Homeschooling for College?

"I'm not an advocate of homeschooling young children, but am actively exploring and planning the curriculum that I'd roll out as a viable option for my childrens higher education."

As I crunch the numbers in planning for my childrend education, it's become increasingly more apparent to me that traditional university route is not for everyone. Let me start by saying I believe in formal education, have invested in private schools for my children that cost as much as many colleges since pre-school. I'm not anti education and come from a family of lifetime teachers who spent the majority of their income on their children's education.

When it came to financing my higher education fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it my parents made enough money that we didn't qualify for financial. The flip side of that was they didn't make so much money that they could afford the more expensive universities many of my Catholic prep school classmates where heading towards. I'm talking Scranton, Holy Cross, Villanova, Fordam etc. Because of their diverse experience and straightforwardness, even if I didn't like it, I trusted my parents guidance when it came to education. For context, I'll share that my father taught in an excellent public school system on Long Island for 42 years and my mother had a much different experience having taught principaled in an alternative education high school called Boces Tech. Alternative high schools offer evening classes, trade schooling and GED curriculum for students for many reasons that did not fit into public school. Observing the paradoxical experiences through the eyes of my parents, while I was in a private school myself gave me an interesting and valuable perspective on the effectiveness of flexibility and creativity in education.

When it was my chance to apply for college we chose York College of Pennsylvania because it was very affordable and I was able to get a partial academic scholarship. The result was that I left school with a modest business education and diploma but less than $15k in student loans which my parents so generously took care of for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm blessed to have had this opportunity but looking back, college in the 90's didn't prepare me for the turn of the century workforce at all. For starters, we barely used email or the internet and by the time I got to my first job technology had been drastically changing how we operate especially in the business world. I'll admit, I was jaded and a little pissed off too. How could I spend 4 years in business school and not one guidance, career placement counselor, or professor ever warned me about cold calling! It would have been nice to know that if you major in marketing or merchandizing, becoming a generalist in business school without getting certifications like a CPA you better be prepared to go into sales and more specifically cold calling for a few years. Even worse, there were no classes on how to prospect, manage a funnel, prepare for and conduct a meeting or even handle a job interview. We learned about marketing and branding strategies that were forgotten and obsolete within a few years let alone by the time I'd reached a position where I had any opportunity to make those decisions for a brand. It should be a prerequisite of business school professors that they have a minimum of 2 years experience and pass a test demonstrating they have a working knowledge of the real business world. I digress.

Fortunately for me, I was geared toward sales. That doesn't mean I loved it. It means I had the personality or stubborness rather to survive, partially through the determination and discipline I learned through sports and luckily because of my personality type. Anyone who's been in sales knows the first 3-5 years absolutely suck. No one tells you when you're getting a marketing degree that no reputable company is going to let some newbie make any significant merchandizing or advertising decisions until you learn their business and climb the corporate ladder first. With short term objectives like monthly quotas holding 100% of your attention, inevitably what happens for most is that they get stuck in a cycle of lateral moves from one sales job to another and loose sight of their original interest. Think abou it this way. If you are successful in sales, middle managers often hold you back to keep you producing for them. They may even consider you a threat to their more comfortable position, so the only way to advance your career is to jump from company to company. If you are not a superstar, then you're going to be interviewing and moving around a lot as well because as soon as you are in a slump the performance plans will work you out of the business and be sure to make you miserable along the way. Of course, a select few stay in the same role for a long time and some are able to climb the ladder but this is statistically very unlikely.

I digress a bit but it leads me to one of my motivations to write about this topic which is that I hate to see high school and college students like me be mislead and sucked into industries they had no intention of ending up in. The other reason is because I believe I figured out a way to manage through this if you are currently in that dreaded cycle.

