Is College Worth It? An Update

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

A few years ago, there was a discussion about the value of college— two- year, four-year, even certificates. I wrote a column in response to that discussion, and most of it is below…

And in reading it, it seems like it might need updating, in light of new data. It’s clear parents, and even students, are seeing college as a vocational training experience, and not a life-shaping one. I get that; college costs money and for many, the time spent in the classroom is time that could be spent on the job, bringing home money for a household. In addition, there’s a question about the relevance of what’s being taught. Is Shakespeare really all that important today?

Three quick points:

• College doesn’t have to cost as much as you think it does. Tuition at a four-year public averages $11,000 a year. With any reasonable amount of help from the Federal government or the college, the family share is about a car payment each month.

• Yes, flipping burgers has become more lucrative in the post-COVID era, with full-time wages starting at $30,000 a year in most markets. Still the four-year college graduate will make twice that much a year over the course of a career—and if you marry a working college grad, your household has 4 times that much money. 4 years, for a million bucks.

• Your social media feed is full of stories of couples that divorce, politicians who lie, and rich people who break the rules. So is Shakespeare—except that, in reading his plays, you can see what happens at the end. You don’t need Shakespeare, but you don’t need McDonald’s fries either—and yet, life is so much better with both.

So read what’s below, and judge it as sentimental, if you wish. As society becomes more polarized, and mental health needs only increase, it could be that the sentimental part of life, and college, holds more value than we think.

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It’s October, and senior year is in full swing: 5 academic classes, one honors class, and 2 APs. If all goes well, you’ll be admitted to a college that’s right for you, where you’ll get to do this for four more years.

“Dude” you say to yourself, “is college worth it?”

Your parents come back from a dinner party in the neighborhood. “I ran into Jenny Smithers” your Mom says. “She graduated from State U this spring with Honors in Architecture, but with the slow job market, she’s an assistant manager at Burger World and living at home.” “She’s the eighth college grad in the neighborhood who came back home” says Dad. “One more, and the unemployed college grads can start a baseball team.”

“Dude”, you say to yourself, “is college worth it?”

You take a break from job hunting to catch the end of the sports show on TV. As you’re flipping the channels, you stop at a story that talks about Bill Gates, Abe Lincoln, and some woman in Connecticut. The story says Bill Gates didn’t finish college and Abe Lincoln never started, but this woman in Connecticut took out $115,000 in loans to go to college. She now has a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy, and can’t get a job.

“Dude” you say to yourself.

You head back to the computer, and make a scientific investigation. It turns out that the unemployment rate is lowest for students with college degrees. It also turns out that most of the job growth in the next 10 years will come in jobs requiring training after high school, but not a four year degree. It also turns out the average graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree has $30,000 in college loans.

“Whoa!” says you.

You’ve decided your homework can wait, and you head down to Maggie’s Pizza. Dave’s the manager on duty tonight, and he’s the smartest guy you know.

“’Sup, bro?” he says, without looking up from the pizza he’s cutting.

“Dave, is college worth it?”

Dave looks up, puts down the pizza cutter, and wipes his hands on his apron.

“Let’s see. Moved in the day before classes started, and I was so scared, I didn’t unpack til November 12th. My roommate was from Brooklyn, and he taught me how to eat pizza the right way. Read my first book of poetry. Worked my summers cleaning dorm rooms, and swore I’d never do that again. Went to Scotland for three weeks, and got to see the sun set at midnight. Learned how to footnote a paper, why camels spit, how to write the business plan that led to this store and the four others in the chain, and why it matters to me who wins the elections in Turkey.”

“What happened November 12th?”

“I met Maggie.”

“Hmm.”

“What about you, man? You know what you want to study?”

“No.”

“Where you want to live?”

“No.”

“Do for a living?”

“No.”

“Yeah. That’s about where I was, before I went. Slice to go?”

Dave shows you how to eat pizza Brooklyn style, and you head for home.

“Where’ve you been, champ?”

“Sorry, Dad. Just needed to clear my head.”

“Well, it’s a busy time for you.”

“Yeah. Hey Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Who’s running for president in Turkey?”

The Key to College Readiness

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

Seniors, it's the first month of school, and seniors are already in the doldrums. That glow of the first day of senior year is a million miles away, buried under layers of college essay drafts, emails to the teachers writing your college letters, and four failed attempts to remember your school's CEEB code. One college application is in, two more are stalled, and it seems like all you can do now is wait for something to change.

And you're right. If you want to be college-ready, it's time to go bowling.

This isn't about adding one more extracurricular to your Common App, and this isn't a way to earn that PE requirement you somehow dodged in 10th grade. This is about getting a taste of college life here and now, since bowling teaches you:

Humility: Just about everyone is a terrible bowler, and it drives you crazy that you are no exception. This is largely because you can't come to terms with the fact that the idea seems so simple — throw the ball, knock down the pins — but the reality is just more complex.

