Did Oden shows us staying in school is foolish?

[Silk Smoov]

I found this article rather interesting. It makes a hard sell for players to continue to come out early for the NBA.


Oden shows us why staying in school is foolish

By Sean Deveney - SportingNews

When Greg Oden was standing before a packed room of teenagers in Times Square for the taping of MTV's Total Request Live in late June, he was asked if he had any regrets about leaving Ohio State after just one season. Oden said he loved college and seriously considered going back. That is, until he looked at his bank balance. "Money is not the most important thing," Oden said. "But it helps."

There's a lesson in the current ordeal Oden faces, rehabbing from microfracture surgery on his right knee. It's not a lesson hoops purists want widely learned. But it's there nonetheless -- if you're a top-flight basketball player with a sure shot at being a first-round pick, you had better get yourself an agent and dive on into the draft as soon as NBA rules allow. You're always just a knee injury away from damaging or even ending your career before it gets started.

Oden got himself drafted before this disaster struck. That was fortunate, because he secured a guaranteed contract that will pay him around $10 million. To pass on that and return to college would not only be unwise, it would be irresponsible. Oden does not come from a particularly wealthy family. Opportunities to be given an eight-figure check don't come around very often.

More on Oden
Oden has surgery
A cloudy prognosis
It's a setback, not the end
Oden's blog
Trail Blazers home
Trail Blazers blogs

Think about it. If Oden had, indeed, gone back to school, it's possible that he would have suffered the same knee injury. Worse, it might have gone undetected longer and caused more damage. He'd have to sit out a year, do his rehab at Ohio State then try to come back in late 2008 or early 2009. He'd be under immense pressure, dealing with an injury that most players don't feel comfortable with until two years after surgery.

What if he doesn't heal well? What if his recovery from surgery is more Penny Hardaway than Amare Stoudemire? Where would that leave Oden and his family, had he not already been drafted?

Around the country, the three fellas from Florida -- Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer and Al Horford -- who returned to school last year to defend the championship they'd helped the Gators win the previous year were roundly praised. They bypassed NBA riches for more work on their games and another year of fun in the leafy grove of campus, despite the fact that each of the three would have been first-rounders in 2006.

One writer called the decision, "all at once, wise, popular and a certified no-brainer." I, however, would call it foolish. Because knee injuries happen. Ask Oden.

In fact, the Oden injury can be extrapolated beyond players' decisions to leap into the NBA draft or return to college. It shows the inherent unfairness of commissioner David Stern's decision to prohibit players from entering the draft until at least a year after high school ends. That takes away a year of players' earning power. In a sport in which a career can be destroyed by one faulty cut, one awkward twist, it's simply not fair to prevent a willing team from selecting a willing employee. There's too much at stake for the employee.

There's nothing at stake, of course, for the league. Why should the NBA care about injured players who are not in the league yet? It doesn't. But in not caring, it leaves potential players at risk for injuries.

It's probable that point guard O.J. Mayo would have been a top-10 pick if he was in the draft this year. He would be guaranteed a contract around $4.5 million, even if he blew out his knee today. If Mayo did, in fact, blow out his knee today, he would stand to get nothing.

No question, there are benefits to going to college, to maturing socially, developing as a player and getting an education. And money is not everything. But the ability to get a guaranteed NBA contract, to start your life on very, very sound financial footing, is a rare gift. These guys have won a genetic lottery, and they darn well better cash in the ticket. More than that, they should be allowed to cash it in, as long as they are legally adults.

Because, as we've just seen, knee injuries do happen.

Link

[Jack.Kerr]

From the players' perspective, they should skip high school if at all possible.

[Usually Lurkin]

high school?


why stop there? How many could start going to a full time paid training camp at 12 yrs old?
They could always get a GED later. Insurance could cover injuries.

[Usually Lurkin]

and as long as we are looking at things from a "selfish motive" perspective: this is crap for NBA fans.If Mayo does blow out a knee, should I, as an NBA fan think, well, at least he's not ruining an NBA team.

[Flacolaco]

Education > everything else.

If you ask me, they should have to FINISH school.

Skipping would only be good for him monetarily. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him? He'll play to some extent and he'll never work a day in his life like the rest of us joes.

This sort of scenario is in the extreme minority anyways.

