Rating: 
Summary: A Parent's View of Higher Education
Review: Success Without College explodes many of the myths about college that abound in upscale suburban neighborhoods where parents expect all their children to go to the Ivy League and thrive. It helps you determine if your child is ready for college, or for a different kind of experience as early as age 15. More importantly, by improving the perspectives of parents, this book will change and reduce unrealistic pressures on youngsters that can make the teenage years difficult. In the process, parents can take satisfaction in helping launch their children onto a more productive path. Despite the fact that U.S. high schools seem to create poorly educated students, a higher percentage of people leave those high schools to attend college than in any other country in the world. College is expensive, and this is a great drain on families and students. Yet, most of those who go off to attend college will not graduate in 4 years. Many will never graduate, and will receive little of value to sustain them as people and economically. Frequent binge drinking seems to be the main experience that people get at college these days. A great strength of this book is that it is based in part on personal experience. The author's own son went to college for two years and did poorly. He then went out to work, and began learning how he needed to proceed with his life in the process. For many young people, college right after high school is too soon. You have to be both academically and emotionally mature. More people are the former than the latter. The book has a wonderful quiz that you can use to assess the emotional maturity of your youngster. I thought the quiz was good because it picked up on issues that two of my children had (who actually did complete college in 4 years), which I should have paid more attention to at the time. Perhaps each of them would have gotten more out of college if they had worked or done volunteer work for a year or two first. The book also addresses what to do with the child who is having trouble with high school. You will also find out about a variety of resources for dealing with emotional problems, learning disorders, and career planning. There are counselors who can help and programs that you can pursue. In many cases these cost money. In other cases (like the Army), they just take investigation. Given that more young people will not graduate from college than will, you would think that there would be more books about succeeding for those who do not go to college than those who do. It's just the opposite. Whether or not you think your children will and should go to college right away, I recommend you read this book. You may get some good ideas that may change your mind, and make your child's life much better! If you are like me, you have not done enough thinking about how to prepare your child for life, as well as education. This book is a superb resource to do just that. My main quibble about the book is that it relies on a few counterexamples to explain how well those without college educations can do. I would have liked to have seen a more systematic discussion about how those who go without college can always outperform the clueless liberal arts major. That would have given the book the necessary legitimacy to make parents feel terrific about exploring the noncollege options. After you have finished this book, I suggest that you discuss what you learned from it with another parent to help pass along the message. If your child is willing to read, you can have a much better discussion about what to do next if both of you read this book first. After you have had those discussions and taken appropriate actions, I also suggest that you consider where else you may have misconceptions about being a parent. What should your children be doing to prepare to be effective volunteers? What should they be doing to prepare to become lifelong learners after they leave school? What values will serve them the best? How can they learn to be good spouses and parents? You may be able to make improvements in these areas as well, based on your own thinking and research. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: A Parent's View of Higher Education
Review: Success Without College explodes many of the myths about college that abound in upscale suburban neighborhoods where parents expect all their children to go to the Ivy League and thrive. It helps you determine if your child is ready for college, or for a different kind of experience as early as age 15. More importantly, by improving the perspectives of parents, this book will change and reduce unrealistic pressures on youngsters that can make the teenage years difficult. In the process, parents can take satisfaction in helping launch their children onto a more productive path.
Despite the fact that U.S. high schools seem to create poorly educated students, a higher percentage of people leave those high schools to attend college than in any other country in the world. College is expensive, and this is a great drain on families and students. Yet, most of those who go off to attend college will not graduate in 4 years. Many will never graduate, and will receive little of value to sustain them as people and economically. Frequent binge drinking seems to be the main experience that people get at college these days. A great strength of this book is that it is based in part on personal experience. The author's own son went to college for two years and did poorly. He then went out to work, and began learning how he needed to proceed with his life in the process. For many young people, college right after high school is too soon. You have to be both academically and emotionally mature. More people are the former than the latter. The book has a wonderful quiz that you can use to assess the emotional maturity of your youngster. I thought the quiz was good because it picked up on issues that two of my children had (who actually did complete college in 4 years), which I should have paid more attention to at the time. Perhaps each of them would have gotten more out of college if they had worked or done volunteer work for a year or two first. The book also addresses what to do with the child who is having trouble with high school. You will also find out about a variety of resources for dealing with emotional problems, learning disorders, and career planning. There are counselors who can help and programs that you can pursue. In many cases these cost money. In other cases (like the Army), they just take investigation. Given that more young people will not graduate from college than will, you would think that there would be more books about succeeding for those who do not go to college than those who do. It's just the opposite. Whether or not you think your children will and should go to college right away, I recommend you read this book. You may get some good ideas that may change your mind, and make your child's life much better! If you are like me, you have not done enough thinking about how to prepare your child for life, as well as education. This book is a superb resource to do just that. My main quibble about the book is that it relies on a few counterexamples to explain how well those without college educations can do. I would have liked to have seen a more systematic discussion about how those who go without college can always outperform the clueless liberal arts major. That would have given the book the necessary legitimacy to make parents feel terrific about exploring the noncollege options. After you have finished this book, I suggest that you discuss what you learned from it with another parent to help pass along the message. If your child is willing to read, you can have a much better discussion about what to do next if both of you read this book first. After you have had those discussions and taken appropriate actions, I also suggest that you consider where else you may have misconceptions about being a parent. What should your children be doing to prepare to be effective volunteers? What should they be doing to prepare to become lifelong learners after they leave school? What values will serve them the best? How can they learn to be good spouses and parents? You may be able to make improvements in these areas as well, based on your own thinking and research. Good luck!
Rating: 
Summary: To the point
Review: This book has impressed me with the facts presented. I'm a vocational guidance counselor and I have a hard time recruiting students to take one of our technical/vocational programs. Parents are determined from the day a child is born that that child will graduate from college with a four year degree. As the author so well puts it, very few kids are actually suited for college. This book will help me put together a presentation to my students' parents to help them make a well informed decision about their child's education. I can't say enough about how much I have enjoyed this book and how it will help me in my work.
Rating:
Summary: Life is what you make it to be
Review: When speak of education, most people think of "formal" or "systematic" education such as college. Unfortunately, to understand the complexity of today's world and life itself, education is a life-long continuously learning process. But too often, most people just stop after they are done with their formal education. From thousands years ago to today, many of the greatest scientists and leaders are not neccessarily formally educated or educated from "top" colleges.
One thing the education system does not encourage you is that once you learned How to Learn and Observe, you can do just fine in life without a college degree (of course, it doesn't hurt to have one). Unfortunately, those who can motivate themselves to learn is always the exception rather than the rule. There are countless examples of extremely succcessful people who understood the fundamental truth about life and learning, who did not finish college and yet succeed. Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Shawn Fannings of Napster, COO and president of Yahoo! - Jeffery Albert Dimery Mallett, AOL/Time Warner's Co-COO Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of Kellogg, Carlos Gutierrez. Let's step aside from the corporate world for a moment. Joseph Atick, a pioneer in biometrics, is a high school dropout at the age of 15 who became bored with school and wrote a 600-page textbook on modern physics. Stanford took him directly into their graduate program in physics and he eventually earned a Ph.D. in mathematical physics. One thing all of these people have in common is that they are avid readers and never stop learning. They also realized that the only limit in this world of what you can do is your own mind. A college experience is good to have, but it doesn't have to be immediate. Readers who are interested this book might want to check out "Chomsky on Miseducation", "Illusions: The Adventure of a Reluctant Messiah" and "Rich Kid, Smart Kid".
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