Ashworth ditch graduate programs

I'm sorry but paying cash or getting a personal loan for $13k ($4k bachelor's & $9k master's) isn't a bad deal! You got people coming out of school with $50-80,000 or more! You probably could earn that $9k or $13k back within a year easily. Imagine being a team lead at Target. You move up easily because it's retail but you attend Ashworth. Get that degree along with hard work you can be store manager, district, regional etc.

 

Agreed. I earned my AAS and B.S. at Ashworth for under 10K, paying out of pocket mostly and a small personal loan from the credit union to pay off the balance at the end (which I paid off in 12 months). I also earned my MBA by paying out of pocket. My first time taking student loan was at Lamar University. I'm almost the holder of a Ph.D. and I have less student loans than many people with a bachelor's degree. I don't regret my Ashworth and Don Bosco route. They may not be prestigious but they have benefited me professionally, which is what matters.

 

Johann,

Methinks you are right. IMO it is unfortunate but understanding academia in terms of economics is increasing convincing.

 

It took me about $20K to get my Bachelor's, but that was a lot of false starts (a semester of Computer Engineering, a semester of Psychology, 3 semesters of Accounting, etc.) so all in I think I did decently. And I was able to pay that off. Will be earning 2 Master's degrees without about $15K in debt (I took a small amount above my tuition for cashflow reasons), and then hopefully a PhD with a reasonable tuition.

But I knew people who went $25K in debt for their associates

 

Wow! You sure were undecided lol. On a serious note, you're right about the debt load for some associate degree holders. The most troubling thing about student debt is that some students take the refund and buy all sorts of things, including cars.

 

That sounds like a lot, a lot, a lot of really bad decision making. I think I hit about $30K for both of my degrees combined (Bachelor's and Master's), and that included time at American University in D.C. which is insanely expensive - I had scholarship money to pay part of it, but decided to ride out the full term there - and it cost me, but that was my decision. I'm 50 now and will have my student loans paid off when I am 63. I didn't get my B.A. until I was 35. I've seen stories about people hitting 6 figure student loan debt for a basic Bachelor's degree, then complaining about student loan forgiveness. That's really, really, really bad decision making in my opinion. You could complete two years at Columbus State Community College here for about $10-$12K. You could expect to spend about another $20K+ to finish out at Ohio State - maybe less if you attended regional campuses. Some other regional schools might be even cheaper. For $30K or less you could have a Bachelor's degree from a respected university. There might be better deals from other regional colleges - of course that doesn't take into account room and board - which you might need to borrow as well, but it also doesn't consider institutional scholarships either - when I was at OSU it seemed like they just gave me random scholarships for keeping my grades up. $600 credit here, $400 discount there, etc.

 

I think that was part of it. When I went for my first semester (the Computer Engineering one) and dropped out, I had to pay back the tuition and part of the residency. I ended up getting a full time retail job and working there for 3 years in order to save up enough to go back, but I had parents to support me (not in terms of bills or loans but rood and board for $300 a month which was way lower than it would have been if I was on my own), and I was more focused the second time. These students were paying everything themselves, not working or not working enough and paying the whole thing with loans, no grants or scholarships even though they were available.

Our attitude that every kid needs to go to college, and to do so immediately after high school is harmful. Part of the reason I ended up switching to Psychology and then to Accounting was that there was such a strong stigma about not being in school that I felt I needed to be studying something if I wasn't working full time, even though my professional path was very uncertain. A lot of my classmates said they went for the program I was in (Associates in Social Work) because it sounded easy, or they didn't know what to do with themselves and it would give them time.

My goal for my kids is to have $20K saved up for each of them by the time they hit 18 (in the next decade), which hopefully will cover the cost of an Associates/VoTech/trade-school program at a regional school. Then they can take out loans. I've already talked to them about CLEP, AP, and Modern States/getting credit for ACTFL language courses. I want them to appreciate there are ways of cutting down the cost of a college education, even if they can't put it in context just yet.

 

