2020-07-27_Why_Not_Skip_High_School_and_Take_College_Classes

00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:03.520 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:07.880 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:10.480 | Today on the show, I want to talk to you about probably your children, although this might

00:00:15.380 | apply to you, but primarily we're probably going to be talking to your children.

00:00:19.240 | And my title of today's show is this, why not skip high school and just graduate from

00:00:23.680 | college instead?

00:00:24.680 | I'm going to expand on that in today's show.

00:00:28.240 | I'm going to teach you how you can help your bright, academically capable high school student

00:00:34.680 | to graduate with a college degree at the age of 18, either instead of, or in addition to,

00:00:41.680 | their high school diploma or GED, which can open up a tremendously accelerated success

00:00:47.960 | path in life for them.

00:00:52.260 | The concepts that I'm about to discuss are applicable in almost any year, but I do want

00:00:56.440 | to anchor them in the current year.

00:00:59.960 | As I record this on July 27, 2020, we are living in, I don't know if we're in the beginning

00:01:06.400 | of, in the middle of, or near the end, who knows, but we're living in a global pandemic,

00:01:12.380 | the COVID-19 global pandemic.

00:01:15.780 | And this global pandemic is affecting different parts of the world differently.

00:01:20.520 | There are some nations that have been able to beat the pandemic back and they're operating

00:01:26.240 | more or less as they were accustomed to operating before the pandemic.

00:01:30.520 | There are other nations that are moderately affected by the pandemic and there are other

00:01:34.760 | nations that are severely affected by the pandemic.

00:01:38.840 | There is a very wide swath of the radical personal finance listening audience, which

00:01:43.360 | is living in places that are severely affected by the pandemic.

00:01:47.200 | Now I think this pandemic is having a number of positive results.

00:01:52.240 | I think there's a number of silver linings that we can observe in the midst of this pandemic.

00:01:58.160 | A couple of them though, relate to the physical distancing suggestions and requirements in

00:02:04.880 | which we are living.

00:02:06.080 | I previously recorded a show on radical personal finance here talking about how your biggest

00:02:11.480 | career opportunity right now is that your current work can be moved online and can stay

00:02:18.760 | online.

00:02:20.040 | In that show I discussed how the opportunity to earn your income from anywhere in the world

00:02:24.400 | that you can set up an internet connection is probably the biggest potential lifestyle

00:02:28.440 | benefit you can have.

00:02:30.160 | And if you were to go back to the 1990s, you had to engage in all kinds of bird brain,

00:02:34.240 | you know, envelope stuffing jobs or really unusual careers.

00:02:40.800 | You know, if you were a back to the lander and you wanted to move out to the country

00:02:44.280 | and you had to figure out how to make a way, make an income from the country, you were

00:02:48.080 | limited to either the low income opportunities that were available in the country or you

00:02:53.880 | were limited to some really unusual careers or you needed to travel.

00:02:57.680 | Well, things improved in the early 2000s as the internet became more useful and more and

00:03:02.640 | more people were able to go online, especially those who did computer work specifically from

00:03:09.360 | the very beginning.

00:03:11.400 | And then online work became more and more mainstream.

00:03:14.360 | But even in 2020, there was still, prior to the pandemic, there was still an expectation

00:03:20.340 | that in office work was the standard.

00:03:24.120 | I think that expectation is changing and will continue to change.

00:03:27.840 | Now certainly many of us make a living in things that can never go online.

00:03:32.680 | But for those of us who do knowledge work, the move to online work is a tremendous lifestyle

00:03:38.160 | benefit.

00:03:39.160 | You can eliminate your commuting, you can move from the side of town that you don't

00:03:42.040 | like living on to the other side of town, you can move from the middle of the city to

00:03:44.440 | the country, you can move from the country to the middle of the city, whatever you want.

00:03:47.160 | You can move from one country to another country, live anywhere.

00:03:50.360 | And so it's a tremendous opportunity.

00:03:53.360 | That's something that I think we're getting good results from due to the pandemic.

00:03:59.200 | And I hope that you are making full use of that.

00:04:02.120 | But we're also getting a lot of opportunities in the field of education.

00:04:06.060 | And I think this is so powerful.

00:04:08.520 | First we're getting more parents involved in their children's education.

00:04:14.040 | The word I hear from people who are involved in things like local homeschooling groups

00:04:18.580 | is that the interest is extremely high.

00:04:21.160 | I don't see how parents can't at least notice a little bit more what was happening with

00:04:26.120 | their children's education if their children are doing online classes from home.

00:04:30.640 | At least they're going to see more and hear more than they previously were seeing and

00:04:34.360 | hearing when their child was in a local classroom.

00:04:38.520 | I think we're getting tremendous advances in teaching techniques that more and more

00:04:42.280 | people are learning how to teach online.

00:04:44.100 | This is going to open up new career opportunities for teachers.

00:04:47.200 | Once a teacher realizes, you know what, if I can effectively teach these hundred students

00:04:51.680 | in my local school online, then why shouldn't I just go ahead and establish a class for

00:04:56.400 | 1,000 students on the other side of the world online and charge them for it?

00:05:00.540 | And so I think there's going to be a lot of teachers who are going to be able to take

00:05:02.640 | their teaching skill and ability and transform that into new careers.

00:05:06.440 | I think this is going to open up the world to where we get better teachers.

00:05:09.320 | I think there are many parents who are going to look down and realize, why should I have,

00:05:13.120 | you know, Mr. Jones at the local school who frankly is not all that bright, but he has

00:05:18.120 | the job.

00:05:19.120 | Why should I hire him to teach my child history or mathematics when I can hire, you know,

00:05:24.720 | Dr. Singh who is on the other side of the world, but he's brilliant and fantastic and

00:05:29.640 | he is able to teach so much more, right?

