[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by sean walker, Ana Maria Larrivey, Positively Parenting, Parent Newz, Danielle Sullivan and others. Danielle Sullivan said: Is College A Must For Your Kids? http://soc.li/ubOc9AQ [...]

Ah the hubris of parenting… “let your kid skip college,” haha. While it’s no doubt something that parents think about and certainly something they hope to influence, it’s not really up to them. Most college students are legally adults, so if they drop out or just don’t enroll… that’s their decision, not Mommy’s.

I will strongly encourage my kids to finish college. Sure some people have been really successful without it but I think that the chances of becoming the next Bill Gates are probably about as good as winning the lottery- with or without a degree. I also feel that college gave me a lot more than future-earning potential and of those I know who opted not to finish college I know a few who are glad but many more with regrets. Sure you can go back later on to finish but it only gets harder as you get older with more responsibilities. As Bec pointed out though it’s not ultimately my decision. I wouldn’t let them use their college savings for anything other than college but I would try to respect whatever life choices my kids make, as long as it’s legal.

You can still make good money without a college degree. My husband makes between 55-60k a year depending on his overtime and he never even took the SATs. He’ll also continue to get raises over his lifetime and has excellent company paid health/dental/eye/life insurance. That salary is really good for the area, we live in a high end apartment building and only pay 650 a month. A lot of college degrees will get you less than that, teaching, for example, only averages about 42k. As long as your willing to work hard, you don’t neccasarily need a degree.

What a huge logic fail. Because a few people got rich without a college degree, you conclude that this applies to everyone? Because a few people (whose numbers are decreasing every day) can still make a middle-class living without a college degree, you conclude that most kids don’t need a decent education (which happens to prepare them for college)? Yikes, how clueless of you. Statistically, the numbers tell a different story. Most kids are not Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey. True, college does not *guarantee* a good income, but it is more *likely* to get you one. The middle class is disappearing in this country for a reason: it is increasingly unlikely that people without a college degree will be able to earn a middle class income as their parents did. In part this is because low-paying service jobs have replaced good-paying unionized industrial jobs, but it is ALSO because high schools do a terrible job of preparing kids for the labor force even when they don’t plan to go college. That’s why it’s dumb to conclude that “college is not for everyone” when you see that less than half of students graduate prepared for college. What you should take away from that is that the schools are failing EVERYONE, college-bound or not.