How to choose a college today, and why the formula has changed

Over the past decade, tuition has spiraled out of control while the benefits of a degree have greatly diminished. A degree today is simply the cost of entry, providing no real competitive advantage in the hiring process because college has been turned into a commodity.

Why does this matter? Because it fundamentally changes the way students should select colleges. Any parent reading this has likely gone (or will go through) their son or daughter wanting  to go to some expensive, out of state school. In fact, they will probably say they need to go to Harvard, Northeastern, Princeton or Yale to have any shot at landing a good job; but they’re wrong. The real advantage in going to these schools is that they help students network to have a better chance of landing a first job. That’s it. After that, nobody cares where your degree is from or what your GPA was, they care about results. I’ll also say that your school experience is what you make of it, not what your school does for you. If you don’t take the initiative to network and meet people, get an internship and set yourself up for success post graduation, it doesn’t matter what school you go to.

For many students, the prestige of going out of state or to a fancy school is too much to pass up. Only when it comes senior year and students realize they have to start paying back their $80,000 in debt does the realization set in. I was fortunate in the sense that my parents sat me down and essentially said they were giving me a certain amount of money and I go wherever I wanted with it. My dad did say “You can go in-state and get the same education as most other schools and buy a Mercedes when you graduate, or go out-of-state and have a Mercedes size car payment with no car for thirty years.” I’ll be honest, that really put it in perspective for me. During my senior year of high school, my choices were narrowed down to UNH and USM, USM costing $15,000 and UNH over $30,000 with a small scholarship. The choice was easy for me to make, I chose USM and will graduate debt free.

When your children are looking at schools, let them know they have to take control of their life once they graduate high school. If they have some idea of what they want to be, have them research what starting and mid level salaries are in the industry and have them look at the price of their top five schools with payments spread out over a twenty year period. Also, where do they want to end up living? I live in Portland, ME and knew that I wanted to live there after graduation, so USM was a good choice to network with Portland area businesses. Plan to live out-of state? Take your first two years of classes in-state, save money and then transfer to a more expensive school, you will save thousands and get the fancy degree.

For most people, it just doesn’t make any sense to go to an expensive school. If you have the passion to work in a typically low paying industry, why would you go to a $40,000 per year school? Even a Marketing degree, which I will have, is typically not a six-figure industry, which is what I would need to make to justify an expensive school. The bottom line here, and the current state of the economy accentuates this, is young people need to have as many options as possible, and starting out with heavy debt severely constricts those options. Expensive schools are great, and worth it depending on your goals and industry, but make sure your kids realize what the long term consequences of their decisions will be.