Slashdot Mirror
Beating the College Bubble
An anonymous reader writes "The real estate bubble is long gone. Oil prices are sliding down. Are we in
an education bubble? The author of
Beating the College Bubble says so.
He's written a short, simple guide to avoiding the crushing college
debt that he thinks is about to bankrupt all of us. Just as easy loans encouraged people to dream big and buy a
McMansion, big college loans are tempting students with too much Comp Lit and Frat
Parties. When they graduate, the debt is so hefty that the students are stuck living
in their parents' basement for 10 years until they've paid it all off. I can
tell you from personal experience that there's some real truth to the hangover.
The beer headache is gone after a week, but the monthly payments just keep going." Read below for the rest of cdog40's review
Beating the College Bubble
author
C. Davis
pages
140
publisher
Edububble Press
rating
9
reviewer
cdog40
ISBN
1438235909
summary
Don't go to college. Save your money.
The author spells out why he wrote the book:
his kids are graduating soon and he wants to do the right thing. Should he encourage
them to spend big on an impressive, Cadillac-grade education or should he
be really cheap so they can be free of loans? Which will help the kids?
Chapter 2 works through a handful of examples of people who spent too much on education. Of course he brings up the fact that all of the big guys in the computer business skipped out on college after a few courses. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started the trend and now it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is following in the famous footsteps.
The author writes out that some of the people in Chapter 2 really did benefit from their education. The lawyers and the doctors who sell their credentials did very well with fancy diplomas.
Chapter 3 is a largely obvious summary of what we all know: lots of college courses don't have any real use in the world. It's not as bad as jokes like: What do you call an English major? (Waiter!) The problem is that the Internet is very good at exporting bits and most college degrees specialize in manipulating bits. The Internet can and will ship this work to the lowest-wage countries in the world. So if you're interested in making money by manipulating bits, the Internet is going to cut you off at your knees. The real secret to making money he says is getting a career in something like sewer maintenance because that can't be exported despite what that famous Senator says about the Internet just being a bunch of pipes.
Chapter 4 is a great piece that explains where the money is going: into the pockets of the college presidents. Many of them make more than a million dollars a year in salary. Well, that's not all true. Some of it is going into the big, expensive buildings. Apparently long ago, students put on shows without fancy state-of-the-art, high-tech arts complexes. They just used an auditorium. No longer. Schools love to spend money on big-name architects. There's a good mention made of the high price tag, the bar, and the leaky roof at MIT's Stata Center.
Chapter 5 is a kind of a nice guy section added so the author couldn't be accused of being completely cynical and nasty. It points out that most schools aren't just spending the cash on the president's new yacht, but on things the students use like fancy dorms and swanky exercise rooms. I know this is true of my school. The dorms are much better. You can't even see the mortar between the cinder blocks any longer. He's still annoyed by this because all of the fancy features pump up the tuition bill.
Chapter 6 is where the book starts to get useful. He talks about how to negotiate for better terms on the debt or how to avoid picking up too much. You can pretty much skip Chapter 7 and move right on to Chapters 8 and 9 which describe how to save money by getting cut rate degrees or skipping college altogether.
I'm not sure whether I buy all of the techniques. He suggests that internet forums like Slashdot are more informative than a college classroom, something I'm not sure I believe. Yes, there's more discussion and the moderation system does a good job of shutting up that bossy know-it-all in the front row, but it would be nice to have a professor. I guess that's what they mean when we're supposed to read the article before commenting. Hah. No one did at my school either.
There are good ones. He tells of low-cost degree programs at most schools. You can save 80% of the price of going to Harvard, for instance. I think he's pretty honest about this because he does point out that you lose something when you take the cheap route. But freedom is just another word for nothing left to pay on your loans.
The book's website is trying to make the book interactive by posting new news stories and alternative solutions for college. It listed the new School of Everything as an alternative.
This is where the meat of the book lies. The only way to avoid getting hurt by a bursting bubble is to get out early. This book made me think long and hard about college. You can't go back and do a scientific experiment because you can only live life once. But I do think that's how he put it. We're really in love with the idea of college that we'll spend anything. It's like when you fall head over heels over some beautiful girl that you don't even know. Then you run up your credit card on an expensive meal to impress her only to find out that she's kind of snobby or flakey or just not interested in the right things (PS3, BitTorrent, Android, Erlang etc). When the bill comes a month later, you feel kind of dumb. This book is trying to help the next generation avoid that headache.
You can purchase Beating the College Bubble from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Chapter 2 works through a handful of examples of people who spent too much on education. Of course he brings up the fact that all of the big guys in the computer business skipped out on college after a few courses. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started the trend and now it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is following in the famous footsteps.
The author writes out that some of the people in Chapter 2 really did benefit from their education. The lawyers and the doctors who sell their credentials did very well with fancy diplomas.
Chapter 3 is a largely obvious summary of what we all know: lots of college courses don't have any real use in the world. It's not as bad as jokes like: What do you call an English major? (Waiter!) The problem is that the Internet is very good at exporting bits and most college degrees specialize in manipulating bits. The Internet can and will ship this work to the lowest-wage countries in the world. So if you're interested in making money by manipulating bits, the Internet is going to cut you off at your knees. The real secret to making money he says is getting a career in something like sewer maintenance because that can't be exported despite what that famous Senator says about the Internet just being a bunch of pipes.
Chapter 4 is a great piece that explains where the money is going: into the pockets of the college presidents. Many of them make more than a million dollars a year in salary. Well, that's not all true. Some of it is going into the big, expensive buildings. Apparently long ago, students put on shows without fancy state-of-the-art, high-tech arts complexes. They just used an auditorium. No longer. Schools love to spend money on big-name architects. There's a good mention made of the high price tag, the bar, and the leaky roof at MIT's Stata Center.
