For many, college is a step toward adulthood, but going from bachelor’s degree to entrepreneur can be quite jarring. Everyone can tell you to keep your chin up, keep a stiff upper-lip and offer a bunch of other empty clichés but that really can’t prepare you for one really important truth: There isn’t a curriculum for adulthood. Knowing this, here are a few changes to expect when you take your first steps away from college and into starting you own business.
Swedish college students still graduate with a ton of debt.
Colleges and universities in Sweden are free. But students there still end up with a lot of debt. The average at the beginning of 2013 was roughly 124,000 Swedish krona ($19,000). Sure, the average US student was carrying about 30% more, at $24,800.
Congratulations class of 2013: you weren’t the class of 2010.
For most undergrads, college graduation is an occasion to celebrate, but in this economy we know it’s also a time of gnawing, career-oriented dread for plenty others. Even at Harvard, where Oprah is sharing some words of wisdom at commencement this week, just 61 percent of soon-to-be grads told the Crimson that they had an actual job lined up. One in ten said they had no set plans for the future.
We should want more college graduates. But we should also want fewer students at colleges with high drop-out rates.
During the Great Recession college enrollments went up. Since 2012, college enrollment has gone down. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, Spring 2013 enrollments fell 2.3 percent from last year. The drop-off has sped up since the Fall.
Kirk McDonald: Dear college graduates: The next month is going to be thrilling as you cross this major milestone in your education. Enjoy the pomp and circumstance, the congratulations, and the parties. But when it’s all over and you’re ready to go out into the world, you’d probably like to meet me, or others like me—I’m your next potential dream boss. I run a cool, rapidly growing company in the digital field, where the work is interesting and rewarding. But I’ve got to be honest about some unfortunate news: I’m probably not going to hire you.
The people who get rich are the thinkers who know how to code.
PayScale.com earned significant press attention last week for its list of the College ROI Rankings — an effort to figure out which schools provide the most lifetime earning potential.
The question of whether college is “worth it” continues to be hot.
Last week, the national unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent after a strong Non-Farm Payrolls report. But the unemployment rate differs greatly for people with different levels of education.
The majority of high-achieving kids from low-income backgrounds fail to apply to any selective colleges.
Middle-class American high-school seniors with good grades go through a familiar ritual of the college application process each year. The seniors file a bunch of applications. They submit test scores, grades, essays, and letters of recommendation. They apply to a “reach” school or two and a “safety” school or two along with some in the middle. The idea is to see where you can get in and then decide where you want to go after researching both the quality of the schools on offer and the actual financial cost of attending. This system is a bit stressful and annoying, but basically it works. Students get matched with schools that roughly suit their level of academic preparation and people have a chance to shop around a bit for the myriad forms of financial aid that make college attendance feasible.
Futurist Thomas Frey: Last week I went through the process of analyzing how much of what I learned in college that I’m still using today. This ends up being a difficult thing to assess.
College graduates who are unemployed and have had to move back in with their parents have become a stock figure of the past few years and is helping to cement the Millennials’ reputation as the “Boomerang Generation.” How many of these graduates are returning to live with mom and dad ((or their aunt or uncle)?
Coursera adds 29 universities and institutes to their online venture.
Providers of free online higher education are expanding the ranks of universities that contribute courses to their Web sites. They are also adding many schools from outside the United States.