00:05:32.360 | I think there's a lot of parents that are going to realize that and start being careful

00:05:35.760 | in the teachers that they hire for their children's education and not just take what's given to

00:05:42.400 | them by the local government school district.

00:05:43.960 | There are a lot of more things that I could say.

00:05:46.340 | But what I see as the opportunity here is for you as a parent to take advantage of the

00:05:51.960 | fact that your child is forced to be in your home and use that to help your child get some

00:05:58.440 | bigger results.

00:06:01.180 | Now I need to emphasize as preamble before I get to the specific suggestions, I need

00:06:06.940 | to emphasize that you as a parent need to study your children and understand what your

00:06:14.440 | children need.

00:06:16.200 | You need to do what's best for your children.

00:06:19.280 | And so the ideas that I have to share with you will not be best for all children and

00:06:23.200 | they may not be best for your children.

00:06:25.760 | Our responsibility as parents is to understand the unique creatures that our children are

00:06:32.220 | and coach them, guide them, teach them in the way that they should go so that they can

00:06:41.020 | achieve the things that they're put here on earth to achieve.

00:06:44.900 | And to do that, we need to not try to apply a one size fits all system to them, but rather

00:06:51.860 | understand who they are uniquely and then seek to meet their unique skills, their unique

00:06:57.660 | talents, their unique personalities with things that will be helpful for them.

00:07:03.820 | With that as the foundation, let's talk about some ideas.

00:07:08.500 | I think the single biggest opportunity that a parent has to help their child get on the

00:07:15.660 | fast track, and here I want to restrict the fast track to academics and to their career.

00:07:24.020 | I don't know if this is a fast track socially for your child, although I don't see that

00:07:26.980 | it has to be a conflict.

00:07:28.020 | I don't know if this is the best for the development of your child, but these are the fast tracks

00:07:32.040 | for academics and for career.

00:07:34.500 | The single biggest opportunity that you have as a parent is to help your child to move

00:07:38.460 | onto a fast track educationally by getting rid of the fluff that is designed for low

00:07:45.540 | achieving children and moving them into a level of studies that's going to challenge

00:07:52.900 | them.

00:07:56.460 | It's my general observation that education, hear the air quotes, right?

00:08:04.140 | Education, schooling has largely been brought down to a very low academic level.

00:08:10.700 | We can debate why that is.

00:08:13.300 | We can debate if that was some kind of intentional conspiracy, right?

00:08:17.060 | Dumbing us down for some reason.

00:08:19.100 | We can debate if that was just an outgrowth of certain overall trends, maybe more, right?

00:08:27.680 | You could say, well, more students are in school now.

00:08:29.340 | Now everyone's in school and so it wasn't just the intellectual elite of yesteryear

00:08:34.620 | that now have access to school.

00:08:36.860 | You decide for yourself.

00:08:37.860 | But it's my observation that the average academic expectation or the academic expectation for

00:08:44.300 | the average student has changed a lot in the last 75 to 100 years.

00:08:51.240 | The rigor of school has dramatically decreased for the majority of schools.

00:09:01.620 | I think, can't prove this, just an opinion.

00:09:05.180 | I think that what used to be learned in primary school has now been stretched out to at least

00:09:12.440 | high school if not beyond.

00:09:13.840 | If you go back to the late 1800s, 1890, 1900, something like that, before the progression

00:09:21.200 | of the progressive movement entered American education system.

00:09:23.280 | If you go back and you look and study what a student learned in a sixth grade education,

00:09:31.320 | it's impressive.

00:09:32.840 | You've often heard people say, well, my grandfather had a sixth grade education.

00:09:35.880 | I want to ask, when did he get that sixth grade education?

00:09:38.440 | Was it in 2020 or was it in 1920?

00:09:41.940 | Because there's a big difference between the sixth grade education of 1900 or 1920 versus

00:09:47.640 | the sixth grade education of 2020.

00:09:51.360 | So it's my opinion that what used to be taught in five or six years has now been stretched

00:09:56.280 | to 12 years.

00:09:57.900 | And what used to be taught in high school has now, for most classes and most subjects,

00:10:03.600 | been stretched into college.

00:10:05.760 | And then what used to be taught at the undergraduate level in many if not most college degrees

00:10:10.720 | has now gone to the graduate level.

00:10:14.600 | So without commenting on whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, I think it just is a

00:10:19.720 | thing.

00:10:21.120 | What do you do if you are in charge of guiding an academically competent, intellectually

00:10:28.200 | bright student?

00:10:30.840 | I think you put them on the fast track.

00:10:32.760 | And basically, if appropriate, you encourage them to get back to the older, more challenging

00:10:39.880 | track.

00:10:40.880 | You move them back onto perhaps a speeded up life phase where they can get ahead a little

00:10:48.040 | bit quicker.

00:10:49.040 | There's a big debate, especially in personal financial circles around college and college

00:10:53.440 | planning.

00:10:55.420 | My opinions lie somewhere in the middle.

00:10:57.400 | I'm not ready to write off college in favor of YouTube U.

00:11:01.920 | I think there's a tremendous benefit in having a college degree.

00:11:05.040 | Assuming that my children are academically inclined, I will encourage my children to

00:11:09.900 | at least finish a bachelor's degree, a college bachelor's degree.

00:11:14.680 | The reason I think this is important is at the minimum as a backup plan.

00:11:21.280 | I've become really sensitive to the need for people to have backup plans, for the need

00:11:27.660 | for people to have a fallback option, especially for them to be able to earn a decent wage

00:11:33.360 | in a career that has specific requirements and that has a good hiring ability.

00:11:39.080 | One of the things that stymies a lot of people's entrepreneurial ambitions is if they don't

00:11:43.840 | have something to fall back on where they can quickly and easily get rehired.

00:11:48.200 | You may have an idea to go out and start a business, but what happens if the business

00:11:52.280 | fails?