[Silk Smoov]

Originally Posted by Flacolaco

Education > everything else.

If you ask me, they should have to FINISH school.

Skipping would only be good for him monetarily. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him? He'll play to some extent and he'll never work a day in his life like the rest of us joes.

This sort of scenario is in the extreme minority anyways.

I agree, but the article has some points. Lets say that a player is not the college type and could never do the college load, then what kind of decision does that gifted athlete make? I think it has its valid points, but I agree it is a minority.

Heres another flip on that as well. Only the minority are the ones to be able to make it to the next level, so essentially the ones making that type of decision is in the minority.

[Dtownsfinest]

You can always go back to school. The NBA isn't always there for you.

[dirt_dobber]

Charles Barkley was once asked about his lack of a degree, his comment.....

"I have five people with degrees working for me"

[alby]

Originally Posted by Dtownsfinest

You can always go back to school. The NBA isn't always there for you.

true.

[alby]

Originally Posted by dirt_dobber

Charles Barkley was once asked about his lack of a degree, his comment.....

"I have five people with degrees working for me"

what a wise man

[untitled]

Originally Posted by Dtownsfinest

You can always go back to school. The NBA isn't always there for you.

Agreed. Oden can go finish college and attend dental school in 15 years if he really wants to, and he won't have to take out loans to do so since he'll be rich as hell by then. If you had the opportunity to sign a multi-million dollar contract to do what you love RIGHT NOW, why the hell would you wait to get a degree if said degree is useless for the job you love? Besides, college grads are a dime a dozen these days - bachelor degrees don't exactly provide the opportunities that they used to.

[Jack.Kerr]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

high school?


why stop there? How many could start going to a full time paid training camp at 12 yrs old?
They could always get a GED later. Insurance could cover injuries.

Here's an analogy:

September 16, 2007
Age of Riches
Bye, Bye B-School
By LOUISE STORY

MOST people who knew Gabriel Hammond at Johns Hopkins in the late 1990s could have predicted he would rise quickly on Wall Street. As a freshman, he traded stocks from his dorm room, making a $1,000 bet on Caterpillar. Soon after, he abandoned his childhood dream of becoming a lawyer and, upon graduation, joined Goldman Sachs as a stock analyst.

Three years into his new job, Mr. Hammond noticed something. Very few of his young co-workers were taking a hiatus from Wall Street to go to business school, long considered an essential rung on the way to the top of the corporate ladder.

So he, too, decided to forgo an M.B.A.. Instead, he raised $5 million and started his own hedge fund, Alerian Capital Management, in 2004. The fund now manages $300 million out of offices in New York and Dallas, and Mr. Hammond, 28, enjoys seven-figure payouts.

Like other young people on the fast track, Mr. Hammond has run the numbers and figures that an M.B.A. is a waste of money and time — time that could be spent making money. “There’s no way that I would consider it,” he says.

As more Americans have become abundantly wealthy, young people are recalculating old assumptions about success. The flood of money into private equity and hedge funds over the last decade has made billionaires out of people like Kenneth Griffin, 38, chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group, and Eddie Lampert, 45, the hedge fund king who bought Sears and Kmart. These men are icons for the fast buck set — particularly the mathematically gifted cohort of rising stars known as “quants.” Many college graduates who are bright enough to be top computer scientists or medical researchers are becoming traders instead, and they measure their status in dollars instead of titles.

Many of the brightest don’t covet a corner office at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Instead, they’re happy to work at a little-known hedge fund run out of a two-room office in Greenwich, Conn., as long as they get a fat payday. The competition from alternative investment firms — private equity and hedge funds in particular — is driving up salaries of entry-level analysts at much larger banks. And top performers at the banks make so much money today that they don’t want to take two years off for business school, even if it’s a prestigious institution like the Wharton School or Harvard.

The new ranks of traders and high-octane number crunchers on Wall Street are also a breed apart from celebrated long-term investors like Warren E. Buffett and investment banking gurus like Felix G. Rohatyn. What sets the new crowd apart is the need for speed and a thirst for instant riches.

“With the growth of hedge funds, you’re getting a lot of really smart people who are getting paid a lot very young,” says Arjuna Rajasingham, 29, an analyst and a trader at a hedge fund in London. “I know it’s a bit of a short-term view, but it’s hard to walk away from something that’s going really well.”

