Not everyone should go to college

I’m going to be blunt. College is not the best choice for a lot of people coming right out of high school. I speak as someone who has seen too many students go to school for one year and then drop out. This can be due to lack of academic preparedness, lack of academic ability, lack of financial resources, or lack of maturity. I rarely see someone who has been in the workforce start school again and then drop out. I believe this is because they work out maturity and financial issues. So here are some rough guidelines for students who should not go to college right away:

1) If your high school gpa is not at least a 3.2, don’t go to college because college is a whole lot harder. Perhaps community college, but not a 4-year institution. (An exception would be if you went to an exceptionally good high school, then you can probably get away with attending a lower-academic college.)

2) If you have trouble making smart decisions, you are not ready for college. For example, if you have been arrested, that probably indicates you have trouble making smart decisions and you are not yet ready for college. You have a lot more opportunities to make dumb choices in college than you did while living with your parents in high school.

3) If you know you will have to work more than 20 hours per week to afford college, you shouldn’t go to college full time. It’s fine to go part time, but it is immensely difficult to manage your time effectively if you are working a lot of hours and taking a full class load. Let me put it this way—the rule of thumb is that you should spend two hours on school work outside of the class for every hour you spend inside the classroom in order to be successful in college. So, if you take a typical 15 credit full-time school load, you should spend 30 additional hours doing school work. That’s 45 hours. If you then spend just 20 hours working a job, you are up to 65 hours. Add another 49 hours for sleep, you are up to 114 hours. There are 168 hours in a week. That leaves 54 hours a week for everything else including eating, socializing, getting to and from places, grocery shopping…Most 18-year olds are not good enough at time management yet to pull this feat off. So what gets taken out? Studying. What then suffers? Grades.

What should you do if you fit in one of the three categories above? I would argue that you should work and maybe take a few classes at a community college first. This will help you develop maturity, study skills, and time management skills. Then you will be better prepared for college and get far more out of the experience.