I am writing this for high school juniors who have just received what seems to be bad news from their parents. My message: It's good news for parental solvency, and it won't hurt you a bit. But it's not what you had in mind.
I am going to talk straight with you. I am probably the only person you will come in contact with who is willing to do this.
First, if you can get a bachelor's degree in any field of engineering, you will have a middle-class income at age 21. You will probably have an upper-middle-class income by age 27.
Second, if you can get an MBA from any school by distance learning, no matter how obscure, and no matter how cheap, you're going to guarantee yourself an upper-middle-class income. I suspect that within five years after you get your MBA, you will be getting more money as a salary than any of your peers in high school will receive. The combination of engineering skill and management ability is the passport to high income.
Third, what I'm about to say does not apply if you have received a full scholarship--room, board, and tuition--at MIT, Caltech, or Harvey Mudd College. If you get a degree from any of those schools, you will be in the upper tier at age 21. But you're not going to get a full scholarship at those schools. Forget about it.
Once you're not talking about those three schools, or maybe a half a dozen of the other major universities, it doesn't matter where you get your degree from. One degree is as good as any other degree in terms of getting an entry-level job.
THE PROGRAMS ARE ALL THE SAME, CAREER-WISE
Do not believe for 5 seconds that one school is going to give you a better shot at getting a job than any other school, unless the school's engineering department has a major alumni association that almost automatically selects graduates from its program. If there is not verifiable evidence of such an alumni association arrangement, which there won't be, do not imagine that one school matters more than another. They are all the same as far as getting that first job is concerned.
This means that your wisest approach is to get through school as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. You want to save time for your career, and you want to save money for the sake of your parents' retirement portfolio.
Here is an unbreakable rule. Any engineering program that does not let you quiz out of your first two years of liberal arts education and enter as a junior is not worth considering. Do not under any circumstances, except a 100% scholarship, go to a school that will not accept CLEP exams for the first two years of college. Here's why. These liberal arts courses are useless. Everyone on campus knows they are useless. They are demonstrably useless. Read this book: Academically Adrift.
Parents: Do not give your child a dime for college unless he reads this book. I mean this. Not a brass farthing. If you do, then you fully deserve the devastation to your retirement portfolio that you will needlessly suffer. Furthermore, if you don't read the book, you are setting yourself up to be scammed by overpaid university bureaucrats. This book is your first line of emotional self-defense against a con job organized by universities. Read it.
These lower division courses generate huge amounts of money for the universities. The money is wasted by the parents. They are paying for what their children do not need. They are letting themselves get scammed by university bureaucrats.
Engineering departments want to make certain that they get lots of lower division students in large classes that generate lots of money for the department. This is why they create prerequisites that cannot be escaped by means of examination or community college. Any department that does this is morally corrupt. I mean this. You can't trust the professors in the program.
If the prerequisite is really academically necessary, the department would set up a rule where any entering student could take the final exam of the course. If the student passes the exam, that's all he needs to do. Why isn't this done? Because the prerequisite is there to force you into the department for a single course, plus all the other useless liberal arts courses, in your sophomore year.
The entire system is a scam. You should be able to walk into any course at any university and pay $50 to take an exam. If you pass all the exams, they hand you your degree, and send you on your way. That would mean that the system was honest. But the collegiate system has never been honest. The system, beginning in the 11th century, has been set up to create sweetheart careers for people who are not skilled enough to compete in the free market. They get paid above-average wages, they teach six hours or nine hours a week, and then they get tenure, never having to face competition again. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who survive get tenure." Then they don't have to teach at all. It was true in 1050, and it's true today.
Every prerequisite is a microcosm of the macrocosm of the whole university system. The system is a gigantic barrier to entry that has virtually nothing to do with lifetime career performance after the bachelor's degree. Everybody knows it, and yet the United States spends half a trillion dollars a year on this gigantic boondoggle.
The university system is set up for the not too bright students who don't have the intellectual firepower to learn on their own. Don't be fooled. That is what the system has always been. If you're really bright, you don't need the university system. You could learn on your own. Then you could take a test. But state licensing forbids this.
