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Is It Worth Going To College? · The Breakfast Club

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  Speaker 1: Morning. Everybody is j n V Charlemagne the guy. We
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: are the breakfast club out co host B Scott is
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  Speaker 1: here and we're opening up the phone lines eight hundred
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  Speaker 1: and five A five, one oh five one. We were
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  Speaker 1: talking about something we've seen in the Business Insider where
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  Speaker 1: they're saying the majority of Americans now think a college
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  Speaker 1: degree isn't worth it, and they said fifty six percent
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  Speaker 1: of Americans now say a four year college degree isn't
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  Speaker 1: worth the cost. And I was saying that I got
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  Speaker 1: my degree of course from Hampton University HBCU shot everybody
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  Speaker 1: at all at Hampton and LUMS. I would say that
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  Speaker 1: I think that students should take some time off before
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  Speaker 1: they go to college. And I'm gonna tell you why.
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  Speaker 1: When I went to college, and as most students go
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  Speaker 1: to college, a lot of them go to pass. They
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  Speaker 1: just want to get their degree and get out. And
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  Speaker 1: that's what I did. I got my degree and got out.
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  Speaker 1: But now realizing there are so many classes and courses
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  Speaker 1: that I should have really listened to because it would
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  Speaker 1: have helped me in you know, in life, in life,
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  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And I wish I could
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  Speaker 1: go back to those courses and I tell my daughter
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  Speaker 1: who's in NYU now that you know, take those classes serious.
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  Speaker 1: Just don't study to pass, study to actually learn. But
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  Speaker 1: it was accountant, whether it's business, whether it's marketing and management. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I didn't get my degree in communications. I got my
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  Speaker 1: degree in marketing and management, which I use in my
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  Speaker 1: career because I always said I was going to have
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  Speaker 1: money going into high school. But I just needed to
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  Speaker 1: know how to keep it, how to invest it, and
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  Speaker 1: that's what college taught me. But I tell kids to
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  Speaker 1: take time off when I tell kids what courses they
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  Speaker 1: should take, because I think they got to figure out
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  Speaker 1: and learn what they want to do. You know, I
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  Speaker 1: think if you take that time off, maybe jump into
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  Speaker 1: the workforce a little bit, then you can really understand
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  Speaker 1: what you want to do. Because most people don't know
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  Speaker 1: what they want to do. They go college, They go
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  Speaker 1: to college and just try to figure it out. That's
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  Speaker 1: because you know, I tell my daughter, my daughter's fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: now she's a freshman, I'll tell her now that you know,
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  Speaker 1: even if she doesn't know what she wants to do.
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  Speaker 1: Even even though she does, I think going to college
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  Speaker 1: is a good thing to do until you figure it
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  Speaker 1: out because yeah, because you're not wasting time, like at
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  Speaker 1: least you'll have a degree after those four years. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't go to college, you know, even though I am
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  Speaker 1: a doctor honorary doctor from South Carolina, but I didn't
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  Speaker 1: go to college. But I'm just saying I feel like
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  Speaker 1: that four years is it's a good way to deal
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  Speaker 1: with your time, but productive courses that you don't like.
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  Speaker 1: My daughter went from real estate to be she wanted
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  Speaker 1: to be an attorney, that she went back to real estate,
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  Speaker 1: so she doesn't necessarily know what do you think? I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I can only speak from experience, so you know, I
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  Speaker 1: went to the University of nor Kaline Choppa Hill, and
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  Speaker 1: for me it was something that was definitely needed because
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  Speaker 1: it gave me a basic working knowledge of the world.
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  Speaker 1: And I feel like a lot of people could benefit
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  Speaker 1: from that. I do believe that just knowing just fundamentals
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  Speaker 1: of just like photosynthesis or just like certain things, just
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  Speaker 1: allows you to appreciate things in a whole new way.
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  Speaker 1: And I do believe that you should use college, as
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  Speaker 1: you were saying Charlemagne, to kind of explore because that's
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  Speaker 1: what the general requirements are. So the general requirements are
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  Speaker 1: all over the place, and as you explore different little
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  Speaker 1: taste of things, you can then say, Okay, I want
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  Speaker 1: to go deeper in that, and that becomes your major.
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  Speaker 1: And my fear is that if they were to take
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  Speaker 1: time off and they go and work, then they're going
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  Speaker 1: to start getting real life responsibilities, which means you're buying
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  Speaker 1: stuff with the money that you're making in this job,
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  Speaker 1: and so that means you got to keep that job
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  Speaker 1: to keep these things, and they prevents you from ever
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  Speaker 1: going back. So every thing about exploring is you're exploring
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  Speaker 1: by paying a bill. Like you look at certain colleges
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  Speaker 1: of forty fifty thousand dollars a year and you're exploring
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  Speaker 1: spending money and might not you might be taking the
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  Speaker 1: wrong classes that you don't like. Like there's a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people that or six years seven year college students
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  Speaker 1: because they started thinking they want to be something and
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  Speaker 1: then they wound up figuring it out, that's not what
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  Speaker 1: I want to do. And then by the time they graduate,
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  Speaker 1: they have three hundred four hundred thousand dollars worth of
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  Speaker 1: debt that they got to pay off and now it
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  Speaker 1: takes some twelve years to pay off. Right, Like what
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  Speaker 1: be Scott said, though you know, if you don't go
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  Speaker 1: to school, you probably getting the habit of just working. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you know. And I also think that sometimes you can
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  Speaker 1: tell it, like when people just don't have a basic
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  Speaker 1: knowledge of stuff, you'd be like, oh, okay, I get it.
