"Hey, Mr. Douglas! I'm Back From College!!"

There is an episode of the 1960's sitcom Green Acres, when addle-brained farmhand Eb (Tom Lester) is sent off to college & returns to the Douglas farm shortly thereafter without an education but sporting a raccoon coat & pennant, still dumb as a bag of hammers but happy as a clam.  That was his diploma I guess...                           

 

I'm not going to divulge my age, but suffice it to say that I have two daughters in their twenties that are presently completing their navigation through the Let's-Make-A-Deal maze of higher education.  I am truly glad I don't have to go through it with a couple more offspring.  It would possibly lead me to drink, or self-mutilation.

And that's what it is, of course.  Door #1, #2 or #3?  Increasingly, parents & high school seniors are faced with the prospect of picking a college that provides the best value for return, with the result being employed in one's field.  Easy to say, extremely hard to do in this fragile economy.

It wasn't always this way.  My goodness, thirty-odd years ago, when I shipped off to a Big Ten university, besides getting merely decent grades in my journalism classes to keep my parents off my a**, my sole responsibility was to avoid getting run over by the yellow buses that criss-crossed campus.  And I succeeded at both, thankyouverymuch.

In comparison, with the current job market that portends to be screwed on tightly for the foreseeable future, everything in that respect seems so much more critical.  From the applications forward it is all subject to scrutiny--the right extracurriculars, GPA, ACT, SAT, volunteer work, and for heaven's sake don't be holding a red Solo cup in photos on your Facebook page!

Whereas the freshman & sophomore years in the 1970's were pretty much mulligans for us ("...pre-med, pre-law, what's the difference?"--Tim 'Otter' Matheson, Animal House), new collegians--all of eighteen years old, mind you--are coerced to choose a major before they've been around the block, so to speak, at University rates for the parents.

That's why I don't think it's a bad idea at all to consider the community college route for the first two years & then transfer the credits to a college or University until graduation.  Saves money for the parents, and it allows the student some flexibility to test different fields out in a non-pressure environment.

Which is why over the next 10 years you will see some of the 'boutique' private colleges, not the Harvards & Princetons & Stanfords and that ilk but the ones that charge $50,000/year out the door for no good reason, struggling enrollment-wise while the community colleges will continue to flourish.

Later.