The shift has not gone unnoticed by administrators at some business schools. Richard Schmalensee, who was dean of the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management until June, chalked it up to the changing nature of money-making. In many banks and investment boutiques, traders with math and science backgrounds now contribute more to the bottom line than the white-shoed investment bankers who long presided over Wall Street. And traders tend to be less likely to go to business school.

“I don’t think you will see M.B.A.’s less represented in executive suites, but you may see M.B.A.’s less represented in the lists of the world’s richest people,” Professor Schmalensee says.

BUSINESS school has not fallen out of favor among the student population at large. The number of students who earned M.B.A.’s in 2005 was about 142,600, nearly twice the level in 1991. But as M.B.A.’s become more common, the degree seems to carry less prestige with people who land top-paying jobs in finance soon after college.

And recent upheavals in the financial markets don’t seem to be changing the thinking of these younger high-fliers and their employers.

Hedge fund managers are unlikely to punish their younger workers for any dip in returns this year, says Adam Zoia, managing partner at Glocap, a headhunter in New York. Management fees charged by funds — typically 2 percent — come in regardless of return levels and can more than cover large salaries for young employees at many funds.

“Most managers say, ‘If I don’t pony up a decent bonus, then I’m going to lose people,’ ” Mr. Zoia says. “It’d be short-sighted of them not to retain their good people.”

At funds that manage $1 billion to $3 billion, people with just a few years of finance experience will make $337,000 this year, Mr. Zoia says, and those with five to nine years of experience will average $830,000, up 6 percent from last year. These estimates include analysts and researchers but not portfolio traders, who can make much more because they sometimes share in profits.

Dozens of young people (mostly male) who want to be, or already are, successful traders said in interviews that they relished the challenge of their jobs, in addition to the lofty paychecks.

But they also spoke as if a money-clock were ticking: many said they wanted to make as much money as fast as they could so that they could live in style later in life while doing less lucrative things like running a charity, working for the government, spending time with their families, or inventing new technologies. Some, of course, plan to stay in finance their entire careers, and they, too, are very focused on earning fat bonuses fast.

“The sales pitch of these private equity funds or these hedge funds is, ‘Come here, and you’ll make a million bucks in two years,’ ” says Gregg R. Lemkau, 38, managing director and chief operating officer of investment banking at Goldman Sachs, who passed up business school to stay at Goldman in the early 1990s when that choice was more rare.

And because today there are more self-made millionaires — and billionaires — than ever before, 20-something traders seem bolder in their monetary ambitions. Business school often does not fit into these plans.

“If you want to make the most money in the shortest period of time, you can’t be away from work for two years,” says Vitaly Dukhon, 30, who recently left the Fortress Investment Group in New York to join another hedge fund.

While in college at Harvard, Mr. Dukhon thought he would go to business school in his mid-20s, but in his first job on the Treasury desk at Deutsche Bank, he realized that the smartest people just a few years his senior were staying put. “I saw that people that had been working for 20 years did have M.B.A.’s, but people five to six years older than me were not going,” he says. “Going to business school is a way for people to try to open the door, to try to get into a company or hedge fund. But if you’re already there, it doesn’t make sense to go.”

Mr. Hammond of Alerian noticed the same trend while he was an analyst at Goldman Sachs. His co-workers who went to business school either wanted to change careers, or they were not doing well in their current jobs, he says.

Part of the shift comes as investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have changed their tune on business school. Instead of pushing all their young employees into M.B.A. programs, banks are telling the best ones to stay put.

“We are the perfect training ground for people who want to have careers in finance,” says Caitlin McLaughlin, director of campus recruiting for Citi, the former Citigroup. Just 15 years ago, Ms. McLaughlin estimates, 85 to 90 percent of Citi’s analyst classes ended up attending business school. Now, she thinks that figure is closer to 50 percent.

Samir Ahmad, 25, has worked at Citi since college. This summer, he was promoted to associate, an M.B.A.-level position, in the fixed-income, currencies and commodities division. Despite advice from his older brother that he should attend business school, Mr. Ahmad says he cannot see what he would gain to justify the time. “If I were to spend two years at business school, I’d get an M.B.A. degree, but I think learning a different product or a different group here at Citi would be more valuable,” he says.

