Chapters 1 and 2

Chapter 1
College Is Not for Everyone

So your kid says he or she wants to go to college. “All my friends are going!” he/she exclaims. All you can do at first is nod your head patiently, keeping in mind, though, that two million—that’s 2,000,000—students drop out of four-year public colleges in the United States each year—more than half of them Black! That’s more than one-third of all the students enrolled at those schools! Your kids don’t have to be among them!

Those drop-outs left college without degrees, without skills, without any college education, and without jobs! Many ended facing poverty. Most of them and their parents borrowed thousands of dollars to pay for their brief stays at college, and when they left, the colleges kept every penny that the students and their parents had paid to attend.

Don’t let this happen to you and your kids!

It doesn’t have to happen! It shouldn’t happen!

If your son or daughter really doesn’t want to go to college or doesn’t have to, don’t encourage her or him to go! Certainly they don’t go simply because their friends are going. They may well waste the best years of their lives, along with their own and their family’s money—and a chance at many, many other great opportunities!.

No matter what well-meaning friends, relatives, teachers, guidance counselors, or college reps-may say about what they believe to be the advantages of college, college can just as easily turn into years of personal tragedy. It already has turned into tragedy for 2 million students this year—just as it did for 2 million students last year and 2 million the year before.

A staggering 40 percent of all students who enter four-year public colleges and State U’s drop out without ever finishing. Nearly one-third—30 percent—drop out during their first year! Again, more than half are Black

In debt by an average of more than $7,000 each when they leave campus, they often lack the skills or education to get a job to support themselves, let alone pay back student loans, especially as the interest keeps building day after day after day!

With interest rates at 4% to 6%, student drop-outs—and perhaps you as a parent— face years of indebtedness for buying into the four-year college dream—or, more accurately, the college scam.

Don’t let this happen to your kids or your family!

The Truth

The truth is your kids don’t need to go to college to succeed in hundreds of satisfying, rewarding careers. Many successful men and women—even millionaires—never attended college.

George Washington never went to college. Neither did Benjamin Franklin—or, for that matter eight U.S. Presidents. In modern times, the founders of Microsoft, Facebook, and CNN all dropped out of college.

Fake Facts

As you’ll see below, much of the advice about the benefits of college–and the big money graduates earn with a college degree—is simply false.

More than 200 occupations pay young men and women who have no college education as much as $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 and more a year to start! Many feast on glamor as well as big money. They’re the ones who work in Hollywood or on the Broadway stage, in TV studios, or even The White House or Congress! Remember, all federal, state, and municipal government facilities need and hire skilled tradespeople to keep the lights on and water flowing. So do big corporations. The homes of movie and TV stars all need care, maintenance, and repairs—and the trained personnel to provide it. To put it another way, pipes leak and the electricity shuts down in storms as often in Beverly Hills mansions as often as they do in Baltimore row houses.

So a large number and variety of well-paid jobs are open at many fine, even exotic work places for talented young men and women who don’t want to go to college and are wise enough to choose careers they really want.

Pitfalls of Going to College

Every year, it costs every student at each of the more than 1,600 four-year public colleges and universities about $10,000 to attend classes and as much as $22,000 with room and board—if the student is a resident of the same state. The total goes up to $30,000 for non-residents. In exchange, the student gets a furnished room and meals, access to a library and classrooms, and recreation opportunities such as physical fitness rooms, gyms, sports, and extra-curricular activities.

But what about education?

What’s crazy about those prices is that the money spent to go to college buys more recreation than education. According to one study, the average full-time college student spends 4 hours on sports and leisure activities each day and only 3.5 hours a day, or 17.5 hours a week, on educational activities—in class and out. See for yourself:

Average Weekday Time Use for College and University Students

• Undefined 2.2 hours
• Grooming 0.8 hour
• Eating and drinking 1.0 hour
• Traveling 1.4 hours
• Working & related activities 2.3 hours
• Educational activities 3.5 hours
• Leisure and sports 4.0 hours
• Sleeping 8.8 hours

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics: Time-use Survey of Undergraduates Enrolled Full-time at Public Four-year Colleges and Universities.