I've had a couple of family members sign up for tech school / medical type programs. Take out loans, then just stop going to classes when they got bored or felt like it was getting hard. They didn't drop the classes or withdraw, they just didn't go. That means instead of getting any kind of refund or any kind of proper withdraw - they got charged the full amount for classes they just stopped going to. They used the money...elsewhere and were left with huge loans that they don't think they should have to pay back because, "that school sucked"... I had a colleague that I hired who had a degree in Art from a prestigious university. She couldn't find much work with it so she went to ITT to learn coding. She was amazing. I hired her because of all the different skills she had - creative and technical. ITT asked her to come back and teach some classes, which she did - but she always said that ITT was fine - the curriculum was good, the instructors were good, etc. But the students were horrible. They thought that because they liked to play video games, they could be IT professionals or something. She said their work ethic was terrible and most of them turned in poor work and wanted all kinds of accommodation and extra credit and such so they wouldn't fail, but they weren't doing the work. She found it disheartening. Another friend went to Full Sail - this was a while back - he said similar things. He said that the school was fine, the teachers were good and that it gave you access to all kinds of gear (he was in a recording program) and opportunities to work on real-world projects, but MOST of his classmates didn't take it seriously - they got high, went to the beach and didn't take advantage of what it offered. Many didn't graduate - and many left with big loans. My friend opened a recording studio and took on freelance audio work for video production. He's made a decent living for decades at this point working for himself and owning his own business. I personally didn't really want to go to college, but I found myself unemployed at 31 and it was hard to find work that I didn't mind doing that paid enough to get ahead. Everyone wanted a college degree to even consider you - so I bit the bullet and went to college in my 30's. I have lots of friends that never went to school, but are very successful - but some of them, like my brother, didn't really care what he did for a living as long as it paid okay - he got into some good opportunities in his 20's with a small company and he built a career on that. Because I've worked in creative fields (video/film/graphics/media) I've met other people that never went to school but have gotten by on talent, creativity, wits, and work ethic. That wasn't working out too well for me when I was 31, so for me going to college was kind of like giving up and playing the game that was being played.

I guess my point is that all college is is a formalized learning opportunity. And it's really an opportunity to SELF-EDUCATE and have someone give you some kind of certification at the end of it all. That said, I'm not sure it was really what I wanted - I just got tired of not getting job(s) or interviews and being told that if I had a degree...I'd be a candidate. It got old. But there were compromises that had to be made along the way - and cost considerations and class selections and which institutions I chose and all that were part of those decisions and compromises - I didn't necessarily get the experience "I wanted"- and honestly, I think I still paid wayyyy too much for my degrees - but I was doing them on MY terms. Taking part time jobs instead of full time jobs, living in less than ideal conditions, etc... and I won't lie, I had help. family, friends, girlfriends. People that let me sleep on a cot in their laundry room or put my stuff in storage while I got myself together in my 30's. People that bought me beer and chicken wings on a Thursday night so I would get a chance to get out and not feel trapped by my financial circumstances, people who charged me $300 in rent instead of twice that much, etc. I tried to honor that help by taking advantage of the opportunities it provided and throwing myself into my education. In the end, I worked for those degrees, but I wouldn't say "I suffered" - I was lucky that I got kind of a "second chance" in my 30's to even get that sorted out - everyone has a different starting place, but you must choose wisely. A degree is not a magic bullet, it's just another opportunity and what it becomes is still really up to YOU. You have to consider what YOU bring to the table before you spend all that money. YMMV

 

I have a coworker whose brother enrolled in the University of Phoenix. And after the first semester he received all F's for the simple reason that he didn't even make an effort to participate in a single class. He never even logged in. He called the school livid and demanded the diploma he paid for. They, of course, told him it didn't work like that and he proclaimed that the university of Phoenix "sucked" and he would never repay any of the loans taken out to fund his brief foray into higher education. While my coworker is no great lover of UPhoenix (neither am I), we both knew well enough that you don't just buy a degree from them.

Sadly, our society has demonstrated repeatedly precisely what it expects. Easy refunds with no questions asked even if the only thing wrong with a product is you didn't like it. Didn't use it correctly? No questions asked, just return it. And now we're starting to see previously generous return policies at places like Target and even Amazon becoming more restrictive as more people unapologetically abuse it. My mother, I love the woman, but she feels that if an article of clothing shows signs of wear at any point that she is entitled to a refund. Bought it five years ago and wore it every day? Replace it.

I look at other countries where many fine jobs are trained without academic degrees. The truth is that I do not need a bachelors degree to be an HR person. A well rounded liberal arts education is not necessary to do this work. And, if you talk to many of my colleagues it is clear that it didn't really stick. While I enjoy philosophy, a love I picked up during my mandatory intro to philosophy course at Scranton, many others glide through school doing just enough to pass and not internalizing any of the stuff "they don't need." We would face no significant loss of quality in HR if, instead of bachelors degrees, we required industry certificate and either an associates or just a 1-2 year diploma in HR. It always saddens me when I see someone wanting to make a career change to HR, knowing they will likely have to take a step or two down, and having them feel they need to earn a Masters in HR in order to effect the change.

As you say, it's formalized learning. But we've conflated it with vocational training as well and just made both areas ineffective in many ways. Saddest of all, we have lost all desire to learn as we chase pieces of paper that we feel we need lest we starve.

 

People can get through school by "doing their minimums". Not to the degree of never handing-in work, that's just ridiculous and it's sad there are people who think that's something they can do. For many people, just passing is enough and I never understood that thinking. I always wanted to master the material and anything less than an 'A' was a failure to me. My thinking always was, I'm paying for this, I want to get every penny of my money's worth out of it.