To be sure, business school can still be a valuable investment, especially for those who want to change careers. Most schools teach a well-rounded curriculum that exposes students to the full picture of the way the business world works. They are great places to make friends and connections that can help throughout a career. And the top business schools serve as a useful filtering system, placing a seal of approval on graduates that can help them find jobs.

“Most banking — and that includes private equity — is about deals and about relationships,” says Timothy Butler, director of M.B.A. career development programs at Harvard Business School. “That will always be M.B.A. territory.”

YET even some students at top schools like Harvard say the decision to go is tougher now than it likely was two decades ago. “We all struggled with it,” says Katie Shaw, 28, who is in her second year of business school there. “It’s not only, ‘Where do I go to business school?’ It’s also, ‘Do I go?’ ”

Ms. Shaw worked in private equity before business school and plans to return to a position in finance. In private equity, she says, an M.B.A. is valued because buying and selling companies involves relationships and company analysis skills. Still, most private equity firms used to require their young hires to leave to go to business school, and some are now letting talented ones keep working instead.

Headhunters for hedge funds and private equity firms say hedge funds, in particular, do not value an M.B.A. “I have some clients that will legitimately say, ‘An M.B.A. means absolutely nothing to us,’ ” says Tim Zack, principal of In-Site Search, a headhunting firm in Westport, Conn., that is a division of Chaves and Associates.

Mr. Hammond of the Alerian hedge fund recently hired someone from Carnegie Mellon’s business school because of that person’s engineering talent, not the skills he learned in business school. While Mr. Hammond says he understands why his new employee went to business school to move into finance, he would look less favorably on someone in an M.B.A. program who had left finance to go to business school.

If he were looking at someone who went to Harvard Business School after the two-year analyst program at Goldman, “I’d be suspicious,” he says. “I’d be saying, ‘What was it you were doing wrong that you couldn’t get a promotion at Goldman or did not pursue an opportunity with a private equity or hedge fund?’ ”

When young people on Wall Street consider the benefits of business school, Mr. Hammond says, the upside no longer outweighs lost salaries and bonuses they would have earned. He calculates the cost of going to a two-year business school to be at least half a million dollars for the average bank employee — $250,000 or more each year in lost salary, plus $50,000 a year in tuition and living expenses. For hedge fund employees, Mr. Hammond says, the number would be considerably higher.

The result, headhunters say, is that many of the best people in finance are no longer entering the M.B.A. pipeline. “If someone is doing well at a hedge fund, they absolutely do not encourage their employees to go off to business school,” says Mr. Zoia of Glocap.

Some young people are pursuing alternatives that can be completed without leaving their jobs. Some take the certified financial adviser tests or study part-time at night at schools like N.Y.U. that offer master’s degrees in subjects like financial engineering.

“There’s a real shift in assumptions as to what is going to make you a better applicant or a prospect for a job,” says Art Hogan, chief market analyst for Jefferies & Company, noting that he had seen an increased interest in young people pursuing a degree as a certified financial adviser at night rather than leaving their jobs for an M.B.A.

At the banks, there has been a push in recent years to keep top performers around after their time as analysts, the most junior position, ends. “Strong performers we want to keep at the firm for as long as possible,” says Julie Kalish, 28, head of United States recruiting for Credit Suisse. “The amount of analysts that we try to keep for the associate promotion process has grown over recent years.”

Admissions officers at top business schools say finance firms always try to hold onto their best employees when the economy is good. They say interest from applicants working in finance is not declining and their graduates still land a large number of top finance jobs. What administrators at business schools do not know — largely because their admissions and career placement offices are separate — is whether their students with a finance background are staying in that industry.

Recruiters at banks say a large number of the students that they are hiring from business schools are from an international background or are changing careers. These students are valuable, they say, but they come in with a different background from someone who has been in finance since age 22.

Jeffrey Talpins, chief investment officer at Element Capital Management, a small fixed-income hedge fund in New York, says he likes to hire people fresh out of school so he can teach them himself. Mr. Talpins attended Yale as an undergraduate but did not go to business school. If a young employee asked his advice on business school, he says, he would tell them not to go if they wanted to stay in finance. “I’d say, ‘You already have a great platform for a job in finance,’ ” he says. “If you’re a superstar, and you’re very good, you’ll grow very rapidly in this field.”

