How Important Is A College Education - Road to the Middle Class

Then how come, asks Australian Mercurius Goldstein, that the most successful people in Australia come up short in the academic credentials department?

[T]hese Australians are "one in the eye" for the great middle-class myth that a university education is an essential ingredient for a fulfilling life.

Such people are living reminders that success often depends far more on hard work, inspired intuition, social skills and not a small measure of rat cunning. Whereas many anxious middle-class parents prefer to believe, and to inculcate in their children, the corrosive belief that once you have a degree, you've "got it made". Of course, none of this helps when all their middle-class mates grow up to possess identical qualifications. The reality is that when everybody has a degree, nobody has a degree; and any competitive advantage in the job market is lost.

So why do parents fork out so much money for college?

It is a bid by parents for more power, money or prestige.. It is to protect privilege and ensure that young Cassandra and Joel both get a bigger slice of the pie than their parents did.

The question is: Does it really help? The message of The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko is that parents have to be really careful doling out “economic outpatient care” to their children. They should only spend money on things that make their children more independent and motivated. Giving them cash just makes them used to supplementing their life styles with remittances.

But Stanley and Danko also suggest that it is a lot easier to live a comfortable life in a professional career than as an entrepreneur and risk taker.

Of course, maybe boys have already figured all this out. Maybe it’s why more girls go to college than boys. The boys do the math, and figure: what’s the point?

So that’s why the feminists want girls to excel and math and science.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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