A way to be smart about the education, aside from taking the first 2 years at a junior/community college, is by not choosing the school just because of the name (Harvard, Pepperdine, etc). It's those schools that will leave you with a $100K+ debt for an education you could have gotten for a fraction of the price, yet still as respected.
you couldn't be farther off on this. if you really believe this, you are stuck in your little area of cali. yes, it's true, that if you want to work in a small town and study psychology, a degree from a local school will suit you just fine. if someone took their cal state degree and tried to apply for a job in big business (ie executive level work at a fortune 500 company) you would be laughed out of the office. (unless you have 20+ years work experience.
it's a common fact that if you want to be a teacher or some liberal arts hippie garbage, it is a waste to go to Harvard, NYU, Princeton, etc, because the pay for those jobs sucks balls and the difference in pay between having gone to an ivy league school and a local state college is moot.
you need to look at the big picture. if you want to make real money. i mean REAL money. not $60k, not $80, I mean $200k+ you need to go to somewhere bigger. you need the paper, you need the connections and networking, you need to work in an area that pays that stuff.
Oooo... don't get me started.
I'm a Human Development major with a Sociology (focus on social deviance) minor. My father is a psychologist, & my mother is a senior social worker.
How would you know how to raise your child if people didn't study the development of cognition, social bonds, the affects of day care vs. in-home care, stranger anxiety, etc?
How could we understand/prevent prejudices, mental illness, behavioral issues, or why people take guns to school and shoot their classmates?
How else could we understand that there are things that are culture specific and be tolerate of them? (Asian cultures believe in the usage of "coining" - putting hot coins on the body as a healing method.... we have to know about the intention so we, as Americans, don't see it as child abuse/negligence)..
I can go on and on...
i know all of that shit and i didn't study it.
kids take guns to school because they are pussies. their parents didn't hug them enough and they needed attention. cut and dry.
like what was posted above, all of that other stuff is a hobby. raising a kid really isn't that hard. if i was put on an island when i was born, then i had a kid when i was 20, i would do a dandy fine job raising a kid. it's take 2 shots of common sense and 1 shot of affection and you have the recipe for a "good parent martini".
people tend to overanalyze it wayyyyy too fucking much. hug your kid, tell it "i love you", send it outside to play once in a while, and bust his ass when he screws up. everybody wants an excuse for shit. hence add and adhd. your kid isn't special, he's bored as fuck or wants attention.
I like you. It is nice to see someone educated on here. I get angry at people (specifically men) who are tunnel-visioned and refer to women as 'females'. I think you and I have bigger balls than some men and anatomically speaking that is impossible.
you fail. if you have read posts on this forum, there are actually quite a few intelligent and educated people here.
the bottom line is this. if you want to get a degree, it's going to do a lot more than just give you the paper. employers look at it as an ability to commit and work for 4 years. study, and actually stay with something. not just the education. but with that said, you need to learn the fundamentals of what you are going to do for work, where better to do that than school?
if you don't learn a skill, gain networking and connections, and just fuck off all the time, then yeah, you don't need the school.
as far as people doing well without a degree, yes, it's possible. but 99% of the time it will be capped and if you had the degree, it would be 1 extra chip in the pot.