Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users seems to agree with me in this post.
We've all accepted that a college degree == $. (Ignoring Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, of course.) College means higher lifetime earnings, and there's plenty of research to back that up. On the other hand, we've also learned that there's scientific evidence that money doesn't mean happiness (assuming you're over the baseline level of poverty). So if there's almost no correlation between money and happiness, but college means more money... where's real happiness in all that?
Where indeed.
I'm no longer convinced that we should assume a traditional four-year college should be the automatic default for all high school grads, esepcially given the state of these institutions today. And I seriously wish people would stop looking at me with pity and concern, shaking their head when they realize Skyler ("but she always seemed so bright...") isn't going to a "real" college. Wake up and smell the 21st century...
So I'm a trend setter. And in good company with Gates and Jobs. Groovy.
My own feelings are biased here - I was on the track to go when I realized there wasn't anything I wanted out of a four year degree at OSU to rate spending my parents money. The thought of working at Orance Julius any longer than I had to (you want fries with that?) gave me a mental rash. So I 'lit out fer the Territories' and enlisted in the Marines. Twenty years on it seems to have worked out for the best.
