00:00 Speaker A
Speaking of mortals, well, like myself, and a kid who is going to college in a few years. We gotta talk about your new book. Well, the book is called “The Truth About College,” and it’s a guide for parents who want to help their children answer difficult questions about higher education. Not just where to go, which I think most of the literature is about, but how to think about what you want to do in life and how college fits into that. Is that a fair way to describe it?
00:23 Speaker B
This is. Fundamentally, the question is, should kids go to college? I mean, there’s no question that college is still the best path, but only if the kid is ready for college and they choose that path and follow it correctly. This is how they earn a good income by earning a degree in a marketable field. They can live a good life. We know that college graduates make the most money in the United States. They are also healthier, live longer, and are less likely to get divorced. They have stronger family and community ties. Obtained by going to college
00:59 Speaker B
The degree is wonderful. But how do you explain that 24 percent of freshmen drop out, only 62 percent of students graduate within six years, the average person enters college with $41,000 in student loan debt, and we have 37 million college dropouts in this country. Today, 25% of college graduates say they wish they had never been.
01:23 Speaker B
Clearly, something was wrong with the way we were executing the plan. That’s what my book is about. Like you said, most books are about choosing a college, choosing a major, how do I get admitted? No, ask a basic question, is my child a college candidate?
01:34 Speaker A
So, I and I feel like a lot of the questions that have been centered around what you’re talking about lately are focused on return on investment and more on what college can offer me, and you don’t have a lot of control over that. You have more control over your child’s behavior and conversations. So, how do you have these? How do you solve this problem?
02:00 Speaker B
So, in my book The Truth About College, uh, in the back of the book, there are 20 conversation starters for parents to have with their children, asking these basic questions to help you decide together whether college is the right path, recognizing that there are many alternative paths today to free education, apprenticeships, vocational schools, or just taking a gap year or two. Let the children grow up, mature, develop, and see more of what the world is like, and help them determine the right path to college. Is it now? Which kind of school, what kind of major, such a result is more likely to lead to success, rather than ruining one’s life.
02:51 Speaker A
I mean, it’s pretty tricky when you’re talking about a 16, 17, 18-year-old kid and even having to wait another year, I mean, you know, in other words,
03:00 Speaker B
25% of college students are over 25 years old. So instead of just waiting a year, maybe wait five years. Get to know yourself, travel, get a job, see what it’s like to have a job, see what the economic realities of the world are. This can help you make decisions.
03:22 Speaker A
Yeah, I guess I just thought about myself and didn’t fully figure out who I was until much later, which I think is true for a lot of people.
03:31 Speaker B
In fact, this is a big mistake that parents make when they’re thinking about their own college experience 20, 30, 40 years ago, or their grandparents’ experience 60 years ago. College today is different than when we went to school, and we need to recognize the fundamental differences and challenges children face. By the way, we haven’t even mentioned artificial intelligence yet.
03:52 Speaker A
I know I want to ask you about artificial intelligence.
03:53 Speaker B
Most professions face incredible threats due to technological innovation. Many children are studying in professional fields that don’t actually exist when they graduate.
04:08 Speaker A
I don’t know if waiting a year would help. I mean, these feel like questions we can’t answer right now.
04:14 Speaker B
So I’ll tell you the path I describe in the book. To ensure your child learns, you need to do four things. Any university can teach these things: thinking, creating, managing and communicating. This is what you need to teach your kids how to do, because this applies to almost any career. Instead, oh, I’m going to be an engineer and learn how to code. Well, great. Thanks to AI, we don’t need coders. So we need to learn how to think, create and communicate.
04:50 Speaker B
You are in the communications field. This is transferable across industries. That’s what we need to help people realize that the universities of the past are no longer the universities of today. The costs are much higher and the challenges are much greater. We need to rethink and reassess the approach we are taking. That’s how I help people understand the truth about college.
