs.

Those numbers are staggering. While a college degree can lead to a better-paying job, it is certainly no guarantee, particularly when you also consider this…

College is ridiculously expensive.

I never cease to be amazed at the Americans who will go into a tirade over a $0.14 hike in their electricity rates, while remaining silent about the fact college tuition rates have risen 213% in the last 30 years.

According to a 2018 report from CNBC, the average student loan borrower will graduate school with more than $37,000 in student loan debt.

Did you see that? More than $37,000.

Paying off that kind of debt necessitates a good-paying job which, as I said in my last point, cannot be guaranteed by a college degree. And while this is entirely anecdotal, I have multiple friends who regret their college experience for just this reason. Some of them are still saddled with debt even years after completing their education, often for degrees they are not even using, and in some cases could not use again without additional education.

Of course, not all students graduate with that level of debt. Financial aid is available for many and wise people take advantage of it. But I also find myself struggling sometimes with the level of pressure I see put on kids in the hope of making them eligible for grants or scholarships. The academic pressure can be unbelievable — careful, meticulous selection of any and all high school courses, multiple attempts at the ACT or SAT in a desperate effort to improve scores. And where academic pressure isn’t working, there is often enormous pressure for athletic achievement or extracurricular involvement and success to the total detriment of faith and family time, all in the hopes some scholarship might be attainable in the end.

I’m sorry. For me, it’s just not worth it.

**Most colleges present an environment and push an agenda that contradicts what I have spent years teaching my children.**

I don’t apologize for this concern. And it isn’t close-minded to think this way, especially when it could be thousands of dollars out of my pocket to pay for it.

Not every college is a moral and ideological wasteland, I realize, but college campuses are often known for their moral depravity and anti-Christian ideas. And this includes many private Christian universities. Even back in my high school days there were colleges, (and there were a lot of them even then,) labeled “party schools”, that were known best for alcohol consumption and promiscuity. You will also be hard-pressed to find a college that doesn’t openly and vehemently advocate for ideas in direct opposition to Christianity, and often ideas hostile toward Christianity.

Fortunately technology now provides people the opportunity to obtain degrees often without ever setting foot on campus, but that doesn’t eliminate the ability of colleges to indoctrinate rather than educate.

And don’t try to tell me that doesn’t happen. While most left-leaning universities wholly deny any effort to alter the thinking of students, even the Washington Post acknowledged that college professors are becoming increasingly liberal and that liberal educators in American universities outnumber conservative ones by a ratio of 5 to 1. Personal belief does influence the way a person teaches. And according to this article, even many left-wing thinkers see the problem inherent in the liberal/conservative imbalance, acknowledging that few colleges are now able to offer an intellectually diverse and rigorous education because of it.

I teach my children opposing ideas, so I am not afraid of them. But neither do I want to spend my money supporting them. I have invested too much in my children over the years to be dismissive of ideas that not only differ from my own, but are often diametrically opposed to them.

A person can further their education without college

I resent the fact that furthering your education is often synonymous with going to college, when a person can educate themselves after high school without ever attending a university. For one, the trades are often devalued as somehow lesser fields of study when, especially as fewer and fewer people pursue them, workers like plumbers, carpenters, and electricians will enjoy greater job stability and incomes that rival or surpass many of their college-graduate counterparts, with little to no student loan debt, according to this article from Forbes.

But every young person should be encouraged to learn as much as they can possibly learn in their particular areas of interest. Colleges generally demand a very wide scope of study, often requiring courses that in no way apply to a student’s major, (all at those ridiculous costs, of course,) rather than encouraging focused, specified study. As college graduates become more plentiful, employers find themselves returning to old-fashioned methods of hiring, by looking for those with stronger work ethic, greater experience, and more complete and specified knowledge of their field, whether that knowledge came as a result of a college degree or not.

College is the right choice for some kids, but I refuse to bow to societal pressures that say college is the only way, nor will I enroll my child at a university in hopes they’ll figure out what they want to do as they go. It’s not worth it. Happiness and true success never came with a slip of paper from an institute of higher learning.

No, I am not anti-college, but neither will I ever view college as the obvious next step for my children when they finish high school.

There will be no pushing at my house.