GUESS WHAT?

No, You Guess What?

by Alex Hutchins

Special thanks to Alissa Alvarez for sending me this link and for following Wondering.

Caterina Fake

What do these 10 people have in common with each other?

1.      Peter Thiel – PayPal co-founder

2.      Mark Cuban – Chairman of HDNet

3.      Warren Buffett – CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

4.      Seth Godin – Squidoo founder

5.      Steve Jobs – Apple CEO

6.      Ben Nelson – Snapfish CEO

7.      Sean Parker – Napster co-found

8.      Richard Branson – Virgin CEO

9.      Bill Gates – Microsoft co-founder

10.  Caterina Fake – Flickr co-founder

If this were a soap, I would suggest that you tune in tomorrow for the answer, but this is not a soap, so let’s get to it.

Peter Thiel, the uncontested leader

of the anti-college movement . . .

All of these people,

believe that is ok

not to go to

College or University.

Now before you really get upset, here’s the link, and I suggest that you go there after reading my comments and see what they think the way they do.

I went to college in the 60’s because it is what sons and daughters of middle class families did.  Personally, I did not want to go but did so for 2 reasons:

First,

I was tired of arguing

with my parents about it.

Second,

 if I did not go to college,

I would have gotten drafted

and the 60’s was not a good time

 to be in the military if you

did not like shooting at

and perhaps killing people

and

I personally wanted

no part of that.

Seth Godin believes the correlation between
College and success in Business
is WEAK . . .

I attended college and after two and a half years of partying I managed to “flunk out” and decided to join the Navy before getting drafted.  Needless to say, it did not take me long to realize that I had made a mistake and as quick as I could arrange it, I returned to college and eventually graduated.

While the first two and a half years of college tuition was wasted, my last two years, including 2 years of Graduate School was paid for by the GI Bill and the only out-of-pocket expenses that I incurred was $500.

The total cost of my Bachelor and Master degrees was about $30,000 or roughly $5,000 each year for 6 years.

$30,000 is now

the average cost of

college for 1 year.

If I had gone to college under today’s prices, I would have paid $180,000 for those same 6 years of education which would take me 15 years to pay off at $1,000/month.  It would take me 1/3 of my career to pay off my educational loans, providing I could find a job and providing that job’s financial compensation was high enough to pay living expenses that would also allow for a $1,000/month educational loan payment.

Honestly folks, the average salary for college graduates is somewhere between $30,000 - $40,000 a year which, after taxes, provides take-home pay of about $2,000 to $2,500 a month.  And, for a Graduate degree, add about $10,000 to the annual salary.

So, given this scenario, do you honestly think one would be able to afford an educational loan payment of $1,000?  Hell no . . .  It would be more like $500, if that!  At $500/month, one’s loan now extends out 30 years into the future.

Why would anyone

want to be saddled with that much

 educational debt?

. . .  Which brings us back to what these 10 people have in common about not going to college?

In fact, I think you will enjoy this next little story about a colleague of mine who is 2 years older than me and was still taking online classes for a PhD.  He once told me that when he finally got out of school with his PhD that his student loans would be close to $200,000 and that he had no intentions of ever paying that debt off; laughingly, he told me that he would die before that happened and his wife would not be encumbered with his debts.

Only in America . . .

right?