00:11:53.280 | I think about this a lot.

00:11:54.280 | What happens if all my businesses fail?

00:11:56.200 | What do I do?

00:11:57.200 | I have four children to support.

00:11:59.460 | I have a wife to provide for.

00:12:00.720 | I have a family to take care of.

00:12:02.520 | I can't afford to go back and get a job delivering pizzas.

00:12:06.720 | I tried that one time.

00:12:08.320 | I thought you could make 20 bucks an hour.

00:12:09.760 | Found out you can't, like nine.

00:12:11.320 | And I can't support a family on $9 an hour.

00:12:13.320 | Just cannot do it.

00:12:15.200 | And so I need a decent wage.

00:12:17.320 | I need a decent professional wage.

00:12:19.720 | And so I need to have a backup plan.

00:12:21.040 | I need to have some kind of industry that I can go back to and get hired quickly.

00:12:26.640 | Some of the most difficult financial planning situations I've ever been in is when coaching

00:12:29.920 | people who don't have that.

00:12:32.060 | They meandered into the workforce.

00:12:34.500 | They skipped college or took a few classes but didn't graduate.

00:12:38.040 | They wound up bouncing from one job to another job.

00:12:41.000 | A lot of times they were single.

00:12:42.000 | Then they got married.

00:12:43.000 | Then they had children.

00:12:44.000 | And all of a sudden, they find themselves unable to live on $20,000 a year.

00:12:48.240 | And they find that I need to make more.

00:12:50.160 | Well, in those situations, you can't just go back and Uber helps, right?

00:12:55.000 | But it's hard to make a living driving for Uber.

00:12:57.320 | It's hard to make a living and support a family driving for Amazon.

00:13:00.560 | It's hard to make a living as a server, right?

00:13:04.320 | You need some good skills.

00:13:05.560 | You need something significant that you can fall back on.

00:13:08.760 | Now, in all of those careers, there are specialties.

00:13:13.400 | And I don't think that that backup plan has to involve academic accreditation, for example.

00:13:18.600 | Perhaps you have developed a skill of bartending.

00:13:21.440 | Well, you're going to make a lot more as a skillful high-end bartender than you are as

00:13:28.960 | an entry-level server.

00:13:31.060 | So something like putting in place bartending skills and being able to toss a bottle with

00:13:35.680 | the best of them may very well be a reasonable backup plan.

00:13:40.280 | But I think the old standby backup plans of a degree, a certification, a job specialty

00:13:48.600 | that's in high demand is a really good idea.

00:13:51.600 | I think of somebody, let's say you've got a nursing degree, right?

00:13:55.160 | A nursing degree is in very high demand.

00:13:57.000 | The nurse who maintains the qualifications, who maintains all of the relevant licenses,

00:14:03.720 | et cetera, a nurse can be assured of employment in just about any city in the world.

00:14:07.800 | And then, of course, that employment can be high or low, but at least it can be employment.

00:14:10.960 | You can support a family on a nursing income.

00:14:13.320 | I think of somebody like an accountant, right?

00:14:16.040 | If you're an accountant and you have a current CPA license, you have the ability to go and

00:14:21.480 | get a job.

00:14:22.480 | You may not love the job.

00:14:23.480 | I'm not saying you love it, but at least you have it.

00:14:26.120 | And so these kinds of backup plans are important.

00:14:29.240 | It's important to have a useful, financially valuable skill that could assure you of employment

00:14:35.000 | fairly quickly.

00:14:36.000 | You know, recently I brought all my financial planning certifications back up to date.

00:14:41.320 | And as I was thinking about why I did it, the reason I just went out of compliance on

00:14:45.240 | my CE, I didn't stay current on my continuing education.

00:14:48.040 | I was traveling.

00:14:49.040 | I didn't really care.

00:14:50.360 | I worked really hard to get a certified financial planner designation and a chartered life underwriter

00:14:54.860 | and I have a master's degree in financial planning.

00:14:56.360 | I worked really hard at some point for those.

00:14:59.520 | But over the last few years, they've just become relatively unimportant to me.

00:15:03.080 | Now, you know, I needed them previously because I needed to learn the stuff, but now I know

00:15:07.040 | the stuff and I know that whether or not I have a CFP after my name doesn't really matter

00:15:10.320 | to me.

00:15:11.320 | I know the stuff.

00:15:12.960 | And so I had let them go, but I recently just thought, "That's stupid.

00:15:17.880 | Let me just go ahead and get them back and do the CE."

00:15:20.200 | And one of my reasons is I want that as a backup plan with a good academic pedigree,

00:15:25.180 | with the experience that I have as a financial planner.

00:15:27.460 | I could move back to any city in the United States and I could have in a week or two,

00:15:31.940 | I could have a six-figure financial planning job at almost any firm.

00:15:36.180 | And what would open the door and separate me from almost any other applicant is the

00:15:40.580 | long string of letters and designations after my name.

00:15:43.820 | That would get me an interview at any financial planning firm in any town in the United States.

00:15:48.140 | And I can't afford not to have that kind of backup plan.

00:15:51.700 | I can't afford not to do that for the good of my family.

00:15:54.660 | I can't afford not to have those options.

00:15:57.520 | And it puts me in a much stronger position as an entrepreneur to have those options,

00:16:02.900 | which is why you always, even if you're going to start something entrepreneurial that you're

00:16:05.900 | excited about, you want to make sure you don't...

00:16:11.020 | You want to make sure that if you get wiped out, you can still eat.

00:16:15.820 | There's a time and a place to take a risk, but sometimes you wipe out.

00:16:20.140 | And the fact that you have a teaching, a current teaching designation or certification, you

00:16:24.940 | can go and get hired and take a year and just teach and then go ahead and work at nights

00:16:29.080 | on your dream again while you're getting your feet back under you is really, really important.

