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For decades there’s been a general consensus that the quality of an education is dictated by the brand of one's respective institution. The value of that sacred brand is determined by the wizards who sit behind the unquestioned veil of the US News and World Report college rankings. These rankings have continually driven irrational decisions by high school seniors plunging face first into massive financial commitments. Now, under the shadow of over $1 trillion in national student debt, and with increasingly transparent work places, the necessity of the brand is fading away fast.
2 Simple Goals
There are really only two academic goals a college student should focus on:
1.) Learn as much as possible.
2.) Survive with as little debt as possible.
1.) Learning, as in the expansion of intrinsic knowledge, oftentimes has little or nothing to do with your GPA (sorry, professors), and certainly has nothing to do with the building you’re sitting in. College is a four-year period of time to learn. I don’t buy the theory that sitting through a host of gen-ed courses is the on-ramp for students to “find their passion” before choosing a major. To find your passion, go acquire real working experiences, read as many interesting books as possible, and create create create. It matters far more what you do than where you do it.
2.) If two schools foster a generally equal learning environment, but one is pricier than the other, the correct choice is absolutely the cheaper option. It simply doesn’t matter how pretty the trees in the quad are or how big the football stadium is. I understand the value of leaving the nest, and certainly encourage departing from your comfort zone of peers. However, that doesn’t mean you have to be 500 miles away because it “just felt right". The collegiate class of 2014 graduated with an average debt load of $33,000, the highest average of all time. That means, if you’re a college student looking to be dramatically liberated from your parents’ house for the next four years at any cost, you may likely be spending the following four years back in the basement after graduation. That’s not freedom.
Sell an arm, a leg, and an impassioned career for a brand?
I’m not saying there aren’t notable niceties to the name brand schools. However, basic market instincts shouldn’t suddenly fly out the window when it comes to tuition. If cost dramatically outweighs the expected return, it’s simply a bad investment. USA Today recently ran an article showing the results of a survey that a few colleges conducted with recent graduates. Two of their six key findings were the following:
- “The more a student owed upon graduation, the less likely he or she will be thriving. Graduates who earned their degree in four years were twice as likely to be engaged in their jobs as people who took longer.”
- "It didn't matter whether a graduate attended a public or private non-profit college, a highly selective institution or a less-selective one. Nor did it matter where a school landed in US News & World Report rankings."
Easy loan availability provides a magical free-money euphoria during college, but a dark cloud quickly arrives to rain on the graduation parade. In addition to the above, here are a few stats to consider: there are 20 million Americans who attend college every year. Currently, there are 37 million Americans who have outstanding student loan balances. Of the 37 million, 12.5 million of them are over the age of 40. 14% currently have at least one past due student loan account and 41% of all loan takers are delinquent at some point within the first five years after entering repayment.
What does all of this say? It’s a long hard painful process to pay back the loans! Graduates are starting out their careers at ground zero with an unnaturally high aversion to risk. This creates an irrational decision making process when pursuing jobs, leaving thousands of the most talented college graduates pigeonholed into uninspiring careers that underutilize their talents and diminish their spirits.
Causation versus correlation
I’ve had several interesting conversations over the past few days about “causation versus correlation”. One happened to be with one of the most senior executives at a top four global learning company. In short, he was saying that the straight A students buy study guides. However, he found it’s not that the study guides are the cause of the straight A’s, it’s just that the straight A students are the ones that will go as far as to pay for any and all additional resources -it’s a mere correlation.
We’re seeing a similar scenario with choice of institution. There’s zero question that countless successful, smart, hardworking people have come out of the big name brand schools. But was the school the cause of their success? Or did their attending that school simply correlate with the fact that they were going to persevere towards success anyways? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t surround yourself with the best and brightest people possible, that’s certainly true. But if all else is generally equal, it’s better to go with the cost-effective option (scholarships aside).
But what about the alumni network?
In today’s LinkedIn reality, the world is your network so long as you’re willing to prove yourself to each desired contact. Is it easier to connect with people from the same school? Sure, for the most part. But that’s just one thing you might have in common with someone, and it still doesn’t mean that person is going to roll out a red carpet for you. Today's business world is so openly accessible that if you want it bad enough, there are endless windows of opportunity to showcase the real work that you’ve done. You can reach almost anybody you want so long as you’re aggressive about pursuing the introduction. So no, it’s not worth taking on a small fortune of debt to buy into a theoretical network. The network is already yours for the taking.
A saddle of debt on your professional development is like running a marathon with a weight jacket on. Lighten the load however possible, and you’ll be astounded at how many more paths you have the ability to travel. Don’t bow to the brand.
Mike Shannon is a co-founder of Chicago-based ed-tech startup, Packback (www.Packbackbooks.com). Packback provides college students with a cost-saving "pay per use" model for digital textbook rentals, allowing students to access digital textbooks for $3-$5 per day.