Eventually, these young people may want to raise money and start their own fund, suggests Thomas Caleel, director of admissions at Wharton, and that’s where an M.B.A. and the connections that come with it could help. “If you are trying to raise money for a hedge fund, you will need that network,” he says.

Mr. Talpins of Element said he had no trouble raising money for his hedge fund without an M.B.A. After all, he had a track record from Citi and Goldman Sachs to show to potential investors. In his corner of the world, where math equations are likely to be scrawled on white boards around the office and young people hold the purse strings to millions of dollars in investor money, it seems there is no point in going to business school just to punch a ticket.

In 2005, Trader Monthly named Mr. Talpins one of the top 30 traders under 30. “Youth is not wasted on this crop, any of whom could be a billionaire by 40,” the magazine said. “Or, then again, they could be belly up and bust.”

Mr. Hammond of Alerian, who was featured on the magazine’s list last year, said he has seen people go to hedge funds and get fired in six months “because they couldn’t hack it.”

But he says the risk is worth it.

“If you look at the really successful hedge fund managers — the Eddie Lamperts,” he says, “they’re all in their 40s now. They were probably making only low single-digit millions in their 20s.

“That’s why you do this,” he continues. “That’s why it’s so attractive, because the payoff of being the winner, the next Eddie Lampert, is so high.”

In short, from the individual's perspective, take the money now. It's a helluva lot better to be too rich than to be too educated. Education can be highly overrated.

[DOMINATOR]

you go to school to get a job or a better job...

[Dirkgreatness]

Hmmm... nevermind.

[DelNegro]

Originally Posted by DOMINATOR

you go to school to get a job or a better job...

And if you're Greg Oden, or any college basketball player for that matter, what better job is there than the NBA?

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by DelNegro

And if you're Greg Oden, or any college basketball player for that matter, what better job is there than the NBA?

I agree.

I don't get the whole "education above all" argument. Just doesn't compute. The point of an education is to have the skills/paperwork necessary to get a career and make money.

If someone is offering you enough money to set you up for the rest of your life, what is the point of a degree, other than for symbolic/personal achievement reasons? Why should an industry EVER force someone to finish school? What is the logic there?

If someone had come to me when I was halfway through college and offered to let me learn while on the job, and given me contract to set me for life, would I have had to think about it? Would anyone around here?

I work with a whooole lot of successful people that don't have college degrees, including my manager, and his boss, who is a director of software development in a successful software company. So I really don't get the whole "education is important, everyone should finish school" argument.

[DelNegro]

Originally Posted by jthig32

I agree.

I don't get the whole "education above all" argument. Just doesn't compute. The point of an education is to have the skills/paperwork necessary to get a career and make money.

If someone is offering you enough money to set you up for the rest of your life, what is the point of a degree, other than for symbolic/personal achievement reasons? Why should an industry EVER force someone to finish school? What is the logic there?

If someone had come to me when I was halfway through college and offered to let me learn while on the job, and given me contract to set me for life, would I have had to think about it? Would anyone around here?

I work with a whooole lot of successful people that don't have college degrees, including my manager, and his boss, who is a director of software development in a successful software company. So I really don't get the whole "education is important, everyone should finish school" argument.

Solid points. Not every career out there requires a full 4 years of college. Professional athlete is one of them. If it were possible for extremely gifted medical students to learn all that they needed in 3 years do you think they'd stay in school for 8 or 10, or however long it takes to become a doctor? No freaking way.

[Flacolaco]

For me, getting a degree was satisfying in so many more ways than "the ability to get a job."

I hope to continue my education in the years to come.

But you guys are right I suppose....you can't force a thirst for knowledge upon someone. The college experience and life lessons are a good way (of course not the only way) to develop into a quality human being.

I think everyone would benefit from the experience, but I certainly can't argue with those who think it isn't necessary. My father is a Senior VP with a major retail organization, and he doesn't have a degree....