Chapter 5 is a kind of a nice guy section added so the author couldn't be accused of being completely cynical and nasty. It points out that most schools aren't just spending the cash on the president's new yacht, but on things the students use like fancy dorms and swanky exercise rooms. I know this is true of my school. The dorms are much better. You can't even see the mortar between the cinder blocks any longer. He's still annoyed by this because all of the fancy features pump up the tuition bill.
Chapter 6 is where the book starts to get useful. He talks about how to negotiate for better terms on the debt or how to avoid picking up too much. You can pretty much skip Chapter 7 and move right on to Chapters 8 and 9 which describe how to save money by getting cut rate degrees or skipping college altogether.
I'm not sure whether I buy all of the techniques. He suggests that internet forums like Slashdot are more informative than a college classroom, something I'm not sure I believe. Yes, there's more discussion and the moderation system does a good job of shutting up that bossy know-it-all in the front row, but it would be nice to have a professor. I guess that's what they mean when we're supposed to read the article before commenting. Hah. No one did at my school either.
There are good ones. He tells of low-cost degree programs at most schools. You can save 80% of the price of going to Harvard, for instance. I think he's pretty honest about this because he does point out that you lose something when you take the cheap route. But freedom is just another word for nothing left to pay on your loans.
The book's website is trying to make the book interactive by posting new news stories and alternative solutions for college. It listed the new School of Everything as an alternative.
This is where the meat of the book lies. The only way to avoid getting hurt by a bursting bubble is to get out early. This book made me think long and hard about college. You can't go back and do a scientific experiment because you can only live life once. But I do think that's how he put it. We're really in love with the idea of college that we'll spend anything. It's like when you fall head over heels over some beautiful girl that you don't even know. Then you run up your credit card on an expensive meal to impress her only to find out that she's kind of snobby or flakey or just not interested in the right things (PS3, BitTorrent, Android, Erlang etc). When the bill comes a month later, you feel kind of dumb. This book is trying to help the next generation avoid that headache.
You can purchase Beating the College Bubble from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I'll just get a loan to pay for that.
Just because you live in your Mom's basement surfing Slashdot all day doesn't mean you can blame it on college debt.
How to beat the "College Bubble:" 1. Go to College. 2. Become deep in debt. 3. Sell a book about being in debt. 4. ??? 5. Profit!!
Humm.. the article quotes "stuck living in their parents' basement for 10 years" like that is a bad thing.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Boo paying back my debt!!!! I want a bailout for me damnit.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
I hear that open course ware thing is pretty nifty for the price.
As for a degree? You got a printer, a scanner and a copy of Gimp? Good boy.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Is it just me, or did this book stop before it could get to Chapter 11 on purpose?
...I can't walk into an interview and drop a name like MIT...
If only you had gone to the Michigan Institute of Technology instead...granted it is geared towards people seeking careers as automotive mechanics, but just think, being able to say, "I went to MIT" would be totally worth it.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
1. Stay in college the rest of your life building up more and more debt.
2. Buy a lotto ticket each week to pay it all off and retire.
3. ???????
4. Have a life of fun on the backs of others.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
"I managed to live off of about @ $300/month. For two and half years I lived like a monk. Even then I owed $8000 to different credit card companies and some $12000 to a bank. I paid that off in four months after getting my first job."
EEEK! A thrifty, competitive foreigner with a work ethic! Cleanse it with fire and legislation!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
seriously, if you cant figure out how to get your debt paid off, cant get a decent job, or are too dam lazy - you shouldnt have gone to college in the first place.
i think a real problem is the colleges teach to the book, instead of cultivating free thought.
Debt is an inevitability, to one degree or another, for those who don't have the cash (or their parents don't) to drop on their education and IMHO most of the time makes sense. I worked summers and did an internship, but even with all that still ended up around $40k in debt. The government forgave 10k and I was left with the rest. But I would much rather rack up some debt and be able to really focus on studying rather than having than burdening myself with the additional responsibility of a full/part time job.
Also, working your way through school to avoid debt, as some here have proposed, doesn't always make sense if it will significantly defer your graduation. The $12/hr you're making now cannot compare with the $25/hr after you graduate. Plus how stressful would it be to be working full time with a full course load? Of course if for some reason you actually find yourself with spare time/energy then by all means get a job - but this certainly wasn't my situation.
After you graduate, put in a few solid years with a good company then start jumping. If you have a CS degree then 6 figures is well within your reach and if you're focusing on paying off debt, it shouldn't take you more than a couple years.
Of course there are ways to greatly reduce debt load:
- COMMUNITY COLLEGE: stay there as long as possible. The teacher to student ratios and hence the quality of instruction is much better. 1/2 price tuition. Do your experimenting where it's cheap.
- Live with your parents. Seriously. If your sanity/social life can handle it, then do it. Rent is money down the drain. This probably implies that you're going to a local university.
- Live humbly. Do you really need that car?
- get a scholarship
Shooting a few of the CEO's who got it into that mess would sure make me feel better, though. Or at least jabbing them with a sharp stick.
Well, I've got my stick. Meet you in NYC? :)
No he's right. Medical researchers = tools. What good did they ever do? I mean, sure, a lot, but have you ever met one of them? Insufferable egotistic jerks who post sarcastically on slashdot.
> hint: it's legal, involved a pole, flexibility and very few inhibitions...yeah, that one.)
> Now she gets to work as an immigration lawyer who does a lot of pro bono work
Ask her if it's more rewarding than the pro-boner work.