00:16:34.500 | There are a lot of entrepreneurs who've gone bankrupt and started afresh, but you start

00:16:39.560 | with a job and you need to maintain that.

00:16:42.760 | And so for children, I think one of our responsibilities with our children is to help them develop

00:16:46.620 | that.

00:16:47.620 | I think this is where we really fail our children a lot of times because the academics that

00:16:51.540 | we teach them, the stereotypical mainstream path does not help a child very much.

00:16:58.180 | First, a high school degree is of minimal benefit in the job marketplace.

00:17:05.220 | A high school degree at one time had significant benefits in the employment marketplace, but

00:17:10.100 | at this point it might be a barrier to entry to not have one.

00:17:14.400 | But the possession of a high school degree doesn't mean that much.

00:17:17.840 | You don't see that many decent jobs, median and upper second quartile jobs saying must

00:17:26.840 | possess a high school degree.

00:17:28.280 | You usually see a college degree.

00:17:31.020 | And so the high school degree doesn't prepare children for the workforce in any really strong

00:17:37.600 | way.

00:17:38.600 | In addition, the college degree in and of itself can be a good way of opening doors,

00:17:44.320 | but many college degrees don't even prepare people for a decent job.

00:17:50.160 | General studies degrees, humanities degrees, the proverbial underwater basket weaving degrees,

00:17:55.880 | these types of degrees do not help students.

00:18:00.000 | I always just feel so bad for somebody who says, "I got an English degree or a gender

00:18:05.400 | studies degree or these general humanities degrees.

00:18:10.800 | I'm all into the humanities.

00:18:12.120 | I'm all into English."

00:18:15.840 | But these are the things that open up.

00:18:18.280 | They don't do much for you.

00:18:19.720 | They're only useful in an academic world.

00:18:21.160 | And when you got college enrollments declining, you've got colleges cutting things back, there's

00:18:24.960 | a major job crunch in the academic marketplace, you don't have much of a choice except to

00:18:30.160 | go and get another advanced degree.

00:18:32.040 | The PhD glut has been real for a long time.

00:18:35.360 | And so you need to help your child to prepare for something, something where they're actually

00:18:39.720 | going to be demand.

00:18:42.720 | But I do still think that four-year degree is helpful and is necessary.

00:18:48.560 | So putting these things together, if you want your children to be prepared for the future,

00:18:54.720 | if you want them to have the academic qualifications, and if you all of a sudden find out that your

00:19:00.000 | children are going to be at your dining table every day, what can you do to help them?

00:19:06.080 | My recommendation is skip high school, study college.

00:19:13.880 | Skip high school, take college instead.

00:19:17.960 | Here's how you do it.

00:19:21.200 | You take your student, you map out with them, right?

00:19:24.600 | You need to take into account their interests, but you map out with them a course of study

00:19:29.460 | that's going to allow them to get college credit for as much of their areas of studies

00:19:35.600 | as possible.

00:19:36.600 | And there are many, many ways to do this.

00:19:41.280 | Let's start with the basic stuff that most people know, and then I'll tell you how to

00:19:45.600 | turbocharge this.

00:19:47.760 | When I was in high school, I took a number of AP classes.

00:19:50.160 | I wish I had taken more.

00:19:52.340 | One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't do this.

00:19:55.040 | Nobody taught this to me when I was in high school, because I would have crushed this.

00:19:58.900 | But nobody taught this to me.

00:19:59.940 | But I took a number of AP classes.

00:20:02.280 | For the uninitiated, AP is an acronym for Advanced Placement.

00:20:06.960 | Advanced Placement classes are classes that are geared towards helping bright students

00:20:12.680 | who would like to have a little bit more of a challenge to study a subject, to get, in

00:20:19.960 | most schools, a little bit higher GPA for their good grades in that subject, and then

00:20:24.400 | to prepare them for an exam at the end of the year, and that exam will be accepted by

00:20:28.960 | most colleges if this exam is passed, accepted by most colleges for college credit.

00:20:34.900 | So for example, I took a handful of classes, but I took an AP English Language and Composition

00:20:41.340 | course.

00:20:43.980 | I could have just taken a standard English course, but I took an AP English course instead.

00:20:48.580 | Then at the end of the year, I sat for the exam.

00:20:50.800 | It was a few-hour exam, and you get graded on a one to five.

00:20:55.060 | I think I got a five on my English exam.

00:20:56.900 | I took a US History, United States History, AP United States History class.

00:21:02.800 | So we study history all through the year, and at the end of the year, we take a comprehensive

00:21:05.700 | exam on AP History.

00:21:07.020 | Passed that one.

00:21:08.020 | I took an AP Calculus class.

00:21:10.040 | Took Calculus all through the year.

00:21:11.340 | At the end of the year, I failed that one.

00:21:15.340 | But the ones that I passed gave me college credit.

00:21:17.340 | My college gave me three hours of credit towards my degree for each of the AP classes that

00:21:23.860 | I passed.

00:21:24.860 | Now, in hindsight, there were more AP classes available, but I didn't bother to take them

00:21:28.500 | because nobody laid out for me how important they should be.

00:21:31.820 | I remember that I chose not to take AP Chemistry.

00:21:34.300 | I chose not to take AP Spanish.

00:21:35.820 | I just didn't take them because I didn't really care all that much, and nobody taught me that

00:21:39.900 | they were really important.

00:21:41.600 | But there are lots and lots of AP classes available.

00:21:44.540 | Your local school, your child's school has them.

00:21:46.480 | Your child might be enrolled in them.

00:21:48.500 | So the first thing to do is to encourage your children to understand how important and valuable

00:21:53.020 | these are, how extremely important it is that they take these and prepare for the exams

00:21:58.940 | and pass the exams because this will allow them to very quickly get through college,

00:22:04.980 | which will save them money, save you money, and/or allow them to specialize in some more

00:22:09.340 | interesting things.