College is just like this. College students take four classes that each meets twice a week, and you have six daily classes in high school. With all of that free time, how can anyone possibly run out of time to study or turn in a late assignment — especially since someone else does the cooking? Try as you may, you just don't understand the drama; but thanks to the intricacies of bowling, it will become clearer to you right around the fourth frame. Remember this freshman year.

Flexibility: Amateur keglers go to great lengths finding an outfit that goes nicely with rented bowling shoes. These fashion marvels may have one blue stripe, one red stripe, brown laces, and a spot of fluorescent orange paint sprayed on each toe, but you refuse to look bad at the bowling alley. You will scour the back of your closet, delve to the depths of your dresser drawers, and even enlist the help of your parents (!), but you will find the perfect ensemble to keep everyone's eyes off the only pair of shoes you are ever likely to wear that glow in the dark.

College is no different. Try as you may, you won't be able to escape the overcooked Friday fish casserole, the roommate with a passion for loud polka music, or the lab partner who persists on sharing their political beliefs that are the polar opposite of yours. You can't run, you can't hide, and setting your hair on fire just won't help. It's time to search high and low for a way to put the best possible face on the situation, and move forward — even if you have to ask for help to do so.

Understanding: You've bowled the same way since you were five. The first three frames are awful, the next four frames make you feel you could be the next king of the alley, and the last three frames give you a sore arm and a lot of time in the gutter.

Seeing the pattern of when things are about to go sour is the beginning of wisdom, and the end of life in the gutter. So do something different. Warm up your arm, don't throw the ball so hard, and remember what happens. You'll learn a little more about what works and what doesn't, and that will come in handy for the next frame of bowling, or for your college frame of mind.

You see, bowling makes you college-ready. It's all about the approach.

College Counseling and Mental Health

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The key to all counseling—personal, academic, career, mental health, college—lies in one goal:  To give the client something new to think about.

Consider that for just a moment.  

A client comes into our office with a given set of rules and ideas about how the world works.  Since they haven’t come in for a social call, it’s clear they want those rules and ideas to do something else than what they’re now doing.  They want them to make more sense.  To open up more possibilities.  To bring them more peace.

How do you know this has occurred?  You can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voice, watch it in their step.  No, they probably haven’t overcome whatever it is that brought them in.  But they’re leaving with a new plan for what the next step is, and what it could lead to.  That’s not just hope; that’s strategic hope.  That’s counseling.

I thought about this when I read about a new survey of high school counselors showing more time is being spent on mental health counseling, and less on college counseling.  The survey suggests students feel the cost of college is a big factor in keeping them away from thinking about that option, followed by uncertainty about their career interests.  Apparently the thinking behind this last factoid is, why go to college unless you know what you want to be when you grow up?

These data points should be discouraging to the profession for a number of reasons:

• The shift is much more significant in public schools than private schools.  Over 60 percent of public school counselors report a downtick in college counseling, compared to 18 percent in private schools.  If we accept the long-standing premise that private school parents tend to be more involved in their child’s education, that would suggest public school students are shutting out college before they don’t really know what they’re saying no to.

• That’s clearly true with the issue of not going to college because they are unsure about career options.  Going to college used to be a vital step in the process of career exploration, and many (most) colleges are designed to give students two years to try out new paths and personas before settling on a major.  Why are students assuming otherwise?

• It’s certainly true that the colleges that get all the media attention cost too much—on average, over $43,000-- and, once again, that’s all the more reason for the media to create a more balanced approach to covering postsecondary options.  In Michigan, most students can go to the first two years of college for free, and in Detroit, most can go to four years of college for free.  Otherwise, a year of public college will run you a little over $11,000, and that’s before financial aid.  Not exactly a car payment, but manageable, with some advanced planning—planning public school counselors can, and should, be giving families in sixth grade.

• The report is a reminder of the sad level of training most public school counselors get in college counseling.  College counseling and mental health counseling aren’t either-or propositions—in fact, tell a mentally distressed student college is a fresh start, and watch their eyes light up.  But we aren’t trained that way; college counseling is an add-on about getting into Harvard, not something every student deserves to understand.

Until the media, and counselor training programs themselves, stop selling college as an elite activity, too many students will make choices they don’t understand, and that is a disservice to them, their families, and our society.

Initiative

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

He was the best combination of head and heart, the kind of student who wanted to change the world, who knew that doing so would take more than just hoping it would happen.  That’s why he went to see the director of our summer studies program one spring, having done his homework.

“I was reading an article the other day that said something like 85 percent of all students living in urban areas don’t know how to swim” he told the director.  “Since all the students in our summer program are from Detroit, I was thinking it might be a good idea to teach them how to swim.  My friends on the swim team and I can do that.”

