The College Alternative

Excerpted from
Real World Careers: Why College Is Not the Only Path to Becoming Rich
By Betsy Cummings

This year more than sixteen million people will be enrolled in American colleges. Some will go because they want to. Others will be compelled by their parents. Far more will enter one of the country's four-thousand-plus institutions of higher education simply because they have no better plan. In fact, the number of students heading off to college increases each year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics; it rose by 15 percent between 1992 and 2002.

And what will they get for their four years of academic dedication? A few will launch promising careers. Many more will come out as clueless as they went in-uncertain of what inspires them or where their professional talents lie. They'll trundle off to countless interviews for low-level entry positions that may or may not promise a gateway to higher earnings and more responsibility. Others will take their crisp new hundred-thousand-dollar diplomas and land the jobs so often filled by thousands of graduates each year, working in stores or restaurants, for example, while they figure out what it is they really want to do with their bachelor's degrees.

But that's for those who even make it through. More than a quarter will drop out after year one. More than half won't graduate after five years. Many will be like Tim Jordan, an ambitious, hardworking individual motivated by money and success, but not by the structured, lecture-based setup of a classroom, trapped in an educational setting that's not appropriate for him. Jordan, who started at the University of Hartford ("not Harvard," he jokes) in Connecticut, called it quits on higher education two years later after transferring to a community college near home, then later the University of Maryland. "I took a class here and there but never followed through," Jordan says. "I was just having a good time" He is now a millionaire (see chapter 1), but not because of a college degree.

Like many who left the classrooms of higher education, Jordan is driven more by practical experience. College for him was a demoralizing exercise that only slowed him down. Too many people like Jordan waste years wandering aimlessly through esteemed university corridors, never focusing on a specific career or course of study. "By the time I left, I should have graduated twice," he says, "but I didn't."

Who should go to college? Probably only those whose legal, medical and educational careers demand that they do. Or those who simply love to learn in an academic setting. "We genuflect before higher education as being this nonprofit opportunity to grow the mind and become a connoisseur of learning and all this high-minded stuff," says Marty Nemko, a career consultant and co-author of Cool Careers for Dummies. "In reality that is simply not the case. When you pull the curtain away from the PR rhetoric colleges put out nonstop and look at what kids learn... the amount of critical-thinking skills is paltry [next] to the amount of money and time" spent on a four-year program.

Finding the Right Payoff

Nemko's right. Part of the problem is society and the ridiculously high expectations it holds aloft for college grads. But why is college so highly valued when the statistics reveal that only a quarter of Americans even have college degrees? "in a country' where we could provide college to every student, that's an opportunity we shouldn't squander," argues Debra Humphreys, vice president for communications and public affairs at the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington.

If you look at salary surveys, Humphreys's point bears out. In 2003, average college graduates earned 62 percent more than their peers with just a high school degree-a huge jump from 1972, when college graduates made 22 percent more than those with a high school diploma alone. Indeed, reports about everything from obesity to socioeconomic status continually weigh out in favor of those with bachelor's degrees.

But dozens of college dropouts interviewed for this book as well as those who sidestepped college entirely will argue otherwise. And they have the careers to prove it. Very few regret their decision to walk away from four-year programs. And all will tell you that getting a jump start on their career was extremely motivating.

If you're just finishing high school, have some work experience but no college degree, or simply never wanted to attend a university but are interested in making money, you may not be aware of just how lucrative a career can be for people who don't have a four-year diploma.

Consider Greg Brooks, a self-described victim of attention deficit disorder ("I had ADD before it was cool," he jokes). Brooks propelled his way through an ambitious journalism career after dropping out of college shortly after starting. Instead of burying his nose in his studies. Brooks pursued the communications field relentlessly, moving through a multitude of journalism jobs before finally landing in public relations. "I was an absolutely unrepentant job-hopper," he says. Today he owns his own public relations and marketing company, called West Third Group, located in Plattsburg, Missouri, and pulls in a comfortable quarter million dollars or more in business a year.

Or look at Ed Richards, who may not have a college degree but has seen and experienced plenty-even on college campuses. One of his first reporting assignments for a local radio station was to cover a burning building on the campus at Kent State University in Ohio. Initially the event seemed likely to fizzle, and Richards and other reporters quickly assumed the worst was over "Some reporters said, this could go on all day, let's get lunch," Richards recalls. Turns out that small burning building was actually part of the Kent State riots, a protest poorly managed by the National Guard, which fired into the crowd of protestors, injuring thirteen and killing four. Just as the reporters headed off to lunch, the event's most horrific moments unfolded. "That was my first outside reporting job. I really didn't understand what the hell was going on," Richards says. "I just started running around and talking to people asking, 'What did you see? What happened?' I got a lot of great sound that day." Richards received his reporting baptism by fire from that day and built a radio career that spanned more than two decades.

Still not convinced? Listen to Terri Nopp, who says, "I have not found the lack of a degree limiting in any way." Her sentiments are shared by many in her position. Nopp came from a family of educators but realized after some time in college that higher education just wasn't for her. It didn't stop her from aspiring to and obtaining a highly lucrative career, however: Today she runs her own public relations firm billing more than half a million dollars a year to clients.

All these stories attest to one unequivocal career truth: A college degree is not necessary for success. Companies that remain enamored with the bachelor's degree are still out there, unfortunately, refusing to consider the (sometimes superior) talents of those without a four-year degree. "I look at the way we do things and it annoys me because I think we cut ourselves oil from so many good people who didn't go to the right school or have the right internship," says one financial executive, who has attained astounding success in banking without a college degree. And while her company refuses to interview interns or other job applicants who aren't in the "correct" school, much less those without a bachelor's degree, this successful non-college-grad realizes the valuable workers the firm may be missing out on due to its policy. "I think it does an injustice" to her company and others with similar requirements for employment, she says.