00:22:10.860 | My wife had so many AP exam credits that she basically had her first year of college done

00:22:15.940 | when she went in, finished her four-year degree in three years, didn't take any extra classes,

00:22:20.100 | got a major and a minor, but took her four-year degree in three years due to AP classes.

00:22:24.340 | And that's relatively easy.

00:22:25.740 | So at the very least, that can cut the expense of college by 25%, which in a world of burgeoning

00:22:31.060 | student debt is particularly helpful and valuable.

00:22:36.100 | Now that's mainstream.

00:22:38.260 | But don't jump over it just because it's mainstream.

00:22:40.220 | It's important.

00:22:41.220 | I want to talk for a moment about academically competent children before we go on.

00:22:45.860 | You'll notice that I use these phrases repeatedly.

00:22:50.620 | Academically bright, right?

00:22:52.060 | Academically oriented, intellectually competent, cognitive with children with a high cognitive

00:22:57.100 | ability.

00:22:58.260 | All of these are ways of basically saying your children are high IQ and they're doing

00:23:04.220 | a good job.

00:23:05.620 | Academics come easily to them.

00:23:07.640 | If your child does not fit that description, then I think as a parent, it's your responsibility

00:23:16.080 | to help them find something that does come easily to them.

00:23:19.320 | In my opinion, one of the biggest problems with the one size fits all, colleges for all

00:23:24.720 | approach is we often try to shoehorn children who are not academically gifted.

00:23:32.960 | We try to shoehorn children who are not, don't have a high cognitive ability into careers

00:23:37.560 | where they get frustrated.

00:23:39.520 | When you look at college graduation rates, what you find is there are a lot of students

00:23:45.400 | who graduate from college.

00:23:47.560 | But the people, and they go, they graduate, they come out of the other side with a degree.

00:23:51.040 | Yeah, they got some student loan debt in most cases, but it's not that big a deal, right?

00:23:54.360 | They get a job, they pay it back, not that big a deal.

00:23:58.840 | The people who really get hurt are the people who have pushed into academically oriented

00:24:03.000 | tracks, but whose brains don't work that way.

00:24:08.320 | They go to school for three years, they pay crazy amounts of money.

00:24:12.800 | They don't have any scholarships because they didn't have good grades in high school, but

00:24:16.280 | yet they're told you got to go to college, you got to go to college, and then they drop

00:24:20.240 | out.

00:24:21.240 | And now they've got $40,000 of debt and no degree.

00:24:25.720 | Those people should not go to college.

00:24:29.040 | College is for people for whom academics come easily to them.

00:24:32.960 | If academics don't come easily to you, if academics don't come easily to your child,

00:24:37.120 | go do something that comes easily to you.

00:24:41.500 | And you'll make a lot more money and be a lot more successful and be a lot more successful

00:24:45.120 | faster.

00:24:46.120 | Right?

00:24:47.120 | I am not skilled with my hands.

00:24:48.720 | When I work with my hands, I feel like an idiot.

00:24:51.800 | I feel completely incompetent in the majority of tasks.

00:24:56.880 | Not true.

00:24:58.120 | I don't feel like it comes easily to me because I think it's important.

00:25:01.080 | I've tried to gain some basic skill, but it just doesn't work.

00:25:06.320 | Whereas for me, academic subjects are the easiest thing in the world.

00:25:10.760 | My brain works that way.

00:25:13.200 | Very good friend of mine from childhood, he's the exact opposite.

00:25:17.320 | Academics don't come to him, but when I watch him work with his hands, it's like he sees

00:25:22.240 | things in 3D, but physical things.

00:25:24.840 | He's incredibly competent.

00:25:26.520 | He's so gifted.

00:25:28.080 | And he makes a six-figure plus income as an electrician.

00:25:33.160 | He's really good.

00:25:34.780 | And he's got kind of that good mix.

00:25:36.440 | I've known guys that made six-figure incomes as welders.

00:25:40.280 | I've known guys that built huge businesses.

00:25:42.880 | So you don't need academics to become financially successful.

00:25:47.280 | And if you'll set your child whose skill set is not in academics free from the chains of

00:25:53.120 | an academically oriented society, what they'll find is tremendous opportunity in other areas.

00:25:58.640 | So that's a separate show of how to steer those children.

00:26:01.960 | But if you have a child who's academically oriented, taking classes, learning, and taking

00:26:07.040 | tests is not that big a deal.

00:26:09.640 | Requires discipline, but it's not that big a deal.

00:26:12.520 | In hindsight, the reason I failed my calculus exam, for example, was I didn't do the homework.

00:26:17.360 | Nobody came along and made sure I did the homework.

00:26:18.840 | I didn't know what I was talking about.

00:26:19.840 | I never, I just didn't pay attention in the class.

00:26:22.520 | And that's why I failed.

00:26:23.520 | It wasn't because I was not competent and I couldn't have learned.

00:26:25.480 | It was because nobody required me to learn it.

00:26:27.600 | The teacher let me slack off.

00:26:28.840 | My parents let me slack off and I failed the exam.

00:26:32.800 | AP classes though, in a standard school environment can give everything that your child needs

00:26:43.040 | to quiz out of their first year of college.

00:26:45.960 | Now you say, okay, fine, but here's the secret.

00:26:49.920 | Did you know that you don't need to be enrolled in an AP class to take an AP exam?

00:26:56.600 | Let me tell you about some of the AP exams that are available.

00:26:58.320 | I'm going to read you the list.

00:26:59.400 | Let's start with arts.

00:27:01.520 | There is a 2D art and design class, also a 3D art and design class.

00:27:06.900 | There is an art history class available.

00:27:09.620 | There is an AP drawing exam, sorry, these are exams, and an AP music theory exam.