My generation of apiring business graduates were lured towards big brands and stabile progression into that prized and promised eventual six-figure salary, benefits, and pension the household name corporation could provide you. By the time I had landed a job that fit those standards at AT&T the pension and salaries were going away. Telecom was all the talk in the late 90's amidst the .com boom, but by the time I'd made it to the promise land the industry was going through major change and the tech bubble had burst. Still those are usually the times when most of us can get our foot in the door so you take the opporutnity you get. Perhaps even worse for students today, I see them lured into the sexy world of "start-up" culture with the statistics demonstrating far worse outcomes than the challenging path I described for a few decades prior. Where my biggest fear was certain mediocrity start ups are almost certain to fail.

It's unrealistic and predatorial to lead students into shark tanks without explaining the probability nor providing realistic strategy for success as entrepreneurs. Business owners experience more failure than anyone. That doesn't just include silicon valley technology startups. It includes small retailers, restauranteurs, and sole proprietors of all sorts like practices like dentist and lawyers. The overwhelming majority of businesses end in failure, which often includes both personal and financial disasters. Many of those that breakthrough require insane amounts of work and sacrifice which can still cause family and personal goals to suffer. At best, it's a life full of challenges and uncertainty that you must get comfortable with overcoming. These sacrifices are glamorous when you are 25 years old but when you are 30 or 40 the consequences of those sacrifices increase. So if you are still cut out for it students should again know the statistics and that is that research proves the average age of most successful startups that IPO is 45 years old. So it might make sense to get some experience first if you have those expectations.

This is also not to say I don't think students should go to business school. What I'm saying is we should be honest with them and stop deglamorizing the slow and steady path to success. It's important to provide them with a realistic outline and roadmap to career and financial independence. And don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating everyone give up on their dreams of entreprenuership. Instead, I'm proposing a more logical and sustainable strategy to acheive it.

My path to entrepreneurship was made possible by a book I read called "The Cash Flow Quadrant" This book was a follow-up to a more popular best seller called "Rich Dad Poor Dad" which many of you may have heard of. The Cash Flow Quadrant shows a realistic and step by step approach to entrepreneurship from individual contributor, employee to self employed/business owner and eventually the possibility of the passive investor. It's a shame this path is not taught in schools. The "Cash Flow Quadrant" is a fairly simple concept. Robert Kiyosaki argues that you can start and learn a trade as an employee/apprentice, save and transition into self employment which means you own that same job, not your employer. Think W2 to 1099. From there it's possible to build upon your self employment, by training and managing others as a business owner where you own the system. Eventually you push a portion of those earnings into income generating passive assets. In my case I transitioned from a telecom sales rep, to contracted sales agent to business owner and it only took 20 years. My point is that these are not things you get from business school and perhaps because the concepts are so simply the coursework wouldn't justify thousands of dollars a credit.

Another reality we need to explain to our children and one my father a lifelong educator explained to me was that most students, even his beloved son are not going to graduate top of their class. He'd make his point by explaining the case of the rare student that could get into an esteemed Ivy League University like Wharton or Standford. Even though graduating from such a high profile university is an accomplishment in and of itself, when Wallstreet recruiters were looking to fill the most desirable positions they overlook anyone that graduated in the 90th percentile or below. It sounded harsh but he was statistically accurate which was more important than my fragile ego when you are faced with the decision that might require incurring a lifetime of debt in 4 years. Needless to say I had no choice but to follow his advice and he was right. I cruised through college not feeling too challenged, and asked if I should put in gear now for graduate school. My dad reminded me of that same conversation we had in high school and then introduced me to a former student of his that had graduated top of his class at Wharton Business School to get a real life perspective on what even the highest levels of success looked like. What I realized is I needed some experience first and if anything should postpone a graduate degree. If you want to be in business you should be taught how to make this very important first business decision. Work the numbers, gathering intelligence about outcomes and interviewing mentors is much more consistent with how these decisions are made in the real world than touring the campus and making sure you like the cafeteria and dorms.

