How many of you readers out there wanted to be a policeman or a fireman, perhaps a doctor or a veterinarian or a soldier when you grew up. Still, there were others that wanted to be a basketball star or a professional baseball player when they grew up. When I was in elementary school I had some extremely ambitious fellow classmates. There was one who wanted to be an accountant, stock broker and an architect, while a girl who wanted to be a professional basketball player, soccer player, and a cop. I don\'t know what either one of them have become since I haven\'t spoken with either one in over fifteen years, but the mystery of what they do now looms in my own mind as to whether they went to college for something they dreamed about doing since a child, or whether they decided to pursue something different, something that wormed its way into their minds and hearts during their youth.
It is still not unheard of around the globe for parents and grandparents, friends and relatives of all ages to tell the younger generation, \"Make sure you keep your grades up, behave in school, do extra-curricular activities, and keep out of trouble, hang out with the right friends, yada yada yada.\" This used to be the norm to make certain that the children of every generation after theirs did well enough to get into a good school, a college, or whatever else you want to call it. Ivy League was the top with a partial or full scholarship at hand was even better. During the 18th and 19th centuries, wealthy families usually who had high political ties were generally able to buy their son a role in a top-notch university doing something that would uphold the sacred family tradition, whether it was medicine, politics or business-related. Many times, these children who would attend these fine institutions, like Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge and Princeton eventually sought after it as a \"mere way of life,\" an \"entitlement\" to their hard disciplines of their childhood.
Middle class families of these centuries were a little more wise, but like their higher echelon, still were quite unaware that college was only going abide the \"student\" as much as he wished to learn himself. The lowest classes, college was unheard of and usually working as a laborer or receiving an apprenticeship was like getting a scholarship compared to the highest of society\'s class.
In the early 20th century the same manner of thinking applied to parents, passed down from their parents and so on all over the world to grow up and become a successful individual who can make an outstanding income, have a family and settle down by the age of 25. Wow, 25 years old. This was sought as being nearly old. If you wanted to be a medical doctor, an attorney, a business professional, accountant, politician, President of the United States, astronaut, or almost every other career found under the sun, then it was advised to attend a fine institution of higher learning, or\"¦ face being a nobody. There are thousands of families from the eras when attending colleges was \"the thing to do\" that did not follow through, and then the children were shunned indefinitely. It was during these periods as well that if a child from a high echelon-class family did not carry through with the father\'s footsteps such as being a physician or a politician, then the local society would shun the family, and the family would likewise shun the child who in their eyes, embarrassed them. Usually, if there was another sibling, then the parents would focus all their energy on that child and throw the other one aside as a seemingly \"absurd, imprudent, and ungrateful\" human being.
Once World War One loomed, all hopes of following in father\'s footsteps or carrying on the local family name for business was gone. This was the time when, (like in the American Civil War), children from military families could prove their worth through attending a military school and carrying on the family legend of being high class and respected individuals who retained the class of \"officer\" while those who were \"enlisted\" were looked at as being subordinates not just in the armed services, but also in life. If you didn\'t attend an Ivy League institution, then you were thought of as a peasant. Post WWI was when the educational system began to show a change. Even though lower class families still sent their young off to work in the shipyards, steel mills, and other heavy toiling fields, the higher-classed and spoiled wealthy class was beginning to slip from attending college and going abroad. They used this \"class\" of their families to go sightseeing and explore, having grand adventures across the world.
Once WWII came and went and the Korean War arrived, this gave way to an unknown, but widely used method that is still highly in place today, (just a little more carefully monitored). The system of people pretending to be something they\'re not. During one of the episodes of the legendary television series M*A*S*H, an enlisted man, who later is discovered to be a sergeant by Capt. \"Hawkeye\" Pierce, fakes being a surgeon, an attorney, and later a chaplain. He has all the skills to successfully administer his years of personal research and expertise under the radar of being discovered, but never once, setting a foot inside an educational establishment.
From the 1960s through the 1990s it wasn\'t entirely unheard of to occasionally hear of a news story where a gentleman was a practicing medical doctor for 40 years who had absolutely no medical degree or training whatsoever, he just studied his books on the weekends. There\'s even the case a few years ago of the USMC chaplain major who had no ecclesiastical background from any religious governing body, but through the Marines performed marriage ceremonies, funerals, Baptisms and all the other religious duties authorized by a military chaplain, but he had no professional recognition at all.
What has officially occurred within our society today is there are three types of people. The first kind, (the children who grow up wealthy, they have everything they could possibly want and just go to college because they believe it\'s an entitlement thing. This for them is a time to party, let go of the family homestead where no parent or other higher adult is watching over them and every little thing they tend to. A place to goof off for a while, a place to find themselves, and all at the expense their parents money). The second kind, (the children go to college just because they think it will help them get a better job when they graduate. These types of people have followed the ways of what their friends, their parents, and even their grandparents may have done. Just go to college and do something, graduate, get a job and eventually have a mid-life crisis at the age of 45, and then go onto another job that they love doing but never needed a college degree for in the first place). The third kind of person, (the ones who can forgo college and still get exactly what they want. Not right off the bat usually, but generally through some careful manipulation of their field and where they choose to work. They know that what they have is a \"true\" gift, one that cannot and does not need to be tricked and altered by a college institution, but instead, must be molded by their own mind and work).