00:27:16.480 | Depending on the exact college requirements, your child, if your child is artistically

00:27:22.120 | oriented, there is 3, 6, 12, 15, 18 credit hours, possibly more of college credit available

00:27:31.980 | for passing those AP exams.

00:27:34.240 | 18 credit hours is your child's first semester.

00:27:37.640 | And your artistically oriented child would probably really enjoy that.

00:27:41.620 | Next English, AP English language and composition, AP English literature and composition.

00:27:45.820 | Your child likes to read.

00:27:47.400 | There's six plus hours of credit available.

00:27:49.600 | The reason I say plus is that every school says what they'll accept.

00:27:54.000 | Three is about the standard for these.

00:27:56.000 | If your child gets a three, a four, or a five on the AP exam, they'll probably get three

00:27:59.760 | hours of college credit.

00:28:02.020 | Some colleges will give more than three hours, so it's possibly more.

00:28:06.220 | What about history and social sciences?

00:28:07.880 | Well, here are the AP exams that are available.

00:28:10.480 | Comparative government and politics, European history, human geography, macroeconomics,

00:28:16.120 | microeconomics, psychology, United States government and politics, United States history,

00:28:21.360 | world history, modern.

00:28:22.360 | There are 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27 hours of potential history and social science

00:28:32.040 | credits.

00:28:33.040 | Huge, hugely powerful.

00:28:35.360 | Next math and computer science, AP calculus AB, AP calculus BC, AP computer science A,

00:28:41.400 | and AP computer science principles and AP statistics.

00:28:44.040 | For your mathematically oriented children, huge number of math credits available.

00:28:48.120 | Sciences, AP biology, AP chemistry, AP environmental science, AP physics one and two, algebra based,

00:28:55.720 | AP physics C, electricity and magnetism, and AP physics C mechanics.

00:29:00.360 | Tons of science credits available there.

00:29:02.200 | AP world languages and cultures, there's an AP Chinese language and culture, AP French

00:29:06.520 | language and culture, AP German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish language and culture, also

00:29:10.880 | Spanish literature and culture, and Latin.

00:29:13.480 | So if your child is studying Latin, go ahead and pass the AP Latin exam and get the college

00:29:18.440 | credit.

00:29:19.440 | There are something like 38, I didn't count these fresh here, but almost 40 different

00:29:23.360 | credits that your child can take.

00:29:24.680 | But here's the secret.

00:29:26.200 | Your child might be enrolled currently in AP, there's no AP chem, yeah, AP chemistry,

00:29:30.920 | or AP calculus, great.

00:29:33.560 | But they can take the rest of the AP exams and they don't have to be enrolled in the

00:29:37.280 | course.

00:29:39.280 | And the AP, the AP is done by the college board.

00:29:42.400 | The college board is actually providing right now free online courses for AP classes.

00:29:47.360 | So if your child is at home, they're already taking school online, go ahead and have them

00:29:52.120 | take these AP classes and pass the exam at the end of the year.

00:29:56.440 | The courses are being taught online for free by the college board.

00:30:00.080 | There are also tons of courses available.

00:30:02.160 | I was recently looking at a math curriculum.

00:30:04.520 | My wife and I were talking about what we're going to do for this next year for our children's

00:30:08.080 | math curricula.

00:30:09.680 | And as we were discussing it, there's a math program that I admire and I was looking at

00:30:18.040 | the requirements.

00:30:19.040 | So they've got all of the math, algebra, they've got, which get to the algebra test in this

00:30:25.000 | moment, they've got algebra, they've got calculus, and then they got AP physics, AP chemistry,

00:30:29.440 | everything is there with one math curriculum.

00:30:30.920 | And the price of the course is a hundred and something dollars.

00:30:34.080 | The teacher is awesome.

00:30:35.480 | Everything is video based and it's a homeschool course, totally available.

00:30:39.040 | And so if your child, even if your child is still enrolled in the local government school

00:30:42.400 | or something like that, you can just sign them up for the homeschool course.

00:30:46.280 | Easier if you just pull them out of the local school, but it's all right there.

00:30:49.360 | And that's the power.

00:30:50.560 | Now why don't most parents do this?

00:30:52.800 | Most parents don't do this because their child is enrolled in a traditional school, local

00:30:56.240 | private school, local government school, and they want their child to be there with their

00:31:00.760 | friends.

00:31:01.760 | They've already got eight classes there.

00:31:02.840 | They've got too much homework.

00:31:03.840 | How can you add more on top of that?

00:31:05.640 | But if your child already can't go there, if they have to do school online anyway, why

00:31:09.880 | not unenroll them from all the dumb stuff and enroll them in AP classes?

00:31:16.240 | For an academically bright student, you buy them an AP manual, a review manual, say, "Read

00:31:21.400 | this book, take this test."

00:31:24.280 | I'll get to this more when I talk about CLEP in just a moment, but my basic assumption,

00:31:29.720 | assuming that my children are academically competent for their high school career, again,

00:31:35.960 | all of this open to proper judgment of a parent, adjusting to the unique nature of his children.

00:31:41.960 | But for my children in high school career, what I basically plan to do is to say, "Here's

00:31:46.360 | a book.

00:31:47.920 | Read this book, learn it, take this exam."

00:31:51.640 | We don't do in our homeschool.

00:31:52.720 | We don't do any tests.

00:31:53.960 | We don't do any quizzes.

00:31:54.960 | We don't do any of that junk.

00:31:56.600 | We just learn and we do the work every day.

00:32:00.960 | I would do the same thing in high school.

00:32:02.600 | Here's the book, learn this, pass it.

00:32:05.720 | Here's the book on United States government and politics, learn this textbook, pass it.

00:32:10.160 | Now I'm good at that.

00:32:11.160 | That's what I've done with all my master's degree.