And that’s how 200 kids from Detroit learned how to swim that summer—and 200 more the summer after that, and the summer after that, and ever since.  The summer swim program soon became as much a part of being on the school’s swim team as 6 AM practices, thanks to a smart kid with a good heart who had an idea, and acted on it.

No one ever knows why a college takes a student, especially the colleges that are incredibly popular.  Everyone has very similar grades, most tend to have the same test scores, most teacher letters are written so badly they don’t say much of anything (just tell stories about the student, really), and more than a few personal statements are devoted to students talking about how they’ve made a difference in the world.  But I’d like to think admissions offices took one look at this student, who started a program that teaches .03% of a city how to swim every summer, and said “Yeah.  That’s it.”

Make no mistake—there are tons of students out there who try to persuade colleges they’ve shown initiative every year.  It’s just that most of them don’t really have an example of demonstrated initiative that will make a college stand up and pay attention.

Where do they go wrong?

One and done  The biggest mistake is when students start a school club that is often based on a personal interest, and that’s it.  There’s no Anime club at school?  Cool—I’ll start one, hang 5 posters up at school, name myself president, and Hello Harvard!

Harvard, and most every other college, sees this coming.  If all you’ve done is start a club, with no information on membership, frequency of meetings, or activities, you’re whistling in the wind.

Classroomitis OK, says you, if it’s meetings they want, it’s meetings they’ll get. Three pals of mine and I will meet monthly and watch our favorite shows at school.

Mmmm. How about putting together some classic Anime episodes and presenting them to interested middle school students at their school?  Or introducing this genre to folks at the local senior center?  Taking your interest on the road shows a little more innovation—and, not coincidentally, shows a little more commitment.

Sit and git  Why stop at watching Anime—how about making some?  Zoom in an Anime artist who wants to share their talents, and open the seminar to your larger community.  You’re now changing a town, especially if…

Create an event …it’s capped off with an annual Anime festival, held in the school auditorium.   Local artists share their wares, maybe a guest lecturer comes by.  Add some snacks, and you’ve built something bigger than yourself, something that will last after you graduate, something that makes a difference.

Do that, and it may get you into college.  Then again, maybe that doesn’t matter as much anymore.

"College Material" and "Terrorists"

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

I’ve likely told you this story before, but, evidently, it bears repeating.

A 10th-grade boy comes bounding out of the classroom when the bell rings and heads straight to the counseling office. “I know exactly what I want to do with my life. I want to go to college, and become a disc jockey.”

You ready?

The counselor responds thusly. “That just goes to show what you know. You don’t have to go to college to become a disc jockey, and that’s a good thing in your case, because you aren’t college material.”

To be fair, this was a while ago, part of those days when, much as we hate to admit it, many counselors weren’t really counselors, but teachers tired of the classroom, and too tired for the classroom. Since then, many licenses and certifications exist to make sure school counselors understand they are not in the business of dispensing personal, um, wisdom, but instead are in the business of human development. The work isn’t about the counselor; it’s about the counselee.

I’m sorry to say I still hear about episodes like this, too often in the area of college counseling. Our nation’s obsession with Harvard plagues our profession as nothing else does. Suzie comes into our office in the hopes of finding a nice little college nearby so she can major in business and take her scrapbooking hobby public, and we put her through a labyrinth of college searching because we’re worried she can’t get into Brown. Suzie likely knows that. That’s why she hasn’t asked about Brown.

As a profession, our track record tends to be better, especially in human relationships and mental health. This makes sense, since the vast majority of counselor training programs are coursework in developmental psychology (often at the expense of college counseling, which is almost never taught as a separate specialty, even though it is). Given that bias, most counselors just seem to understand that, when a kid comes in our office with that look on their face that is neither happy nor sad, it’s time to grab the tissues, shut up, and listen.

But apparently, not always. A report from a middle school in Michigan indicates a student was having trouble with a class, and decided to do what he was encouraged to do—he went to go talk to a counselor.

You ready?

Once she heard of the problem, the counselor admits that her response, at least in part, was “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

If, at this very moment, you are asking yourself any of the following—“What was the student’s religion?”, “What did the student look like?”, “What was the student’s last name?”—let me respectfully suggest you find a new line of work, as should, in my opinion, this counselor. She apologized for the remark, and there has been a federal investigation into the incident.

The kid who wanted to be a disc jockey went on to college, and became a band director. He returned to his hometown to work as a teacher, starting a side business as a disc jockey, and taking night classes to get his master’s degree in counseling. He went on to become his hometown high school’s counselor…

You ready?

…replacing the counselor who told him he wasn’t college material.

Here’s hoping that middle school kid overcomes the adversity his counselor provided him, and thrives in the same way.

I understand the reason why professionals want to stop being called guidance counselors. Still, at times like this, it seems there are counselors who could use some serious guidance.