Once the new millennium rolled in, so did the effect of the \"new\' teenager, still today believing that they must go to college to make something of themselves. I remember working for someone once whose son went to Penn State University to study Landscape Architecture. He goofed around for five years on his wealthy aunt\'s money who paid for his college degree free and clear because she was a wealthy New York attorney and Penn State alumni. He finally was forced out of college by his parents. After leaving college, he had a Bachelor of Arts in Science and then went on to do graphic arts. Over $100,000 later and with a degree in something he can\'t even use, he ended up in something else. The question is why did he go to Penn State? His youngest brother attended. His aunt attended too. But both of his parents went elsewhere. It is once again, carrying on the silly tradition of going somewhere to receive an education that you, yourself may not even want. To further extend my point, my brother had a high school friend who has three Bachelor Degrees, two Master\'s and two PhDs, and positively hates his job as a professor at Harvard University. His entitlement phase and desire to use everybody for his own personal growth took him to some of the farthest reaches he could imagine, and all for what? To be miserable.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor from 2003 to 2005 of the 13,450,090 graduating classes of college students, only one-third of those graduates will end of getting into a field that is even remotely-related to what they studied in college. The remaining percentage will end up in jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with what they originally studied. Of that percentage, half will go back to college believing they require more training to get the job they really want, thus forking out an additional $120,000 more on average for a Master\'s degree or higher. In several issues of Forbes over the past seven years, there have been clippings and other articles, (also in other related magazines) referencing that more and more high school graduates are able to obtain the same job or very close to it without college, but instead, with just a little more elbow grease and a little bit more of dedication.
The days of attending college to become a geologist or a firefighter are just about over. It is right for anybody wishing to become a medical doctor, an attorney, an engineer to get a higher education. Mostly however, within the past ten years more and more individuals are finding that they can achieve the same career they want with little to no schooling at all. For instance, those who want to be a screenwriter may think they should go to film school, but instead have come to learn that this career is mainly about networking. \"Networking\" is the key these days. It\'s who you know, not necessarily what you know. Anybody can get a college degree these days, but employers are now looking at where you\'ve worked instead of where you went to college. They\'re looking at who you know and not how much money your grandfather donated to the university you attended. With the constant growth of jobs and companies expanding, not to mention families, the need for adults to go back and get more education in order to keep up with the ever-growing market has allowed most universities to offer internet degrees as well.
So, is the possibility of kids going to college more of a birth-right and an entitlement phase, rather than an actual desire to go for something that can easily be learned in the field of apprenticing, (something that was born into this world and still has a high-standing in hands-on education over many college-level degrees). Such fields that really do not require a college degree and can be learned on the job are, but in any case, certainly not limited to: (park ranger, forester, police officer, librarian, accountant, musician, artist, computer programmer, film maker, chef). Most of the time college students can finish their Bachelor\'s, Master\'s and Doctorate, each in about two to three years, some can finish in as little as 6 months even! However, colleges, governed under certain US boards and councils regulate that schools must teach certain things in order to maintain that the \"student is getting what they pay for\" and that the \"college is getting their money.\" In other words, if you go to college to become a minister, it is required that you be taught water polo in order to graduate. What a farse! The days of the 18th century where a student goes for a maximum of two years to study their particular field are long gone. Colleges know that they are on the outs with some apprenticeship systems, but, high school graduates and their families are now weighing the cost of attending college based on the rise of costs from constant inflation.
Is attending college right for you? If you wish to become one of the following careers, then yes; (medical doctor, veterinarian, attorney, minister, teacher, and engineer). Everything else, you can learn through; (apprenticeships, small-class schooling, networking, and using a smaller job as a stepping stone to get to another one). Even today, to become President of the United States, one doesn\'t really need to have a college degree, (granted it might buy you a few votes from the elders throughout the Midwest thinking you\'re a good boy who wanted something better for himself), but today, in order to be President, really it\'s about money. President George W. Bush Jr. became our President for two terms. We\'re talking about a man who once was arrested on using marijuana and going AWOL in the Texas Air National Guard. President Obama really hasn\'t done squat in his four years, but he is worth just over $360million. Today, in order to become President, it\'s advised that you first take up a local office, then become an entrepreneur, and then go for the big time. Look at those twenty-something year olds who make a fortune on start-up companies, and retire by the time they\'re 30 years old. Not one single of those individuals has a college degree. Bill Gates doesn\'t have a college degree and he\'s worth over $5billion. Albert Einstein dropped out of school in 5th grade and went on to become the world\'s greatest physicist.
After all, no one ever said \"life was set in stone.\"
As the old saying goes, \"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.\"
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