00:32:12.880 | I did the entire thing.

00:32:13.880 | I have a master's degree in financial planning.

00:32:14.880 | The entire thing was ship me a textbook or two or three.

00:32:17.720 | I read the textbook.

00:32:18.720 | I take a test.

00:32:19.720 | That was it.

00:32:21.440 | Did that, I don't know, a dozen or two times and wound up with a master's degree.

00:32:26.160 | And that's the power of it.

00:32:27.400 | But again, that's why I try to give you the caution on you have to make sure your child

00:32:34.320 | is academically inclined.

00:32:35.400 | To me, I thrive in this environment.

00:32:37.360 | Your child might thrive in this environment.

00:32:38.600 | I would have thrived in this environment as a high school student.

00:32:42.920 | Your child may not.

00:32:43.920 | So just for that.

00:32:45.200 | But there's 30-something courses.

00:32:46.880 | And even if your child is not enrolled in an AP class, they can still take an AP exam.

00:32:53.200 | Anybody can take an AP exam.

00:32:55.240 | Now the limitation of the AP exam is they're offered once per year, May generally.

00:33:01.060 | And so you have to take them all at one time.

00:33:02.960 | So that can be a very tiring week if you're taking five AP exams or 10 AP exams, but you

00:33:07.280 | can take them.

00:33:08.460 | And there's no limit on the number of them that you can take.

00:33:10.600 | You just simply have to arrange it and do them all during May of that year.

00:33:15.360 | Now at the moment, it's my understanding though, that they're administering these exams at

00:33:18.000 | home, which is a totally separate opportunity.

00:33:20.600 | Where now you don't even necessarily have to go into the school, but we'll see what

00:33:23.240 | happens in May of 2021.

00:33:25.640 | Now what comes next?

00:33:27.560 | Well next we come to CLEP exams.

00:33:29.640 | CLEP exams are college level examination programs, which are given basically the same rating

00:33:36.320 | or weight as AP exams.

00:33:39.840 | If you pass the CLEP exam at the appropriate level required by the school, generally 50

00:33:43.920 | points, sometimes a little bit higher, depending on the school, your school will give you a

00:33:47.360 | certain amount of credit.

00:33:48.520 | Let me go through some of the options that are available here.

00:33:51.040 | CLEP exams, composition, and actually before I do it, let me, let me notate this for you.

00:33:55.160 | The neat thing about CLEP exams is CLEP exams are available to anybody.

00:33:58.920 | Can be a child, can be an adult.

00:34:01.580 | So if you as an adult wish to finish a four-year college degree, a bachelor's degree, this

00:34:06.760 | is your ticket to getting college credit quickly.

00:34:08.840 | If you can do this, if you can sit, read a book, take an online class, right?

00:34:13.560 | You can use a teacher.

00:34:14.960 | You can give your children teachers if they need teachers, give them an online class.

00:34:18.200 | If there are things that they need the teacher's input, great.

00:34:20.680 | If it can't be learned well from the book, give them the teacher and have them do that.

00:34:24.680 | But the CLEP exams can be taken by anybody and CLEP exams can be taken around the clock.

00:34:29.000 | They don't have to be taken at any particular time of the year.

00:34:31.360 | So let's go over the current CLEP exams.

00:34:33.400 | First, composition and literature.

00:34:35.840 | American literature.

00:34:37.680 | Analyzing and interpreting literature.

00:34:39.920 | College composition.

00:34:41.000 | College composition modular.

00:34:42.880 | English literature and humanities.

00:34:44.880 | There are six courses where if your student passes those exams, which I don't know, I've

00:34:51.800 | always found that stuff pretty easy.

00:34:53.480 | Some people don't.

00:34:54.540 | But if your student passes those exams, there are potentially 18 credit hours of work.

00:35:00.840 | Now here is what's interesting.

00:35:03.280 | If you're going to take an exam on American literature, let's say you're going to take

00:35:05.520 | a ninth grade English class, right?

00:35:08.640 | Most of us took in ninth grade some kind of English class.

00:35:12.680 | But all you got for that at the end of the year was ninth grade English credit.

00:35:18.000 | Why not just simply adjust your ninth grade English class to adjust, to fit the needs

00:35:23.840 | for this college composition exam?

00:35:25.560 | I know it says college, but come on, give me a break.

00:35:29.080 | Bright ninth grader with practice, very well do this.

00:35:33.480 | English literature.

00:35:34.600 | Why not just simply adjust your 10th grade class to the syllabus and the things that

00:35:39.400 | are going to be tested in this English literature exam?

00:35:42.160 | In a homeschool, you have all this as a possibility.

00:35:45.760 | So you adjust your curriculum to these CLEP exams and you map the courses to the exams

00:35:52.040 | and your child's final test at the end of the study period is pass this exam.

00:35:58.320 | Now if you had given Joshua, the 10th grader, this as an option, and you told Joshua, "Here,

00:36:03.280 | your job is just study this and then test the exam.

00:36:07.240 | And whenever you're ready, let me know."

00:36:08.920 | And some of those I could do in two weeks, some of those I could do in two months.

00:36:11.520 | One of them might take me two years, who knows?

00:36:13.880 | Now we've got the ultimate in broad-based education, getting college credit, and it's

00:36:19.120 | just at the pace of the student.

00:36:21.000 | Study, take the exam.

00:36:22.360 | Let's continue.

00:36:23.360 | World languages, French language, German language, Spanish language, and Spanish with writing.

00:36:28.600 | Four different exams there.

00:36:30.320 | History and social sciences, American government, history of the United States one and history

00:36:34.680 | of the United States two.

00:36:36.160 | I mean, pause.

