Some of this is silly. Lie 1 is wrong. The uber rich (Gates and Ellison) are not a prescription for how to aim your life as a young person. Also, in the 2008 r

Some of this is silly. Lie 1 is wrong. The uber rich (Gates and Ellison) are not a prescription for how to aim your life as a young person. Also, in the 2008 recession, people without 4-year degrees were hurt far worse and recovered slower than those with degrees. Lie 2 is reasonable, except in particular majors. My wife was a historic preservation major in undergrad (I think there's less than a dozen in the country, and one happened to be in-state but she would have gone out of state if necessary) and her graduate program was out-of-state for Museum Studies. There are only a handful of these programs in the country, so being out-of-state was not a choice. 3 is also incorrect in my experience. While the employers may not care a lot what's on your diploma, they also don't recruit evenly across universities. Wasn't everyone complaining a while ago that Google was basically where people went after graduating from Stanford? 4. When I was looking at school, the scholarships on those "find scholarships for you" sites were all under $1000. While that's not insignificant, you can't count on getting every one you apply for, and it's not reliable for paying for more than books. Community colleges and living with parents are underutilized, but you eventually have to attend at least 2 years in a 4-year institution if you want the 4-year degree. 5. I wish this had been drilled into me 6. Reasonable, but I don't think it is widely talked about 7. This is complicated. I was in school during the 2008 recession, so there was really no way to know before going in what was going to happen after graduation. Students do need to know it isn't necessarily a given, and this was a big pitfall for me. Unfortunately, our parents' generation didn't know about this because it is different from their experience with college. 8. I've never heard anyone say this, but attendance levels are up in bad years 9. Nobody thinks they're going to need bankruptcy when they start their college education; they're still young and bushy-tailed.