Success in Higher Education: Small Colleges vs Big Universities

The Wall Street Journal had a pretty good article today about the current state of higher education.  You can see it here (hopefully): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304177104577307580650834716.html

This article does a good job of mixing statistics (30% of US adults have four-year degrees, which lags behind 14 other countries) with concrete anecdotes about young people that have or haven't gone to college.

I'm a big proponent of education.  As long as you're smart about what you're getting into, I think that the time, money, and effort invested in education will always benefit you. The article does a good job of describing the situation.  In this blog I like to offer ideas on how to improve the situation. 

From my own experience, I saw that there are substantial pros and cons to what kind of school a person attends.  I've written previous posts about how to choose what to study.  In this post I want to focus on WHERE to study.

Big vs Little

Let's simplify the problem a little by dividing school choices into two

Get off the bunny hill

The temptation to stay on the bunny hill
The bunny hill is the nearly flat run closest to the parking lot at every ski resort in the world.  Bunny hills are designed for first timers to have a relatively safe place to learn how to use their bindings, control their edges and use chairlifts. 

The temptation of the bunny hill is to get stuck in an endless loop of taking one more run before moving to the advanced runs.

Catching edges forever
 The problem with waiting until you are ready to move up is that you may never be ready.  You can refine and practice and focus, and you'll still occasionally lose your balance and fall. The non-intuitive truth of snowboarding is that it is actually easier to stay in control at higher speeds.  At reaaaaally low speeds, it's tough to stay on one edge or the other. 

Learn the basics, then get to the steeps
The bunny hill has an important role.  It's good to practice getting on

Getting your money's worth out of school

The cost of going to school is tremendous.  Obviously.  The increasing cost of tuition and books regularly make headlines. Many people are deciding that college isn't worth the high cost.  Those that choose to attend are left feeling pressure to minimize costs and increase the returns on their investment.

When I was in school, I had two friends that were clearly trying to get their money's worth out of their investment.  We'll call them Stan and Miles.


Goods and Services
Stan had an approach that still makes me laugh.  When he realized how much he was paying for every day at the university, he decided to reclaim the price of his tuition in goods and services.  Every time he

The limit on technical degrees

I like the idea of a two-year technical degree. They are immensely practical.  They take less time (and less money overall) than four-year bachelors degrees.  They usually have a large percentage of time spent in hands-on labs.  Having a two-year degree is much better than having only a high-school diploma (which is much better than having no diploma.)

You can't get there from here
The problem with having a two-year degree is that the ceiling is much lower than it would be with a four-year degree. Or, in other words, the ladder to where you want to go may not reach down to people with two-year degrees.

As with any life decision, you have to first ask yourself what your goals are.

Let me illustrate with a tale of two friends... after the jump.
______

Read more »

Career options are like flocks of girls

Disneyworld crushes
As a teenager I discovered a phenomenon that seemed unique to flocks of girls in public places.  From thirty feet away, any group of girls my age was appealing.  The larger the group was, the less closely  I looked at any one of them.  I once chased down an all-girls marching band at Disneyworld, completely infatuated with all of them.  Only after chatting up the whole group and verbally committing to spend the afternoon with them did I realize that not any one of them was actually that cute.  (Shallow?  Yes.  But then again, what else are you supposed to build a relationship on during spring break at Disneyworld?)

Late in my college years, I found that girls en masse are not the only ones to exhibit this phenomenon.  Career paths are very similar.

How to find the keepers... after the jump.

The Worst Advice That You Hear a Dozen Times

Everybody hears it, so everybody repeats it.

When trying to choose a major to study in college, the common advice is:

"Study what you find interesting" or "Think about which classes you enjoyed in high school. Study those topics."

What awful advice.
The reality is that college is only for four or six or twelve years. The rest of your life will continue on for the rest of your life.

Ignore the bad advice

Here's the issue: When I was in high school, I really enjoyed my English classes. I enjoyed them a lot. I kind of liked the reading, and I kind of liked analyzing what we read, but I absolutely loved getting feedback on the papers that I wrote. I loved the attention and the praise I got from my teacher. I loved having my friends read my papers and tell me what a great writer I was.

I was three semesters into college when I realized that what I had enjoyed about high school english class had nothing to do with a career in writing. In high school, I was one of the best writers in my class. Everything I wrote was comparatively awesome. In college, I was competing (in my head) against the best writers from all the other high schools in the area. I was no longer a standout. I no longer got the praise that I had enjoyed. My friends didn't care to read my papers anymore. What little I knew of the writing industry told me that professional writers will often receive even less praise. Editors are not frequently lavish with praise to writers for simply remembering to cite specific examples or for using proper thesis statements.

Another way to pick a career... after the jump.