00:00 Speaker A
Speaking of mere mortals like me with a kid about to go to college in a few years. We need to talk about your new book. Uh, it’s called The Truth About College, and it’s a guide for parents who want to help their teens answer tough questions about higher education. Not just where to go, which I think most of the literature is kind of geared toward, but just how to think about what you want to do with your life and how college feeds into that. Is that a fair way to describe it?
00:23 Speaker B
It is. The fundamental question is, should the child go to college? I mean, there’s no question that college remains the best path, but that’s only if the kid is ready for college and he chooses the path and follows it correctly. So they show up with a degree in a field that is marketable, they can earn a good income. They can have a wonderful life. We know that college graduates make the most money in America. They are also healthier, live longer, are less likely to divorce. They have stronger family and community relationships. To go to college
00:59 Speaker B
a degree is wonderful. But then how do you explain that 24% of freshmen drop out, that only 62% graduate in six years, that the average person comes out of college with $41,000 in student loan debt, that we have 37 million college dropouts in this country. That these days, 25% of college graduates say they wish they never went.
01:23 Speaker B
Clearly, something is wrong with the way we are executing this plan. That’s what my book is about. Like you said, most of the books are about choosing a college, choosing a major, how can I get accepted? No, it asks the fundamental question, is my child a college candidate?
01:34 Speaker A
So I and I feel that also a lot of the recent questions, um, um, centered around what you’re talking about is kind of focused on ROI and it’s more focused on what the college can give me, which you don’t have as much control over. You have more control over what your child does and the conversations you have. So how do you get these? How do you know this?
02:00 Speaker B
So in my book, The Truth About College, there are in the back of the book, 20 conversation starters that parents can have with their teenagers, asking these fundamental questions to help you decide that college is the right path, recognizing that there are so many alternative paths today for free education, for apprenticeships, for vocational school, for just taking a gap year or two. Let your child grow up a little more, mature and develop, see the world a little more to help them decide that college is the way to go. is it now What kind of school, what kind of major, so that the outcome is much more likely to be successful than to destroy their life.
02:51 Speaker A
I mean, it’s pretty complicated, though, when you’re talking about a kid who’s 16, 17, 18, even waiting another year, I mean, you know, in other words,
03:00 Speaker B
25% of college kids are over 25 years old. So don’t just wait a year, maybe five. Learn about yourself, travel, look for a job, see what it’s like to have one, and see the economic realities of the world. This can help you frame your decision making.
03:22 Speaker A
Yeah, I think I only think about myself and don’t realize who I am until much later, which I think is true for a lot of people.
03:31 Speaker B
And that’s a big mistake parents make, actually, is they think about their own college experience 20, 30, 40 years ago, or their grandparents, 60 years ago. College today is not like when we were in school, and we have to recognize the fundamental differences, the challenges that kids face. I didn’t even mention AI by the way.
03:52 Speaker A
I know I was going to ask you about AI.
03:53 Speaker B
And the incredible threats to most careers from technological innovation. Many kids are majoring in fields that literally won’t exist by the time they graduate.
04:08 Speaker A
and I don’t know if waiting a year will help with that. I mean, those seem like questions we won’t necessarily have answered for a while.
04:14 Speaker B
And so I will tell you the path that I describe in the book. There are four major things you need to make sure your child learns. And any college can teach these: thinking, creating, managing and communicating. This is what you need to teach your kids how to do because it is adaptable to almost any career. As opposed to, oh, I’m going to become an engineer, I’m going to learn how to code. Well, great. We don’t need coders because of AI. So we have to learn to think, create and communicate.
04:50 Speaker B
You are in the field of communications. This is transportable throughout the industry. And that’s what we need to help people realize that the college of the past is not what it is today. The cost is much greater, the challenge is much greater. We need to rethink and reevaluate the approach we take. And that’s how I help people understand the truth about college.