If I had been presented with the same choice when I was 19 years old, who's to say what I would've done? I don't think I turned all high minded and appreciatve on the college experience until late in my junior year

[jthig32]

Well, I don't want to come off as someone who toiled through school. I loved school, high school and college (although my college life was rather non-typical for someone my age), and it was a significant achievement on many levels. I firmly believe in college as the best overall route to success and will most certainly expect attendance from my children.

I'm simply saying, it is ridiculous to say to an 18 year old in this country "Yes, I realize 30 different corporations are falling all over themselves to pay you a lifetime's worth of money, but I don't care, I still think you should finish school"

[Silk Smoov]

I used to feel the same way about a college degree, but as it turned out I never really used it. As I think back to my college times (So,so many years ago), I remember the partying and whatnots that comes with the typical college experience. I too thought that you go to college to have fun, then get your degree to get you a career job. I quickly found out that is not true.

What I found out later, is that alot of the really smart college students leave school around their junior year in order to start-up their own business. You get a bunch of college geeks together and they form start-up companies and a couple of years later they are millionaires. I have seen this time and time again. My oldest daughter is about to start college and I wonder if I would get mad if she had decided to skip college all together?

I think I would, unless she came to me with a business plan on how she was going to become a business owner. I think then, I could agree and help in anyway I could. As of matter of fact, I would become the start-up investor for whatever she wanted to do. Granted the business plan would have to make sense to me

So in the end, I think my motto for my kids is , "College or Business Plan?"

[mcsluggo]

Originally Posted by Flacolaco

Education > everything else.

If you ask me, they should have to FINISH school.

I could not disagree with you more

(and I PERSONALLY stayed in school, grabbing and clawing to not have to go out into the real world, until I finally got a PhD and they MADE me leave)

[horse900703]

haha,portland this season not getting any better

[kingmalaki]

This education above all argument is really silly to me. I understand the impact college can have on social development, but I don't think the majority of us would choose that social development over say, having the option to never work again in life.

There is nothing wrong when successful business man like Bill Gates say forget college because I can make millions doing something else, yet there is for an athlete? That is as backwards as it gets. If nothing else, the athlete can take say, 10% of his salary and pay to go to any college that he wants. YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK TO SCHOOL. Give me a guarenteed $10M and you can have both of my degrees!!!!

[Usually Lurkin]

college is about learning how to think critically, to research, analyze, and solve certain kinds of problems. Bill Gates could obviously do that. We don't know about Oden, but lots of broke ex-pro athletes could've used more than they got. For those who say you don't use your college degree, do you not use the education that came along with it? Of course, you can get that education in the workforce, and sometimes it's a better path than college, and athletes attending university are sometimes educated minimally. College is a place designed for education, though, and athletes about to be charged with the responsibility of caring for millions and millions of dollars are better off with some education rather than none.

[Usually Lurkin]

maybe the best solution is to have a "you will enroll in business management classes the day your retire" clause in the contract of every draftee without a college degree.

[kingmalaki]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

college is about learning how to think critically, to research, analyze, and solve certain kinds of problems. Bill Gates could obviously do that. We don't know about Oden, but lots of broke ex-pro athletes could've used more than they got. For those who say you don't use your college degree, do you not use the education that came along with it? Of course, you can get that education in the workforce, and sometimes it's a better path than college, and athletes attending university are sometimes educated minimally. College is a place designed for education, though, and athletes about to be charged with the responsibility of caring for millions and millions of dollars are better off with some education rather than none.

Yeah, assuming you go to class, aren't coddled as a star athlete, not receiving private tutoring (or having them do your work), taking super easy classes (not saying it always happens just stating the possibility), etc.

Those ex-pro athletes went broke because they had poor money management skills. You don't need to go to college to learn how to handle money, correct? Again, I'm not saying you can't learn that in college....but it doesn't have to be learned there.

[ballin_boi]

MONEY>EDUCATION>BEING SPOON FED BY THE GOV'T>DEAD>FLIPPING BURGERS

[ty]

Originally Posted by kingmalaki

Yeah, assuming you go to class, aren't coddled as a star athlete, not receiving private tutoring (or having them do your work), taking super easy classes (not saying it always happens just stating the possibility), etc.

Those ex-pro athletes went broke because they had poor money management skills. You don't need to go to college to learn how to handle money, correct? Again, I'm not saying you can't learn that in college....but it doesn't have to be learned there.

