If your kid has no idea what he or she (and there is obviously apparently only to us only he or she) wants to do, why are you going to shell out a fortune to lose your kid to the woke indoctrination factory at most of these liberal arts colleges/programs? It's literal insanity, and sometimes you never get your kid back. Instead, he or she can start working early, learn on the job some real skills, and get a head start. I know SO MANY success stories from this track.
Respectfully, if your goal is to set your child up for financial stability in life, I could not possibly agree with this less.
Of course there are successful people who didn't graduate college, but these people are the exception, rather than the rule. Statistically, for every 5 people who make it big without a degree, there are 95 who find themselves working too hard, for too little, with limited upward mobility. I've got all the respect in the world for the service industry, physical laborers, tradesman, etc. But as a parent, I don't want my child's body to break down at age 50 with no medical benefits or 401k to fall back on.
Any perceived short-term gain or head start from entering the workforce straight out of high school is going to get wiped out in less than five years by those with college degrees.
Specifically, recent college graduates (aged 22-27) make $52k per year, on average. Identically aged high-school graduates without a degree make $30k, on average. Long term, college graduates earn 84% more than those with only a high-school degree.
The current unemployment rate is three times higher for those without college degrees (6.9% vs. 2.1%).
And even if you consider many college programs to be "woke" fluff, 92.2% of college programs and 94.7% of college graduates produce median earnings/annual earnings higher than the median earnings for those whole only graduated high school. Empirically, per Federal Reserve data, almost any college degree is better than no college degree.
You can't expect to forego formal college and learn on-the-job skills for career tracts like medicine, or engineering, or corporate finance, or data science, or law, or transportation planning, or education. Is it possible? Sure, in isolate cases. Is it efficient and good for gross production to shift the onus of training and certifying high school graduates to those already bogged down in contributing to output? It just doesn't make sense.
Is the current college system perfect? Of course not. But you'll never be able to convince me that the hard skills learned in college (and the soft skills, for those of you who have hired someone who attended college virtually during the lockdown can attest to) are superfluous and don't contribute to success in the workforce. We shouldn't be discouraging college enrollment. We should be making college enrollment equitable and available to anyone who wants it.
And as someone who works with several colleges here in Florida, it is absolutely tragic how the Governor has poisoned the well and undermined the hard work of so many people looking to bring the best and brightest students and faculty to Florida. Disgusting, even. And it's horrifying that anyone could consider things like book bans, hostile campus takeovers, and the clamping down on diversity, inclusion, and free speech to be productive and in line with our supposed values as a state and as a nation.