To be fair the college route even if you are not a top student still produces results. I know friends and former classmates who chose this path and landed those jobs at Fortune 1000 firms and found themselves making great money in their early 20s. Sometimes I envied the ones who graduated from better schools at least they were able to get jobs wherre didn't have to door knock or cold call. The certainty of the income and consistency of their work was attractive from my limited vantage point. What I learned, later on, is that the burnout rate from 80-hour weeks and lack of freedom I was afforded in sales was taking a huge toll on them personally. Some turned to drugs and alcohol. Others gained weight, gave up on sports or important life goals or made decisions that led to failed marriages, personal turmoil or mental health crisises. Of course, a few are built for it and like me in their fields found themselves oddly adapting. Some too, were able to make it through the initial annointments to more rewarding work and senior-level management positions but again, that is not the norm from what I've seen.

My kids are not at the age yet where they have to make these decisions but as I try to jam money into their 529ks I give a ton of thought to how I will prepare and guide them through these choices. As parents, we cannot leave it to school counselors and attractive ads for university life to make this decision. My kids will know a college education is not for everyone and I won't need to be the dad with the university sticker proudly posted on my back window to be proud of them. I believe, with an ongoing debate around college debt and student loan forgiveness, it's our responsibility to take inventory of our current affairs and ownership of these long-term consequences for not only our kids but our country. Moreso many of our institutions including early education are suspiciously focusing on ideologies that don't align with the values we are trying to instil as parents and are clearly turning out students unprepared for the work force.

The cost of an average degree whether online or on-campus has skyrocketed since the 90s and the entry-level job market and salaries have not kept up. It baffles me coming from an industry where technology consolidates and optimizes everything so that we can do more with less and pricing receeds as competition increases as to how the price of colleges continues to increase at such a fast pace.

It's lead me to run through an alternative scenerio or two. For example, I've thought, what would happen if I were lucky enough to save 100k for each of my kids and invested it for the 4 to 5 years they'd spend in school in the market. What if we instead of going into debt to take liberal arts prerequisites encouraged them to spend that time getting technical or trade certifications online, doing meaningful volunteer work and traveling a bit with the intention of learning a second language. At the end of 4 or 5 years, they'd likely be able to acquire several transferable and marketable skills and invaluable perspective. What if during that time otherwise spent on college socials, binge drinking, and mandatory prerequisites they went to work as a paid apprentice/intern in a field of interest, earned a few dollars, and learned about how the stock market and various financial savings plans worked? In a few years, they'd likely save tens of thousands of dollars while interest on your nest egg for them accrues significantly. By 25 it's not impossible to expect they'd have 200k to their name as opposed to 100k in debt which is about average for an undergraduate degree. Let's say they got certified during that time as a cyber security analyst, get a CDL or beautician's license, or get Cisco certified. If they need rounding isn't it more realistic they could get those insights from travel, a master class on cooking or a podcast on other special interests?

I'm not an advocate of homeschooling young children, but am actively exploring and planning the curriculum that I'd roll out should as a viable option for my childrens higher education.

Sound too extreme? Well a similar model to my postulation has been available for over a century and serves as another viable option.?The US Armed Forces career path works very much like the example I've outlined above, whereas you gain experience and transferable technical skills that you can monetize in the future and get paid for learning today.?With the GI bill it doesn't mean you give up on college.?In fact that path becomes more meaningful if you discovered what it is you want to apply yourself towards.?This path has it's obvious risks, but served many generations very well and delivers experience and rewards impossible to find anywhere else.

Our children's futures are complex and important but limiting beliefs in obsolete systems that serve only a few and usually corporate interests is a failed strategy.?I believe these standards need to be challenged and the best way to do that is by example.?

So for many reasons described above, I submit that parents should reconsider the same old college talk we have with our kids. Research and present the statistics across different career paths. Quantify the investment in terms of debt and caculate the interest and opporutnity cost. Story board the long term lifestyle goals and possibly ask yourself if you need to go a step further and help with some of the curriculum.