Many college athletes get perks. And you're right, education is not always on the same level.

[dude1394]

I read somewhere that the US was one of the most "certification" happy country. Diplomas, ceritificates, etc. It's a means of creating protection for those that have it. I'm sure that many are needed but I would also think that many folks could do many jobs without a diploma. I think it also inflates college costs as well, since people are getting a diploma as a checkmark that is required whether they are qualified for the job or not.

Some of the absolute best engineers I've ever met were technicians but could not get a job anywhere in engineering without a degree. So in their case they had to go and get something that was "useful" but not necessary.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by kingmalaki

Yeah, assuming you go to class, aren't coddled as a star athlete, not receiving private tutoring (or having them do your work), taking super easy classes (not saying it always happens just stating the possibility), etc.

That happens to most in high school as well. And to quite a few in jr. high. Do you think they should skip out if offered a pro contract?

Those ex-pro athletes went broke because they had poor money management skills. You don't need to go to college to learn how to handle money, correct? Again, I'm not saying you can't learn that in college....but it doesn't have to be learned there.

Are people more likely to learn how to handle their business in college?
And whether they learn anything in getting a degree or not, the piece of paper will help them when and if they do blow all their money. That's probably a more important factor for those who were too lazy and privileged in the first place to learn anything while they were in college.

[Jack.Kerr]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

That happens to most in high school as well. And to quite a few in jr. high. Do you think they should skip out if offered a pro contract?

It depends on the size of the contract that a 14 or 15 year old would garner. If it's $1M (or more), then it's an easy call (hell yes); if it's a contract more on the order of a minor-league $30K-35K, then it's also an easy call (nah), though a 14-year old might be tempted.

Reversing the question, would you take $1M today for your high school degree and call it a day? I'm guessing more people would than wouldn't.

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

Are people more likely to learn how to handle their business in college? And whether they learn anything in getting a degree or not, the piece of paper will help them when and if they do blow all their money. That's probably a more important factor for those who were too lazy and privileged in the first place to learn anything while they were in college.

I don't think people are really more likely to learn how to handle their business in college because of college itself. Most college curricula don't include that kind of information. If a kid learns money management in college, it's most likely small-scale personal finance that comes from having to live more like an adult. A college degree alone isn't gonna help keep a kid from blowing a pro contract. Avoiding that is gonna come from either parental guidance or professional management advice.

And supposing the lazy privileged do-nothing kid DOES blow the contract, I really don't see that the piece of paper in and of itself is going to do much for him. If he didn't get any help or advice the first time around, the diploma is just a trinket.

Anyway, I think people are talking about two different populations here--the exceptional athletes who can command the huge contract versus the marginal jock who can't, and for whom a college education is more likely to provide a steady (albeit much smaller) meal ticket, over a longer period of time. The prodigies (like a Bill Gates or a Micahel Dell or a LeBron James) should take the money and go with it. The mortals whose names we never knew or have already forgotten have reason to be more circumspect.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Jack.Kerr

Reversing the question, would you take $1M today for your high school degree and call it a day? I'm guessing more people would than wouldn't.

I wouldn't. Like all those lottery winners, I would have blown the million in a year or two, and across my lifetime, the degree will earn me more than that (including many non-monetary benefits). Just because most people are short sighted does not mean they are right.

I don't think people are really more likely to learn how to handle their business in college because of college itself. Most college curricula don't include that kind of information.

College is good for content general skills as well as content specific skills.

If he didn't get any help or advice the first time around, the diploma is just a trinket.

Well, according to some of the testimony in this thread, that trinket in and of itself represents something to some people. Like it or not, right or wrong, it does, and your average the lazy bum who partied his way to a degree has a door opener that your average hard worker who didn't get a degree doesn't have.

Anyway, I think people are talking about two different populations here-....The prodigies (like a Bill Gates or a Micahel Dell or a LeBron James) should take the money and go with it. The mortals whose names we never knew or have already forgotten have reason to be more circumspect.

Yep. I agree with this.

I'll bow out of the thread, and quote in conclusion:

Did Oden shows

[Underdog]

Can we agree on this:

1) College is good for some...
2) Quick money is good for others...


(ahhh, agreeing to disagree makes for boring debates!)