The Worst Investment You Can Make.

If you read the Chuckmeister's bleatings, you know I'm not in favor of today's higher education process.  Not what it teaches, how it teaches it, and how much it costs.

The big name universities and colleges that cost at least an arm to attend.  Upwards of $30,000 a year for tuition at state schools, and up to $90,000 a year at the Ivy League institutions.  There are 23 University of California universities, which report that you can expect to spend $150,000 for your 4-year education.  Tuition, fees, housing, food and books.  Not including a car to get there, or the gas to put in it.

For what?  They have professors that all to often profess anti-American vitriol that just might brainwash your little sons and daughters.  You send them off to learn, and they come home as socialists.  Or worse.  That, in my opinion, is a bad investment.

And as a college graduate, I'm quite familiar with what you must do to get that all important sheepskin.  To wind up finally able to hold it up to prospective employers, secure in the fact that it will grant you an extra few $Tens of Thousands a year in salary.  And a quick rise to the executive suite.

You expect wrong.

I'm here to finally provide you with some evidence that I was right all along.  The Secretary of Education's office just dropped a stastistic that should chill those of you who are paying through the proboscis for your kids' education.  My research just came up with the answer to all-important question:  How many new college graduates land a job in their major field of study, as of 2025?  Ya' ready?

                            31%

That's the good news.  It was only 20% in 2024.

And worst yet, more than 51% are working in a field for which a college degree is not necessary!

That should scare the crap out of whomever is paying for their student loans!  They have to work to pay their rent, and the job they trained for either no longer exists, or its already occupied.  Only those who have majors in engineering, medicine, nursing, laboratory sciences, pharmacy and law can count on a job when they graduate.  Those with degrees in social sciences, communications, or other non-specific majors will, as I've wryly offered in the past, will be asking, "Would you like fries with that?"

The Harvard Business Review had a article a couple of years back that indicated fully one-third of the jobs today's college attendees are attending college to attain, will no longer exist by the time they get their degree.  Artificial Intelligence is erasing many of the jobs we've long believed will always exist.  No longer.

If you wish your kid to get a degree, my suggestion is for them to go to a junior college for two years.  Get the requireds out of the way on the cheap.  By then they'll likely know what they want to do when they grow up, and then have them go to a college or university to attain it.  But by then they'll also find out whether it will still exist by the time they do.

That last part is uber important.  The Harvard Business Review recently reported that fully 40% of all the jobs in major fields of college study will not exist by they time one graduates.  Artificial Intelligence is eliminating entire career fields while we watch.  

I say go to college if you'll graduate with a license to practice a skill for which a degree is necessary.  Law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, or engineering are classic examples.  A major in Medieval Lesbian Poetry is not.  Nor is psychology, finance, social sciences, computer programming, or so many other yesterday's news major fields.

Think about it.  UPS starts their truck drivers at $176,000 a year.  A degree in social sciences starts at $56,000 a year.  A full-time job in a California McDonald's pays $48,000 a year. You make the choice.  

And then prepare to live with it...