I was watching this interesting documentary online recently that talked about how people in the US have massive amounts of student debt where they can’t find the means to pay it off. Or if they do pay it off by that time it would almost be like they are retired. While we can get into the topic on whether or not people are simply not spending wisely one of the interesting comments I heard was something along the lines of if the person knew they were going to have so much debt they would have just worked and invested that money into something to earn more instead of going to school.
In many ways that actually doesn’t sound like a crazy idea assuming your sole purpose for doing the job is money only. For example, if you could work straight out of high school till you are like say thirty at a very common job at maybe $30,000 per year minimum would that sound crazy? That is minimum $360,000 per year before tax and assuming you never get a raise or promotion. Would you ever opt to go that route instead of a school path?
The real example I still remember is how two people worked at a McDonald’s restaurant during and after high school. One person decided to not go to school and stayed with the company where eventually he worked his way up to be a store manager. The other person actually quit and went to school to study management. The funny thing was he was essentially training in things that the other guy learned just by continually working with the company where he called it free education as a result.
It doesn’t sound crazy in that case does it? I would say if your job is more than just money in the sense of you want to be a doctor because you want to innovate and find better ways to treat people then that definitely requires an education. But if it is a 100% just for money situation then just going to work right away may actually make sense for some.