Is College Still a Good Path to a Good Job?
Plus, here’s a top small town to visit, says Smithsonian Magazine
Ric Edelman: It's Thursday, June 13th, and I'm excited to tell you that Smithsonian Magazine just published its annual guide, The 15 Best Small Towns to Visit in 2024. And coming in at number seven, Glassboro, New Jersey, population 24,000. Glassboro is where Jean and I went to college, Glassboro State College, now Rowan University. And here's why Smithsonian Magazine said it's one of the 15 best small towns to visit.
They said Glassboro, NJ is welcoming the public to its long awaited Jean and Ric Edelman Fossil Park and Museum of Rowan University. As the museum gets ready to open its doors later this year, a whole new side of the South Jersey town is about to be unveiled. The 65-acre fossil park is the only site east of the Mississippi where you can actively dig for fossilized remains from the late Cretaceous period, which ended 66 million years ago, and its 44,000 square foot, echo friendly structure is everything that a world class museum should be.
The space is equipped with geothermal heating and cooling systems, making it the largest public net zero facility in the state, and features impressive exhibits like the Hall of Cretaceous Seas, home to dozens of marine recreations, including that of a mosasaur, a sea dwelling lizard that was unearthed on site by world renowned paleo sculptor Gary Staab and a hall of extinction and hope, which explores innovative ways to take action against climate change.
The museum itself is perched above an active dig site where visitors can search for fossils of shark teeth and marine crocodiles alongside Rowan University's top paleontologists. I'm pretty excited about this. So is Jean. Hope you are, too. The magazine also highlights Glassboro's Heritage Glass Museum and, of course, Rowan University and its Rowan Boulevard that Smithsonian calls the quintessential college town.
Yeah, we're excited about the soon to be opening Edelman Fossil Park and Museum at Rowan later this fall. We're looking around Q3 for the grand opening. It's gonna be a major tourist attraction. Not too many places in the world where you can go into an active paleontological research site, dig for fossils, and get this... whatever you find, you get to take home. We're pretty excited about it. I'll tell you more as we get closer to the grand opening.
But today's topic. Do you want a good paying job? Only 25% of adults now say that a college degree is extremely or very important to getting a good paying job. And 40% say it's not important at all. And if you have to get student loans to get that degree, only 22% say it's worth it.
And guess why so many people are so disgusted with the idea of going to college. In a study of people who graduated from college a year ago, more than half of those people, 52% of them, are underemployed, meaning they're working in jobs that don't require the degree they got. And looking at people who graduated 10 years ago, nearly half of them, 45%, still don't have a job that requires a degree. Even in hot fields like engineering, only 74% of engineering grads had a job in their field five years after they graduated. It's even worse for biology majors. Barely half of them have jobs that require that degree.
And that study looked at data over decades, and they found that this trend was persistent. A third of all college graduates throughout history end up in jobs that don't require their degrees. Would you make a bet on your life where you have a one third chance of failure?
No wonder so many people now say college simply isn't worth it. They say the investment of six years, that's how long it takes the average kid to graduate college these days, the investment of six years and the tens of thousands of dollars it costs just doesn't make economic sense. And it's getting increasingly harder to argue with this logic.
So if you're a financial advisor, you better have a serious conversation with your clients who have children of elementary, middle school, and high school age, who are thinking of the traditional route of going to college for a four-year degree. Is it really worth it? Is there an alternative path that can lead to happiness, satisfaction, economic and financial independence?
Don't assume that the traditional route of college is necessarily the route to financial success. And if you are one of those clients, if you are one of those parents, you need to be rethinking your strategy on behalf of your child, because the future could very well dictate an alternative strategic approach to life.
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Ric Edelman: On tomorrow's show, and in addition to the hot topic I'll be talking with you about, which I don't know yet what that'll be, you're going to hear my conversation with Jenny Johnson. She is the CEO of Franklin Templeton, one of the world's largest asset managers and one of the top executives in the financial services field. Jenny Johnson tomorrow here on the program. I'll see you then.
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Links from today’s show:
Become Certified in Blockchain and Digital Assets: https://dacfp.com/certification/
Jean and Ric Edelman Fossil Park and Museum: https://www.rowan.edu/fossils/
Rowan University: https://www.rowan.edu/
The 15 Best Small Towns to Visit in 2024: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-15-best-small-towns-to-visit-in-2024-180984472/
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