Making the picture even crazier is that a normal academic year at college lasts only 30 weeks, during two 15-week terms. So students and/or their parents spend almost $22,000 a year to live only 30 weeks on campus and 22 weeks off campus not learning during Christmas, spring, and summer breaks.

The College $cam

Now here are the dollar-and-cents fact of the college scam: Most of America’s largest four-year public colleges and universities keep building bigger, better sports and recreation facilities every year. Then, by lowering admission standards, they lure as many as 2 million new students to enroll each fall, knowing they will fail and drop out and that each student will leave as much as $10, 230 in the college cash box that had been paid for tuition and fees. That adds up to more than $20 billion a year the public colleges collect for not educating 2 million students who drop out. That’s why I call it a billion-dollar college admissions scam.

In fact, sports and entertainment are so profitable that they’ve replaced education as the primary focus of many public university administrations. Twelve state universities pay football coaches $5 million to $10 million a year each; and almost 60 public colleges pay football coaches between $1 million and $5 million a year each. Those same schools pay instructors who “teach” classes an average of only $48,200 a year. That’s less than teachers earns on average in New York City public middle schools. The colleges make millions in profits off sports to pay for lavish living, travel, and other facilities for college administrators and athletic staffs. While students must make do with middle-school teachers for higher education.

Before You Invest…

The low salaries that four-year public colleges pay their instructors show you in advance what kind of “education” your kids going to get.

Before investing any of your family’s money in a four-year state college or university, look carefully at what these figures mean for you financially and what they mean for your children’s futures.

Your son or daughter could well spend more than half of every day on campus and almost six months each year off campus not learning and have nothing to show for it but thousands of dollars of debt to show for it.

Ask yourself if that’s how you want your son or daughter to spend the next four years of life?

The Joy$ of Not Going to College

There can, of course, be many benefits to completing four years of college and earning a degree. If a student is committed to devoting at least six hours a day every weekday and a few more as needed on weekends, he or she can get a fine, even a great, college education at many public colleges.

The books in public college libraries, after all, are the same as those in the libraries at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and other renowned universities.

Secondly, many acclaimed scholar-professors teaching some of the courses at public colleges and universities. So good education is there for the taking by ambitious, aggressive students.

But even they will have to hurdle a few non-academic obstacles. In comparison with most private universities, public universities often stand on huge campuses and house student populations of more than 50,000. Crossing campus in and out of classes often means struggling through crowds of students, and the sheer size of campuses and student populations invites more campus crime than on smaller carefully guarded campuses of private colleges.

But the same knowledge is there for the taking by highly motivated students, and a college degree will allow your daughter or son to join the 60 percent of college students who do graduate and who fulfill the requirements for about 30% of all available jobs.

Figures Don’t Lie, But…

Do not, however, expect the “success” that comes with jobs for college graduates to be as universal or lucrative as those colleges often promise. As often as not, choice of occupation determines earnings, not whether or not the job holder went to college.

There’s an old saying that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” Some colleges do just that with misleading statistics that college-degree holders earn an average of $32,000 a year more than those with only high-school diplomas. What that statistic fails to include is the 28 percent of college graduates who are unemployed. The statistic compares only employed college graduates with all high-school graduates.

And it also omits the nearly $17,000 in student loans that the average graduate of a public four-year college must repay for years after graduation at interest rates of 4% to 6%.

So, figures don’t lie, but….

…Liars Figure What’s more, the average income that colleges say comes with a degree can often be terribly misleading.

Here’s why: if one person is unemployed and earns $0, and a second earns $500 a week, while a third earns $1,000 a week, their “average earnings” may be $500, but the first one hasn’t a penny and may be sleeping in the streets! So “average earnings” tell you nothing about these three college graduates.

Nor do “average earnings” tell you which jobs they’re comparing. Many jobs requiring college degrees pay less than jobs that need only a high-school diploma and no formal education beyond high school. In fact, almost one-third of workers without four-year college degrees earn more each year on average than workers with college degrees.

