re: The ROI on college investment

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I don’t see companies paying top dollar for educated individuals anymore.

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Not really true. It’s always been the case that grads won’t get top dollars straight out of school, but my income ceiling was very much increased with a degree. I can’t imagine I’d ever have made as much per year without a degree.

If I’d had to pay $10k/semester when I was in school I wouldn’t have screwed around as much.

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There is a huge gap between those with and without a college degree when it comes to mortality rates in white people between the ages of 40 to 60. And lots of data and reasoning that covers jobs, pain, habits, depression, etc. Yes, white people more so than others when it comes to the size of that gap.

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My son is taking all AP classes and doing well, except his Auto Tech class, where he excels. His goal has been to study mechanical engineering with an emphasis on performance automotive engineering and aerodynamics, possibly wing frame design for the advance aerodynamics. Suddenly he's like, "I don't have to go to college. I can get a two-year auto tech degree, get into a Mercedes or Porsche training program and work my way into a racing program and develop my career."

I'm torn because he has the aptitude and math smarts for achieving an engineering degree and I want for him to get the experience of going to a major university, but at the same time, while his degree would be great, I have to wonder whether his idea makes sense. He's dead set on getting into engineering design for high performance automotive and I have to admit, his path idea may give him the quickest way onto a team, but I think likely not. I think there would be an initial growth curve in his useful knowledge with his idea, but the degree would open more doors to start at the bottom of a high performance team than working his way through an automotive dealer, even if they are high performance vehicles.

I think I might get the book and if there are points I want to get across to him I will. I won't stop him from being his own man. I admire that in him and he knows I won't, but I will make damn sure he bears in mind how his decision can potentially impact him over his entire life and that he decides based on a mutually agreed upon path. My wife and I had to channel my daughter into the right decision. She ended up going to OU. At first she thought going to North Texas would be fine. It was to be close to her boyfriend, but my wife and I knew that would end up being a disaster. We put our foot down. Of course we were right. She ditched the kid after the first semester.

WELDING SCHOOL