Just out of curiosity, in this difficult economic time, how important do you think it is to have a college education?
When I graduated high school in 1982, you didn't need a degree to get a decent job. Somewhere in the 80s and early 90s the tide turned and I was finding that my secretarial training for the past ten + years was not considered worthy in light of the fact that I had no higher education. So my ex (who also did not have a degree) instilled in our kids the importance of a college education.
Now the kids are college-age. My oldest is studying to become a physicist. She's going to a state college and has gotten grants and scholarships (mostly because she's a female in a male-dominated field and studied in Germany for her junior year of high school) so she's doing fine. I'm not worried about her now nor am I worried about how she'll do once she graduates.
It's her sister I'm worried about.
My youngest is going to an art college down in Georgia, the tuition of which will be $35,000 a year (and that's not including rooming and food). She's planning on studying either sequential art or illustration. I'm really worried about this, for a few reasons: one, by the time she graduates she will have racked up close to $150k in debt, unless she can come up with a lot of grants and scholarships. Two, the school won't allow you to transfer credits, which means she will have to go to that specific school for four years to complete her education. And three, I don't really see art as a field where she will recoup the expenditure laid out in tuition.
I really don't know what to tell her. I want to be supportive but I think she's making a mistake by choosing art as a profession. And I'm really tempted to try to dissuade her from going to college. I don't want to shit all over her dreams, but I also don't want to see her adult life crushed under the weight of this massive student loan debt. Anyone have thoughts or advice?