The average high-school teacher with a college degree earns barely $50,000 a year while half the electricians in America earn more than $60,000 a year—with no college! Social workers with college degrees earn only about $45,000 a year; librarians $1,000 less.

Bus drivers and subway operators earn about $60,000 a year and need only high school diplomas to qualify. Transit and railroad police make an average of $74,000 a year; and half the air traffic controllers, who need only two-year associate degrees from community colleges, earn more than $125,000 a year.

Even highly skilled scientists with two or more professional degrees may not rank among high earners if their interests lie in the study of tropical diseases in underdeveloped countries or hunger among the poorest segments of the American population.

Enjoy Life!

So ask yourself again: Do you want to risk spending as much as $100,000 over the next four years and accumulate as much as $40,000 in debt to send your son or daughter to an institution that pays its football coach millions a year and its math and science instructors less than $50,000. Millions of intelligent, clear-thinking men and women do not.

Ignoring seductive appeals of traditional four-year colleges and the occasional taunts of friends and classmates, they choose nursing, computer repairs, catering, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, and hundreds of other lucrative trades that they enjoy and that do not require college degrees. They not only earn substantial incomes, many earn more—often far more—than many college graduates with four-year degrees, and they engage in crafts and trades for which demand is often higher and often universal .

The World Needs You!

The entire nation—the entire world—needs carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters, masons, nurses, maintenance workers, housekeeping staffs, groundskeepers, and other men and women skilled in a wide variety of crafts and trades. How could our farms, our towns and cities, and our nation survive without the talents and skills of nurses, computer operators, chefs, plumbers, air traffic controllers, actors, mechanics, barbers, glaziers, security guards, bank tellers, firefighters, clerks, carpenters, postal workers, railroad engineers, masons, police officers, utility lines workers, meat cutters, dental technicians, ambulance drivers, emergency medical technicians….

How could our nation survive without the millions who fill these and other essential occupations? The answer is it couldn’t, and we couldn’t, and if your children are thinking of filling these important occupations, they should be proud—and you should be proud—of the vital contributions they will make.

Just because many of these jobs don’t require college or other formal education after high school, however, doesn’t make them easy. No important job ever is. All require hard work, dedication, knowledge, intelligence, and training to succeed. But as in most occupations, success yields not only a sense of professional pride and accomplishment, it can yield comfortable and often substantial financial rewards.

Chapter 2
Where the Jobs Are…

American industry needs millions more workers right now! Today! And the workers needed only have to have high school diplomas or equivalent to qualify—even for jobs that pay as much as $60,000 a year to start.

But remember, even jobs that pay only a minimum wage to start can be doors to opportunities to high-paying supervisory positions and even management and ownership opportunities after a worker has learned enough about his or her new craft or trade.

The Start to Success

Almost all owners, managers, and supervisors started out as beginners. Many restaurant owners once bussed or waited tables; many store owners and managers started out as stock clerks and salespeople; and many successful building contractors started as laborers or apprentices.

Where Are Those Great Jobs?

What kind of jobs are they? What will beginners have to do and what kind of training is needed? To keep things simple, about 120 occupations need many more workers right now. Of these, more than 40 are growing at average or above average rates, and most of that group are listed and explained in detail in Appendix F.

A few occupations in that large group—those with two or more plus (++) growth signs—are growing so much faster than average that they deserve a quick look here first. Keep in mind, though, that the annual earnings posted by each occupation is a “median”—which means the “middle” income in that group. So half the workers in that group earn more than that figure, and half earned less.

What’s a Median?

But, the median does not represent an average income for that occupation. Top-earning broadcast technicians in the first group could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, while all the workers below the median might well earn $45,499. Median simply means “middle”—not average. A $50,000 “median” among five earners, for example, could look like this: $49,000, $49,000, $50,000, $1 million, $2 million. Which means there’s no upper limit on what a worker might earn in any of the following occupations—regardless of the median.

The Jobs

Broadcast and Sound Engineering Technicians, $45,500 Number of Jobs: 140,000 Job outlook: 9% (++average) What they do: Set-up, operation, and maintenance of electrical equipment for media programs. Training: On the job

Computer Support Specialists, $55,000 Number of Jobs: 900,000 Job outlook: 8% (++average) What they do: Help, advice, table-top repairs to computer users. Training: Post-high school classes, technical schools.

