Education is more than just Degrees

Even if you were to fall into extreme financial hardship and file for bankruptcy, you need to understand that your student loan debt will not be discharged through bankruptcy. It is the Velcro of all debts, Suze Orman

Education is necessary for many stable, highly skilled, and well-paid jobs and to avoid dead end jobs, emotionally abusive relationships, or certain health issues. People with a good education are more likely to live more enjoyable, healthier, and longer lives.

However, education is not a college diploma, but a process. It is a life-long commitment to learning, success, and personal growth. It is the willingness to grow beyond our comfort zones, and foster creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking. It is a passion for problem-solving and continuos knowledge enhancement.

Unfortunately, many so called experts often claim that a college degree vastly increases lifetime earnings and job prospects. This is a big, fat, ugly lie, period. There are many useless college degrees (e.g., Anthropology and Archeology, Art History, Library Science, Creative Writing, Psychology, Philosophy, Exercise Science, Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality, Performance, Visual or Culinary arts, Entrepreneurship) that are pushed on students with high price tags and no market or little value in terms of employability and job satisfaction.

Please, be very careful about accumulating too much debt while you are studying!

Student debt is a form of debt that is owed by an attending, withdrawn or graduated student to a lending institution. The federal loan balance is $1.617 trillion. The average public university student borrows $32,880 to obtain a bachelor’s degree. Students at private, non-profit institutions borrow $35,983.

“Heavy debt can be crushing for many students. Young people who graduate with debt have lower net worth, are less likely to own a home, and less likely to have any savings. […] Debt levels are linked to lower graduation levels and reduce the likelihood of continuing to study beyond a bachelor’s degree. […] In addition, the psychological impact of accumulating massive debt while studying is difficult to assess but must be a significant factor for most debt-burdened students,” The Peak Magazine. 54% of student loan borrowers say their mental health issues like anxiety and depression are directly related to their debt, cnbc.com.

Nowadays, you can obtain new skills, competences, and knowledge on-line for free. Let me offer some suggestions:

• Codecamy, learn to code interactively, for free. W3Schools is an educational website for learning web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, etc.
• Investopedia is an Internet site devoted to investing and finance education.
• Khan Academy is a non-profit organisation with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. “Students can make use of our extensive library of content, including interactive challenges, assessments, and videos. It covers maths, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even finance and history.”
• Get inspired with Ted, ideas worth spreading! This is a non-profit organisation devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks.
• iTunes U is a part of Apple’s iTunes Store offering free educational content.
• Academic Earth offers free access to video courses and academic lectures from the world’s leading colleges and universities.
• CosmoLearning is a free educational website for students and teachers. It is an aggregator of free, online video lessons and documentaries.
• Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online.
• MITOpenCourseWare is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content.