It’s amazing to me that parents who are willing to be academic iconoclasts for homeschooling are suddenly the most conservative people in the world when it comes to college: everyone’s going. Like, the way to prove homeschooling works is your kid goes to college. Read more
Despite knowing that college is an outdated rip off, I am still stuck on the idea that my kids will go to college. My kids are young enough that I continue to live in a fantasy land that they will go to one of the small handful of colleges that the majority of powerful people attend. Read more
Time magazine did a cover package on the end of college. I tell you this because Time magazine is the pulse of American ideas. Something is mainstream when it gets into Time. Because those journalists don’t aim to frame public discussion so much a summarize it in a way to reflect the discussion back to us. Read more
I am convinced that kids should not go to college. It’s overpriced, it’s nonessential to getting a job, and you are more likely to earn a ton of money if you take unconventional paths. Not that earning money is the primary goal of life, but for the amount of money college costs, it should be the primary goal of college. Read more
The life of a homeschool parent means spending a lot of time rejecting the school system, defending counter-culture decisions to naysayers, and gaining self-confidence to be different in a very public way.
Yet after fifteen years of this behavior, parents make the irrational decision to send their kids to college when it’s clear that college is just a repackaged version of failing schools in the US.
In case you think you have some research that shows a college degree makes for a good life, here is a detailed retort against the people trying to prove the value of college still, somehow, exists. Read more
It’s my weekly post about why kids shouldn’t go to college.
To be clear, I write these posts to convince myself that my kids should not go to college. I remember, about ten years ago, when I wrote that entrepreurship is a safety net. I felt like I was writing the post to justify the fact that I really wanted a cushy corporate job, but I woudn’t get to see my kids if I had that job, so I had to make my own job. The blog post was convincing myself that I was doing the right thing.
I was doing the right thing of course. But it’s hard to see in the moment when it feels so unstable and out in left field. Read more
The debate over the value of college is heating up. The value of degrees from non-top-tier colleges is negligible. The future job market does not require a four-year college degree. And now Time magazine is advocating vocational school for most kids.
I have thought for a while that homeschool should be like vocational school. For example, when my son goes to horseback riding lessons, he doesn’t just ride. He learns to do the work of the people who run the horse barn. Sometimes I worry that my mind has been clouded from fifteen years of giving career advice and now I’m too vocationally focused. But now I’m thinking that vocational school is the education that kids need to be successful adults. Here are three reasons why: Read more
It’s not that top universities are telling people directly to homeschool their kids. Instead, top schools are using a selection process that is hugely advantageous to those who do homeschool. Here’s why:
1. Good grades are a commodity, so they don’t help in the admissions process.
Girls are doing so much better than boys in both standard high school courses and in standardized tests that their good grades and good scores don’t get girls into good colleges. It’s not enough anymore. White girls especially need a hook.
A hook is, ironically, something you are passionate about and engaged in that is outside of school. Top schools like Harvard and Stanford have always required a hook. Because when you’re in a room full of smart people, smart suddenly doesn’t matter—interesting is what matters. Read more
The demise of the college education is coming fast. It’s clear that college is largely a rip off. At this point, Generation Y is the most in-debt generation in American history largely because of the over-inflated price of a college education. To illustrate this situation, Sannah Kvist took photos of Generation Y with everything they own. One of the photos is above, and it’s a great illustration of post-college disappointment. (There are more photos from Kvist’s project here.) Read more
I notice that lots of people use college admission as evidence that homeschooling works. Here’s an example of a mom who says college is proof of her homeschooling success.
This is shocking to me. While homeschooling is controversial, ditching college is much less controversial.
There are lists of wildly successful people who did not graduate college. The New York Times is publishing essays about how starting one’s own business is more important for lifelong success than going to college. And because of the insane costs associated with higher education, the topic of how useless college is has entered the political debate as well. Read more