Is College Worth It?
Are College Degrees Worth It? Rethinking Work & Success with Ken Rusk
“People think success only comes with a degree, but blue-collar work can create financial freedom just as well—if not better—without the burden of student debt.”
- Ken Rusk, Author of Blue Collar Cash
I graduated from college at 21 with a degree in Animal Science. After using the money I had saved working and raising heifers during high school, working while in school, and taking three paid summer internships, I still had about $25k in school loan debt.??
I also had a maxed-out credit card (~$3500) and a whopping $20 cash. I used that $20 to pay for gas to drive the 400 miles to my parents' home.
A degree in Animal Science from an Ivy League university, which cost about $120,000, afforded me a job with a starting salary of $43k a year.
?That was in 2001.
Now, let me dig into some comparisons.
The average starting salary for that job is now $65k—$75k; an inflation adjustment would suggest a salary of $75k. Okay, so it's in the range, but a recent graduate is definitely getting the low end of the range.
The tuition now costs around $352K, $88k per year to get the same degree I received.? Inflation adjust what I paid; the tuition should be closer to $225k. Hmm!
At one time, the salary to tuition cost was $1 earned for $3 spent; now it's $1 earned for $6 spent.? Adjusting for inflation, the ratio would be just over $1:$3 ($65k salary to $225k in tuition).
I failed economics at Cornell, so take the following comment for what it's worth: the economics don’t jive!
The cost of education has outpaced the potential earning potential by nearly 2x.
Why College?
For many years, the prospect of higher education was the mobility needed to escape a lower economic class.
In many cases, the opportunity of earning potential early in the 20th century was $1 earned for $1 spent or even better.
Gaining an advanced education provided a superhighway of opportunity to escape the mundane grunt work that encompassed the less educated society.
It provided a knowledge base and skill set that could not be acquired elsewhere.? It also offered a network of connections that created the jobs to make those upper-middle-class fortunes.
Lastly, it helped fill the roles needed in an ever-growing and advancing society with more technology and expertise requirements.
College degrees became a status symbol for the degree holders and the families whose children achieved it.
As a college graduate, in many communities, Lauded established an aura and honor one could “take to the bank.”
Yet some Andrew Carnegie-type immigrants still had little formal education and created massive financial holdings.
Those were the anomalies, not the norm of the day, right?
The Beginning of the End
My parents were the first college graduates in their families, and they both earned master's degrees.
For me, college wasn't an option; it was the option.? As much to learn and get educated as it was to find a career away from the farm.
In the late 1990s, the societal pressure upon schools was for high school graduates to attend college.
Public and private schools boasted their students’ college acceptance rates as a ‘job well done’ and justified their performance as teaching institutions.
The said, unsaid, saying at the time was you had to go to college to make anything of yourself or end up toiling away at one of the factories around town.
And even think about not going to college to work a trade.? Wow, that was as good as saying you wanted to be a ward of the state and live off food stamps and welfare for your whole life.
Again, I failed in economics, but it's easy for me to see that the connection between the value of education and earning potential has been decoupled.
The Perfect Storm
Ken Rusk is a self-aggrandized ditch digger, a blue-collar business owner who defied the popular logic of the time and jumped with both feet into, yes, digging ditches. Ken not only created a thriving business but has helped many others create a life for themselves and their families.
In his bestselling book Blue Collar Cash, he shares the many virtues of engaging in blue-collar work.? He applauds those who have and will in the future choose to do work that someone needs to do and forgo the heavy cost burden of college education to be lost searching for work.
In our conversation, which was this week’s podcast episode, he shared the Perfect Storm that has befallen our education system and the American workplace.
First, trades have disappeared from education. In the early part of this century, schools, under pressure to prepare students for college, swapped out woodworking for computer programming classes.??
Along with this came the second element of the Perfect Storm.? Dirty work, work that would leave stains, dirt, or callouses on your hands, was shamed.? I have lived this.??
I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons I went to college was to pursue a career that didn't involve living and working on a farm—even though the education path I started on was to work with and support dairy farms!
Lastly, the third element of the Perfect Storm is the parental pressure for kids to go to college as a status symbol.?
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