Unfinished

[CatsDomino]

I will say, as someone who has seen thousands of transcripts and hundreds of evals, I also think people just aren't prepared to go to college when they graduate HS - they don't know what they want to do.  They've spent zero time trying to figure it out.  It really should be a high school course - "What do you want to do when you graduate?" and it should show college and it's costs, how to choose a major, CC-to-4yr, trade school, everything.  Instead, we tell kids to go to college, but don't tell them how or why or help them figure it out.

When someone spends 2+ years (and I've seen closer to 8 or 10 years many times) doing GE courses, and then they go to a 4yr and spend 2+ years (and up to 4) taking courses and switching majors, sometimes multiple times, it's just not conducive to getting a degree of any kind.  You really need to figure it out sooner rather than later.

I told both of my kids, I'm not sending you to a 4yr school until you can tell me what your major will be, what kind of job that leads to, what you will be doing for that job, what that job pays, how much it will cost to get that 4yr degree, etc.  I'm not willing to stick my neck out financially, or let them stick out theirs, for a wishy-washy answer.  Nope.  You need to KNOW what you're doing before doing it!

This really is spot on.  After raising two kids of my own (and being the mom all the friends came to for advice), I can tell you that most don't have a clue what they want to do after high school.  Luckily for kids in my small county, our administrators realized that their efforts to push all the kids into the 4-year college track wasn't working and they invested in the community college track through a partnership with a local CC that helps them get college credit in high school as well as invested in the vocational programs at school.  Not all people require a BS or BA to be successful or happy in their chosen field, and many of my acquaintance make a very comfortable living in HVAC, plumbing, and getting their 2-year ADN (RN).  

Like defrecore, I helped my children explore the various careers that interested them and the various paths to get there.  My oldest graduated debt free from community college with and AE (associate in engineering), got a great paying job at the place he interned with, and they paid for 100% of the last 2 years of his BS in electrical engineering.  My youngest started off at community college, got his AS, and transferred to a state school.  He's in in his senior year for computer science and will graduate debt free thanks to scholarships, working part-time, and saving on housing and a meal plan by living at home.  He also explored online options (FHSU was one), but he got so much scholarship money from the state university by applying like it was his full-time job for anything he remotely qualified for.