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  Speaker 1: You just you skip some courses. Let's go to the
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  Speaker 1: phone lines. A lot of people are on the lines. Hello,
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  Speaker 1: who's this Good morning, hey Bernard, go on and talk
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  Speaker 1: to us. All right, So I just wanted to touch
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  Speaker 1: on the I word out of college. I've thought about
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  Speaker 1: eleven years and so when it comes to the affordability,
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  Speaker 1: colleges are very but it's also public schools that are
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  Speaker 1: much more affordable. And in some cases we qualified for
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  Speaker 1: like programs but actually do an entire um not sure
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  Speaker 1: degroup for free without paying anything out of pocket. It's
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  Speaker 1: usually when we get to those masters degrees and gradual
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  Speaker 1: program or those private schools that folks are paying a
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  Speaker 1: ton of money and not really seeing that return on investment. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I won't say that too. You know the bad thing
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  Speaker 1: and this is why we always talk about, you know,
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  Speaker 1: free education. My mom worked extra hard and my dad
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  Speaker 1: work extra hard to so that I wouldn't have huge
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  Speaker 1: college bills when I graduated, right, I think they pay
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  Speaker 1: like seventy percent of my college to which and I
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  Speaker 1: had to pay thirty percent when I graduate. So for me,
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  Speaker 1: the biggest thing for my kids, I have six, is
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  Speaker 1: to make sure that you have six, six kids twenty one, eighteen,
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  Speaker 1: nine eighty six in a one year old. That's impressive.
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  Speaker 1: But for me, I want to make sure my kids
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  Speaker 1: don't have any college bills, so I work extra hard
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  Speaker 1: to make sure when they graduate they start from zero.
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  Speaker 1: You do have to work extra hard with six kids.
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  Speaker 1: Yeare six kids, you can see six more. I was like,
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  Speaker 1: I got one wife and all my kids from one woman.
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  Speaker 1: That is true. You know. You know what that was?
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  Speaker 1: What college do that? I don't hear y'all talk about enough.
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  Speaker 1: Don't you learn other things outside of just getting a degree,
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  Speaker 1: like meeting people, networking skills? That was another thing, you know.
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  Speaker 1: Me coming from New York, all I was about was
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  Speaker 1: New York. But when I went to college, I had
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  Speaker 1: a roommate from Mississippi. I had a roommate from Ohio.
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  Speaker 1: I had a roommate from New Orleans. I had a
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  Speaker 1: roommate from Jersey. So it opened me up, you know,
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  Speaker 1: doing music to all those different areas of music and
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  Speaker 1: things like that, and in most cases, it's a safer
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  Speaker 1: environment to a spot different things and learn how to
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  Speaker 1: interact with people than the real world. So it's like
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  Speaker 1: a buffer, it's like a step right before you on
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  Speaker 1: your own. And that's why I'm not knocking these people
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  Speaker 1: who say that it wasn't worth it to get a degree.
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  Speaker 1: But are you just equating worth to monetization, because I'm
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  Speaker 1: sure you probably got life lifelong friends, Like my wife
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  Speaker 1: has her two best friends or from college, you know
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  Speaker 1: what I mean, they're friends with twenty plus years. And
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  Speaker 1: I also think that you touched on something that was
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  Speaker 1: powerful you said in terms of a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: go to college just to pass. Correct, it's about why
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  Speaker 1: you are there. But if you're there to learn and
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  Speaker 1: actually get something from the experience, you're going to have
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  Speaker 1: a different result than someone that's they're just to pass.
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  Speaker 1: That's true to Like, I didn't want to go to college, right,
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  Speaker 1: I was a DJ. I wanted to do music, but
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  Speaker 1: in my family, I was the first person to go
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  Speaker 1: to college in my family. Wow, So my parents were like, no,
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  Speaker 1: you're going, Like they wanted me to go to more
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  Speaker 1: house and I was like, more houses too far, like
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  Speaker 1: they wanted me to go. So for me it was
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  Speaker 1: I was doing it more for them then for you're
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  Speaker 1: not a more house man. You went Hampton was good
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  Speaker 1: for you. I'm a Hampton man, sir. Yeah that's yeah, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's nothing wrong with being an I can call some
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  Speaker 1: my more house people. Do you think's a more house man?
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  Speaker 1: But I thought the Howard Howard, Oh my god, I'm
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  Speaker 1: about to fight you in here. I'm about I'm about
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  Speaker 1: to fight you a here my money. I've been fighting
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  Speaker 1: my whole life. Now five a five five one. We're
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  Speaker 1: talking about college this morning. Now, we were saying a
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  Speaker 1: majority of America's now thinking think getting a college degree
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  Speaker 1: isn't worth What are your thoughts? And they're saying fifty
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  Speaker 1: six percent of America's now say a four year college
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  Speaker 1: degree isn't worth the cost. Let's talk about it. It's
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  Speaker 1: the breakfast club the morning