Fire Inspectors, $60,000 Number of Jobs: 16,000 Job outlook: 8% (++average) What they do: Inspection of building plans to ensure adherence to federal, state, local fire codes; inspection of buildings to detect fire hazards Training: Experience as a firefighter + on the job.

Medical Records and Health Information Technicians, $42,500. Number of Jobs: 340,000 Job outlook: 8% (++average) What they do: Organization and management of health information and medical records. Training: On the job.

Millwrights, $53,000 (Includes industrial machinery mechanics and machinery maintenance workers.) Number of Jobs: 525,000 Job outlook: 13% (+++average) What they do: Installation, maintenance, and repair of a wide range of factory equipment and industrial machinery. Training: Apprenticeships

Pest Control Workers, $37,500 Number of Jobs: 88,000 Job outlook: 9% (++average) What they do: Removal of unwanted pests in buildings and surrounding areas. Training: Apprenticeships.

Phlebotomists, $35,500 Number of Jobs: 132,600 Job outlook: 17% (++++average) What they do: draw blood for tests, transfusions, research, or blood donations. Training: Post-high school certificate program from phlebotomy program.

Solar Photovoltaic Installers, $45,000 Number of Jobs: 12,000 Job outlook: 51% (+++++average) What they do: Assemble, set up, maintain roof-top and other systems that convert sunlight into energy. Training: Apprenticeships.

Wind Turbine Technicians, $53,000, or $25/hr. Number of Jobs: 7,000 Job outlook: 61% (+++++average) What they do: Install, repair, maintain wind turbines. Training: Technical school + on-the-job.

…and How to Get Them

In addition to on-the-job training, there are about a dozen other ways for young people to train for good jobs with bright futures. The most successful is an apprenticeship:

Apprenticeships

As you’ll see from the numbers that follow, more than half the jobs available to folks who only have high school diplomas are through apprenticeships. Sponsored by both employers and labor unions, an apprenticeship usually offers the best vocational training—especially in such industries as construction, where trainees earn while they learn.

Most apprenticeships involve about 2,000 hours—about a year of five-day work weeks, seven hours a day. A handful of apprenticeships require some related supplementary instruction—usually with self-study but often with an online course or even a classroom course at a nearby community college or technical institute.

More than 500,000 men and women are now enrolled in 21,000 apprenticeship programs in America. Here are a few of the best such programs with the number of workers in each occupation and the rate of annual growth:

1. Carpenters, 1 million jobs, 8% annual growth, $48,500 median wage.
2. Construction laborers, 1.2 million jobs, 12% growth, $33,500 median wage.
3. Electrical power line installers and repairers, 120,000, 14% annual growth, $68,000 median wage.
4. Electricians, 700,000 jobs, 9% annual growth, $53,000 median wage.
5. Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, 6% annual growth, almost 2 million, $41,000+ median wage.
6. Plumbers, pipefitters, steamfitters, 16% annual growth, 480,000, $51,500 median wage.
7. Sheet metal workers, 9% annual growth, 140,000, $47,000 median wage.

Like any form of education or training, beware of fraud. All legitimate apprenticeship programs in the United States register with the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training in each state. More than 800 types of legitimate apprenticeship programs are registered. If your son or daughter finds one that isn’t, urge than to walk away. It could be a fraudulent operation.

To check on the legitimacy of an apprenticeship program in your state or any other, key in USDL-BAT on the internet, click “contact us” followed by your state or any other, and you’ll find all information you need to contact the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training in that state.

Cooperative Vocational Education

Skip this section if your daughter or son is absolutely dead set against setting foot on a four-year college campus, because this option could keep them on campus for four, even five years.

But maybe not! About 60 four-year colleges offer what they call cooperative-education in which alternate periods of work and classes give students professional work experience while enrolled in school. Drexel University in Philadelphia, Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Cincinnati pioneered cooperative education and still operate outstanding programs.

