Attending university is a popular option among school-leavers today. Among many of the homeschoolers I grew up with, college was the number one option. Perhaps this is because our parent’s generation didn’t always have the option of affordable lessons so they wanted to give that option to their children. Or perhaps it’s because they thought college would ultimately provide us with a valuable education to get a well-paid job. Either way, I’ve come to the conclusion that university is not a place I want my children attending. And for that reason, I’ve compiled a list of 10 reasons to not go to college:

ALPHA-PHONICS BLOG EDITOR NOTE:  We have edited the story, shortening each of the 10 points.  To be able to read all the text please click on the LINK at the end of the article.

1. You’ll waste many precious years that you could have used to get your finances in order

The first reason sending your kids to college is often a bad deal is because they’ll waste precious years that they could have spent setting up their finances.

While someone might say they can do that after graduation, they may not understand the power of compound interest. If you start earning money early and buy a house early, your compound interest builds. Essentially, when it gets to retirement, you’ve made so much money just because you started working and saving super early!

The Barefoot Investor explained it in his book. If you look at the chart in the Barefoot book, you can see that if you start early, you’re financial headstart is huge! For example, if you started putting $5,000 into savings from age 15 every year until you were 24-years-old and then discontinued putting in $5,000 thereafter, you would make $2.71 million by age 60. But, if your friend started putting in $5,000 from age 25 for the rest of his life, he would only make $1.61 million by age 60.

2. Entrepreneurial ventures are fun and kids have time to hone their business acumen

Another reason I’m keen to steer my children away from college is so they can become entrepreneurs instead. Entrepreneurship is something that requires plenty of time and effort and kids can have that at home – especially if they’re homeschooled.

Given children are natural entrepreneurs, if we allow our kids to follow their interests, they can easily find a niche they’re interested in, and a niche that’s dry and needs to be covered. This is exactly what Seamus, a homeschool entrepreneur I interviewed, recommended and did. (You can read his interview here).

Also, kids will never again have free (or very cheap) rent and a low cost of living like they do at home. This means that they can develop their business ideas and get hit with mistakes which they’ll have time to overcome.

Personally, I think it’s really sad that so many students are forced to live so far away from home just so they can get a degree. Taking the entrepreneurship path means you don’t have to do this. but can stay with parents so their cost of living isn’t as high as if they went to university.

3. They can use the time more wisely if they’re not at university as there’s lots of busywork

University courses have so much busywork. .

Why is it necessary to take French 101 or French 102 if you’re studying how to be a medical scientist? 

4. Tradesmen get paid more

Another disadvantage of college is that the jobs it qualifies you for often don’t pay as well as a tradesman’s job would. Many tradespeople are earning $50 an hour or more while college graduates – who’ve studied for many more years – earn less.

If a tradesman starts his apprenticeship at 15 (and many start around then) and begins saving early, you can see that he would be very far ahead.

So, if you aren’t keen on an entrepreneurial venture, I suggest you look into training to be a tradesman!

5. Most colleges have very liberal and progressive ideologies

Unless you have a worldview that you’re confident about and that you’ve got a good grounding in, that worldview can change easily if you attend university. For Christians, college is particularly difficult as it is so anti-Christian and so progressive. From what I’ve heard, Christian parents often feel frustrated as their children’s minds are slowly changed over 3-years of indoctrination in university.

6. College doesn’t make you think – it tells you what to think

If you compare the way college operates these days, it rarely makes students think critically. It seems to be a factory where they indoctrinate you in certain thoughts but don’t want you to challenge those ideas and weigh them up for yourself.   If you compare this way of learning to that which happened in Plato’s day or in old rabbinical schools, it’s a very anti-thinking and pro-fact-swallowing way of learning.

7. Many graduate with useless courses in which they can’t get jobs

Another reason to not go to college is that you may be left with a degree but no job at the end.

The colleges don’t seem to care that they’re doing this as they are interested in the money they’re getting from students more than the students themselves. My husband and I know this very well. We regularly shake our heads at how useless our undergraduate courses were.

8. You often have to do advanced study to make it worthwhile

Another reason to not go to college is that you might have to boost your qualifications and do another course after your undergraduate work. As mentioned above, undergraduate courses often no longer qualify you enough to get a job easily at the end, many undergraduates find themselves having to spend a minimum of two more years at university as they do a post-graduate degree. 

Of course, many graduates give up and (like I also saw frequently) go to work at Walmart as an overqualified shelf-stacker. Needless to say, they could have done this three years earlier and been financially better off.

9. Delayed family

Another reason to not go to college is that you’ll have to delay your family in order to do so. This was the case for my husband and me.

As a woman, the happiest day of my life was when my son was born. Since then I’ve realized what a joy it is to be a parent.

10. There are advantages to using your hands for physical work

One of the other cons of going to college is that, unless you do a very manually intensive course, you’ll forego using your hands a lot. This is especially sad for young men who benefit so much from being outdoors and working manually with their hands. In particular, the benefits of manual work include:

• stress reduction as you release more endorphins which make you more relaxed
• help with sleep as you’re more physically tired at the end of the day
• improved learning as you use different intelligences and
• help with obesity as you are physically fit from the hard manual work you’ve been doing.

Conclusion:

There are many disadvantages of going to college that I only saw once I exited the institution. I wished someone had outlined these reasons earlier and showed me how much better off I would have been had I never set foot in university. Today, there are so many different pathways you can take which promote critical thinking more and are less financially draining. Keep in mind that the institution is a business and it’s there to make a profit. Sadly, this profit is at the expense of many naive students who studying the wrong courses because that’s what everyone else does.

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