The High Cost of Higher Education

There seems to be a growing trend to allow workers into career paths without college. In St. Louis, there is a program called Launchcode that offers anyone with self taught computer programming experience the chance to work in a paired programming environment that could ultimately result in a full time job. There are no education requirements, just a skill requirement.  This idea is beyond just St. Louis. I recently read an article about a recruiter that is trying to find those special unique individuals to join the top tier companies such as Facebook and Google so that they are not limiting their recruitment to the MIT or Stanford grads. They want diversity and that can be about where you did or did not go to school. A select few are able to get into those programs and even with scholarships, extremely expensive universities can be out of reach for many. While those colleges are outliers on the cost scale, even many top tier state universities will now leave a four year graduate with a mountain of debt. I know a java programmer that recently joined a company in St. Louis who attended a middle tier school that cost his parents $35,000 per year. Yes, he is now making around $60,000 but he is only coming out ahead because the college education was a gift from his family. Fewer families can now give that kind of gift.

The same thing is happening in the food industry with a return to the old school apprenticeship model in lieu of high priced culinary schools. It is called staging and allows a budding chef to work in different aspects of the kitchen for no money but also at no cost. In some top tier European kitchens, the opportunity to stage could even come with room and board so the only cost is transportation. This can provide a much less expensive learning opportunity.

This concept may never catch on in the medical field or law, occupations where credentials hold much more value and are an integral part of those career paths. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds as the cost of higher education has become so prohibitively high and colleges seem more interested in their athletic programs, buying land and expansion than they do on providing an education for all. We need to find lots of creative ways to solve this challenge. Education is still the key to our future but can’t it come at a more reasonable price.