As Catholics, we need to be concerned about the debt our children easily can incur while attending college. For those of our children who will attend, we need to help them find ways to emerge from the experience debt-free – whether that means going parttime and working fulltime, or joining the military, or finding a full scholarship somewhere, somehow. Here is an article that punctures gaping holes in the arguments of those posters who imply that a college degree is essential to raising a Catholic family….

12 April 2012

Student debt, like any other form of
debt, has a strong social impact. As student debt continues to rise in
the United States, unanticipated consequences on family formation
becomes more evident.

While empirical data concerning the effects of student debt on
marriage, divorce and fertility is still meager, early research has
found that there is a positive correlation between debt and family
formation and stability.

A recent report by IHS Global Insight said that as a result of
increasing economic stress, young adults are delaying key rites of
passage typically associated with adulthood, with statistical evidence
of later marriages and lower fertility rates for people in their late
20s.

http://www.economywatch.com/in-the-news/infographic-how-a-students-debt-affects-the-family-unit.12-04.html

As a college instructor (more than 21 years’ experience), I’ve met SO MANY kids who really should not be in higher education.  They don’t have the desire for it, their hearts and skills are somewhere else, and they have no intention of using the skills they are being taught in the field they’re being trained for (this is a college training teachers).  Why are they here?  Their parents insisted that they ‘had to’ have some kind of degree.  It is not easy to teach people who have no particular motivation or talent, who see ‘education’ as a tedious means to ’getting a degree because everyone says you have to have a degree.’ They do what they have to do to pass classes and ‘get a degree.’  It’s not about really learning anything; it’s about that magic piece of paper that ‘everyone’ told them they have to get. I’ve had many conversations with students who realize that they are in the wrong place, trying to do something that doesn’t interest them, that they are not skilled for, students who even know exactly what they would rather be doing.  When I try to convince them to drop out and get on with a satisfying life, the response is the same: ‘My parents really expect me to finish’ or ‘I started, so I have to finish.’  Time, resources and talents wasted, and in our case, someone officially decreed prepared for a career in teaching – someone who has no business in a classroom, and who will probably make a miserable carreer, neither inspired nor inspiring as a teacher.  Someone who really would probably have been better off starting that little furrniture refinishing and repair shop, but who will now be a mediocre, unhappy teacher because ‘My parents said I should go to college’ or ‘My parents said I should be a teacher.’ It’s depressing.

Maybe we need to replace the stereotype of the ‘stage mother’ with the stereotype of the ‘university mother’ – the parent who forces the child to go to university, even if it’s unrelated to the child’s ability, needs or desires.  Equip your child to make the choice of university and explain its true usefulness, but don’t force them to go or force them to rebel against you if it’s not for them.  Religious vocations, the NBA, marriage and children, a career in the movies, being an acrobat or a gas-station attendant are not for everyone – and neither is college.

 Wow, Stella- I think you’re the first college instructor that’s weighed in here and your insight is fascinating.  Thank you!

Could not agree more! This topic needs to continue to be brought up and discussed. Going to university has become an end in itself-so ridiculous. 

I totally agree.  I have a good friend who has a four-year liberal arts degree — and is an electrician.  All the degree did for him was waste his time and money so that now, at 25, he’s still trying to get fully qualified as an electrician.  But he always wanted to be an electrician, so … there you go.  My mom’s mechanic actually has an advanced degree in chemistry.  He spent a year as a chemist after graduating, decided he actually hated the job, and went back to fixing cars, which he happened to be very good at.  Her hairdresser has a classics degree.  He couldn’t get a job in the field, and besides he makes decent money cutting hair, with more contact with people, which he loves.

The idea that “college will teach you to think, so it’s intrinsically worthwhile” is fine, I suppose, if you actually want to and if you are independently wealthy.  But to go into debt just for an “experience” that will never help you pay your debt?  Why?

If you don’t know what you want to do with your life at 18, it’s not a problem.  Go work for awhile until you know.  When you figure it out, you will either have some money to get an education with, or some money to set out on your non-college career with.  Either way, it’s hardly wasted time.  Once you graduate college, you’ll have too much debt to change your mind, switch jobs, or take time off to figure things out.  Before you go to college is when you have the freedom to discern.

For the record, I went to college.  My parents paid for what the scholarship didn’t.  I got a career in the field, and I think my education was “worth it.”  But so many of my classmates didn’t even care about college, so they spent four years (or however long it took them to flunk out) wasting their parents’ money or running up a debt they’d never be able to pay, just for the “experience” of partying and drinking and sleeping all day.

Sadly, though, it’s a class thing.  College is seen as the entrance ticket to the educated class.  But being part of a class isn’t really worth it if you don’t like it, right?  What’s the real point?

 Keep in mind that this depends a lot on where you live.  In my town, college degrees, and jobs requiring them, are rare.  Most people are mechanics, hairdressers, salespeople, and service jobs.  And they can afford to live on these jobs, because they’re in a small town.  In the big city, it’s much harder to get a job without a degree, and much easier to find a good one that will use yours.

Hi Dwija, You might really like the books by Dr. Leonard Sax. He is a pediatrician and psychiatrist who noticed all sorts of crazy things happening to kids. His book “Why Gender Matters” goes over a lot of huge differences between boys and girls, and “Boys Adrift” covers why boys are in crisis. He includes as one of his five main reasons the fact that so many boys who would be happiest growing up into the trades are shoved into college instead. You will not believe the stats on how many men aged 18-35 live off of their parents or girlfriends. About 20% in many areas, 50% in Alaska. He quotes company owners who can’t get enough skilled labor domestically. He just wrote another book called “Girls on the Edge.”

We intend to homeschool our kids, and part of their high school education will be learning a trade that they can use to a.) fall back on, b.) pay for school, and/or c.) make them super handy around their future homes. I’d love for my kids to be nerds like me and my husband, but also handy and thrifty like us too. Hence why we don’t turn our noses up at trade school.