The most profitable company in America is Google. To get a job at Google, you do not have to have a university degree. You have to pass a series of rigorous exams. If you pass the exams, you get paid a lot of money. You have great working conditions. You are in the free market. You are on your own.
If I had one phrase to describe what is needed to reform higher education, it would be this: "Google it."
Here is a general rule. Any barrier to entry into any field that cannot be legally penetrated by means of a competitive examination is there for only one reason: to line the pockets of the people who have created the barrier to entry. Legal barriers to entry are marks of an unfree society. Politicians have abolished individual liberty for the sake of lining the pockets of members of cartels. They are using coercion to steal from excluded victims.
Any engineering program that has a single course in the sophomore or freshman year that you must take on campus as a prerequisite in order to get into upper division is playing the "steal your parents blind" strategy. The department is using you as a tool to sell your parents on two years of education that you should not have to pay for on the four-year campus. There is no legitimate prerequisite to get into any upper division program that cannot be quizzed out of or taken at a community college. Any department of engineering that says otherwise is simply using you to guilt manipulate your parents to spend an extra $50,000 for an educational program that is not necessary for your education, and is surely not necessary to get an entry-level job.
NEVER BE A SHILL
Universities deliberately use students as shills to extract money from their parents.
Departments in tax-funded universities impose academically needless prerequisites to get around the law. Most states have rules that community college credits transfer without question into a state university system. These transferred courses dramatically cut the income for state universities. Some departments, but primarily the engineering departments, create needless prerequisites that force students to spend the extra time in the four-year university, with parents footing the bill. This is corrupt. It is a scam against the taxpayers.
Do not cooperate. Pick a school that lets you quiz out of the first two years through examination, or which accepts any credit from a community college as long as you get at least a B in the course. Do not sell yourself out to a bunch of scam artists who are trying to use you as a shield to extract money out of your parents.
If you cannot CLEP out, then they are clipping your parents. Do not become an accessory to corruption. You don't need to do this in order to get a degree that gets you a job.
First, the best way to get an engineering degree is to take all of your liberal arts courses in the first two years through examination before you graduate from high school. Almost any student with an IQ above 100 can easily do this. Students are lazy, so they won't do it, but they can do it, and they should do it.
Second, if you don't take this approach, then attend a community college and get through as fast as you can. Go to the summer session after your high school graduation, and go to the summer session at the end of your freshman year. Get into a university program in engineering no later than what would otherwise have been your sophomore year in college. Quiz out of at least your first year of college, and if you don't, then use a community college to do it for you.
What I am saying is this: do not violate the rule about not attending a four-year college until your junior year. Absolutely, categorically do not do this. You should get into a four-year college as a junior. You should be fully qualified to enter the program and finish in no more than two years. Go to summer school to do it. Do whatever you have to do to do it. Do not spend more than two years at a four-year college.
The smarter you are, and the more self-disciplined you are, the less you need classroom instruction from a professor. Professors are useful if you're not the brightest bulb in the room. They can probably help you. But if you are really smart, you don't need them. You need to be self-motivated, self-educated, and self-assured. That is the kind of employee that a company wants to hire. If you think you need help from a professor in a classroom setting, then you are not going to be a very good engineer.
If you want to launch your career as cheaply as possible, get your engineering degree at a local state university. Live at home. Then, if they have any extra money that they would have spent on your undergraduate education, use that money to get a master's degree in your field of engineering. This degree, coupled with an MBA, is going to put you on a fast track to $150,000 a year.
Here's the bottom line: don't ask your parents to pay retail. Never pay retail for anything, but especially not a college education.
I will be blunt, as is my style. If you don't take my advice on this, you are stealing from your parents on behalf of a bunch of university bureaucrats. You are using guilt manipulation and a completely false idea of what it takes to get a degree in engineering in order to get your parents to send money to a four-year college for two extra years. The four-year college does not deserve this money, and you should not let yourself be used as a shill to extract this money out of your parents.
Parents, don't let yourself get scammed by university bureaucrats. It's your money. Lay down the law on how your child gets into upper division. Do not pay a dime for your child's college education in the first two years. No exceptions. No excuses. Don't do it. Never listen to any argument that begins with this: "But Dad . . ."
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