Like healthcare, education has noble roots and is essential to our well-being, but has become big business with a profit motive. Parents should keep the following in mind as they plan for the educational needs of their children:
- Not everyone needs a college degree to be successful, but they do need a solid foundation in the 3 R’s and to know how to work hard. The concepts of algebra are especially important for most anything in the ever-growing information and technology sector of the economy.
- With the internet and the explosion of educational opportunities it offers, perhaps today more than ever students can obtain the skills they need to be successful in many emerging fields without a “formal” degree.
- Success is much more a function of learning to learn and learning to work hard than filling a bucket with a particular educational program.
- The unseen laws of economics are just as much in force as the law of gravity, and no one can guarantee your child a good job apart from real skills that are valuable to others any more than they can promise them a trip to the moon apart from obeying the laws that govern flight.
- If your child is college bound, consider the return on investment for each of your education dollars spent, and keep in mind that the goal is not just a degree, but real skills that are valuable whether economically or in some other way that is important to your family.