the Cost of College Tuition

The service is one semester of 12 or more credit hours of university classes. The service also includes access to recreational facilities, reduced cost health care on campus. Reduced rates are available if fewer than 12 credit hours are taken in the semester. Room and board and classroom supplies such as textbooks are available at extra cost.

Some days were good, some were bad. I spent most of my time gradually improving my ability to go to school. But by a retarded twist of bureaucracy, when it came time to graduate I was one three-credit-hour class short of my graduation requirements. The stupid thing was that I'd already taken -- and passed -- the class. With no intention of repeating the class solely for their amusement and profit, I said to hell with it and went into business for myself. My customers certainly don't care whether my math degree is formally complete or not, they only care about the quality of the work I do for them. And in the last year I have to say I've learned more about my field than I did in four years sitting in classrooms.

It's difficult to pin down the value of a section of a college education. One semester is a bit of a crap shoot when it comes to the quality of the teaching. A teacher you thought was excellent in one class may turn out to be a complete dud in another because it's just far enough outside her specialty that she ends up struggling with the material as well. As a whole, it's what you make of it. But don't go because you think you have to or simply because you want to, figure out if you need to do it to get where you want to be. If you don't, skip it. It's four years you could spend having a life, a four year head start you could have on the world, if you didn't go to college.

If you do decide to go, the world, and not to mention you, would probably be better off, however, if you didn't indulge your desire to major in pottery or art history or philosophy or phys ed or music or theater. Although they seem like fun, you won't learn much more than you could doing it as a hobby in your spare time. Minor in fluff, if you must, don't major in it. Seek a professional degree. Architecture, engineering, nursing, accounting, actuarial science, advertising, industrial design, and the like. Second best are the general hard sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics. Skip astronomy, psychology, or sociology. Economics may the only fluff subject worth studying. If you know you love the prestige that goes with 120 hour work weeks and another 3-8 years of school after graduation, go pre-law or pre-med.

Avoid an education degree at all cost. You're merely accepting a substandard education in your field of choice in exchange for a certificate that allows you to direct classes full of unruly children. Although it is so secure a position you'd have to molest your charges to loose it. That certificate, I might add, is one anyone with a regular degree can acquire in two months work over a summer.

As for selecting a school, unless they have a particular reputation for being exceptional the field you want to study, they're all much the same, and not much different from high school. Though you never have to ask permission to go to the bathroom.

Whenever possible, assist your professors with research projects along with your fellow students. And don't forget to enjoy the extra curricular activities, both school-related and purely social (party!), you'll make friends and future business contacts and gain personal and professional references, and you'll never know how important that can be until you find you don't have them.