Students usually begin cooperative education in college with a year of full-time study, then alternate between traditional academic semesters and full-time paid work at nearby companies in their chosen field in three- to six-month stretches.

Average pay for co-op students is $18 to $25 an hour, with no charges for college tuition during co-op work periods. Most students complete one to five co-op stints, or one to two years of professional experience, before they graduate. Because of the time spent with employers, it often takes students five instead of four years to earn a bachelor’s degree.

Among the many advantages of college co-op programs are the vast opportunities to supplement vocational education with academic courses. Students can transfer from vocational education to academic education—and vice versa. Both four-year and two-year colleges offer cooperative education programs, but four-year schools usually have more spacious living and dining facilities than two-year colleges, along with larger recreation facilities, and, often, more extensive job-placement facilities.

Students don’t have to enroll in degree-granting programs, however. Some colleges allow them to limit studies to only those needed to learn a trade. About half the students in co-op education programs receive job offers from one of their co-op employers before graduation, and co-op graduates usually command higher starting salaries and stay with their first employers longer than other recent graduates.

The National Commission for Cooperative Education in Boston (and on the internet) has more information, including scholarships and job opportunities.

Technical Institutes

Technical institutes are costly, full-time, two-year schools, which provide excellent training in certain trades, but usually don’t include opportunities to earn while students learn. Technical schools combine a depth of technical knowledge with hands-on, shop-floor skills taught by masters of each skill. Geared to the needs of nearby industries, each tech-institute program offers a broad enough knowledge of a trade to help graduates climb into management ranks.

Although technical institutes have excellent job placement records, they have many disadvantages. First, there are very few of them. Secondly, they can cost a lot. Third, quite a few are in small, isolated “company towns.” And finally, most don’t have dormitories or full-time dining facilities. In effect, students have to be day students, and they don’t live nearby, they’ll have to pay for room, board, and other expenses.

Before committing to a technical institute, be sure your family can afford the time and money and that its offerings match and are essential for a youngster’s career goals. Appendix A lists a few well known technical institutes, their locations, and costs of attending.

Trade Schools

These are small, specialized for-profit private schools usually owned by a practitioner of the trade. An advantage is quick training, but they usually teach only one or two trades with limited applications outside those trades—barbering, for instance, or bartending, cosmetology, hair-styling, etc.. Training is intensive—often lasting only two weeks—and does not guarantee finding a job. Nor is there any recognized accreditation group to ensure students get the proper training.

Unfortunately, the field of trade schools is notorious for unethical, often criminal operators who think nothing of advertising their “schools” in a shop they rent for the day with a mail box to receive payments before they vanish—and reopen somewhere else under a different name. If your youngster’s life’s dream leaves no choice but to enroll in a trade school, check the school’s credentials first—to see whether the school is listed with the Accreditation Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology, in Arlington, VA. Its web site is listed in Appendix B, Recognized Accrediting Organizations. If it’s not, try to convince your kids to walk away!

Community Colleges

Although all community colleges offer a range of academic courses, many have vocational courses that often rank among the best in the United States. In fact, most community college students—more than 60 percent—enroll in community college vocational courses as stepping stones to full-time jobs.

Most community colleges try to specialize by limiting vocational education offerings to one or two industries or career clusters—hotel and restaurant management, for example, or graphic arts, that feed into nearby industries. One enormous advantage of community college education is the status of teachers in vocational courses—many of them part-time professionals who are up-to-date and knowledgeable about what’s happening in their fields—and in close touch with the local job market!

Because community colleges are public schools, the average tuition for in-district students is only $3,340. Out-of-district students must pay as much as $8,200. Transportation, meals, and other living expenses can raise costs of a year at a community college to as much as $10,000. But unlike traditional schools, community colleges allow students to take one course at a time while holding down a full-time or part-time job and, in effect, paying as they go and taking as much or as little time as they want or need to finish their job training.

In addition, many students find they only need to take one course to get the training they need, and they can then simply leave—with none of the stigma associated with conventional dropping out.

An important part of community college training is the word “community.” Most have caring educators dedicated to serving their communities and their students.