00:36:37.160 | If you're going to take a history class, why not just map the content of the history class

00:36:43.160 | to the CLEP exam and make sure that component, one of your history texts as you're hammering

00:36:49.840 | home the real point of history that really needs to be learned using your living books,

00:36:55.120 | using your primary sources, using your, you know, whatever professor you're going to use,

00:36:59.640 | just map that and then have the capstone requirement of that course for your ninth grader, your

00:37:03.640 | tenth grader be, read this CLEP exam review book of the history of the United States,

00:37:11.600 | read this book, take these practice tests and go past this exam.

00:37:17.160 | I'm not, I appreciate that this can be challenging for many students, but for a bright student

00:37:23.920 | or for a disciplined student, this is very doable.

00:37:26.320 | There are lots of students that are doing it.

00:37:27.600 | And there's no real difference in academic ability between a disciplined and mature tenth

00:37:34.160 | grader or a disciplined and mature 15 year old and a disciplined and mature 20 year old.

00:37:38.720 | There's nothing magically that happens at the age of 18 where somebody's academic levels

00:37:43.480 | come up.

00:37:44.480 | And so if you can instill discipline and character in your children such that they can do this

00:37:48.660 | and put an orderly environment in place where they're expected to study and expected to

00:37:52.080 | do it, you can basically skip college with this path.

00:37:56.960 | Continuing on, human growth and development.

00:38:00.000 | Your child needs to understand about the human body and growth and development, map their

00:38:03.560 | content to the CLEP exam.

00:38:06.480 | Introduction to educational psychology, introduction to psychology, introductory sociology.

00:38:10.600 | Don't you think that most of us should study a little bit about psychology and understand

00:38:15.480 | at least the basics?

00:38:16.480 | Wouldn't that be important?

00:38:19.200 | Principles of macroeconomics, principles of microeconomics, social sciences and history,

00:38:24.760 | western civilization one, ancient near east to 1648, western civilization two, 1648 to

00:38:29.200 | the present.

00:38:30.960 | Most of that, a good history curriculum could knock out your western civ one and two and

00:38:37.940 | history of the United States one and two with CLEP exams at the end of the course of study.

00:38:42.880 | Science and mathematics.

00:38:44.080 | Here's what's interesting.

00:38:45.160 | First biology.

00:38:46.160 | If your child's going to take a high school biology class, just map it to the, map the

00:38:51.480 | requirements to the CLEP exam and have them read the CLEP review book for their biology

00:38:56.680 | book and at the end of it take the exam.

00:38:58.640 | I'm going to change the order here.

00:39:01.320 | There's college mathematics is a CLEP exam.

00:39:04.920 | Now college mathematics is interesting but it's a lot of arithmetics, not algebra, a

00:39:08.360 | lot of arithmetic.

00:39:11.360 | Your child who's taking math, who's good at math can read the prep book, pass the exam.

00:39:17.760 | Next college algebra.

00:39:19.440 | Why not finish your algebra class and have the capstone requirement of your high school

00:39:24.080 | algebra class take the college algebra CLEP exam?

00:39:27.440 | There's not that big of a difference between, I mean there's a good, high school algebra

00:39:31.360 | class is the same as a good college algebra class.

00:39:33.480 | We're not talking about differential equations here, it's algebra.

00:39:36.960 | Next chemistry, calculus, natural sciences and pre-calculus.

00:39:41.760 | So right there if you've got college mathematics, college algebra, pre-calculus and calculus,

00:39:46.480 | if you map your high school students study to those four exams, they take the class,

00:39:52.040 | take the math curriculum, build the skills, read the review book, practice the exercises,

00:39:57.460 | take the pre-test and then take the exam, you now have with those four classes you now

00:40:02.160 | have 12 credits, 12 college credits.

00:40:06.240 | And then business, financial accounting, information systems, introductory business law, principles

00:40:12.960 | of management, principles of marketing.

00:40:15.720 | Again total potential of 15 credit hours if they pass all those CLEP exams.

00:40:24.240 | That's a lot of potential credit hours.

00:40:26.040 | We're now going to pivot to the third program, less known, not quite as widely available

00:40:32.000 | but still perfectly applicable.

00:40:35.200 | The DSST exams, Department of Military exams, the Dante exams.

00:40:40.240 | I'm going to read fast but listen to these titles of exams.

00:40:44.240 | The nice thing about the DSST exams also often accepted for college credit by many colleges,

00:40:49.760 | also often accepted for college credit but these are a little bit more granular in nature.

00:40:53.720 | They focus on more subject matter.

00:40:55.900 | And so your child can often, they can prepare for these, right?

00:40:59.040 | Study.com has a lot of great resources for DSST classes.

00:41:02.700 | They can prepare for these exams and they can take them and they're smaller chunks than

00:41:08.120 | the AP US History exam.

00:41:10.200 | So let's cover them.

00:41:11.200 | Forgive the thunderstorm outside my window.

00:41:16.360 | Sorry about that.

00:41:19.360 | Continuing on, the business courses for DSST, business ethics and society, business mathematics.

00:41:25.960 | Now pause for a moment here.

00:41:29.960 | You want your child to understand business mathematics, right?

00:41:35.920 | That's basic knowledge.

00:41:37.440 | That's mathematics 101.

00:41:38.780 | That's every business owner needs to understand business mathematics.

00:41:41.600 | This is not difficult stuff for those who are academically inclined.

00:41:45.400 | It's not hard.

00:41:47.360 | So have your child take the DSST exam and pass the DSST exam and now we've got some

00:41:52.240 | real benefits for their math studies.

00:41:54.520 | Instead of just saying, yes, you took ninth grade math, 10th grade math, 11th grade math,

00:41:57.800 | 12th grade math, have them take business mathematics.

00:42:01.000 | It's going to be much more practical than ninth grade math.

00:42:04.720 | Business ethics and society, business mathematics, human resource management, introduction to

00:42:09.540 | business, management information systems, organizational behavior, money and banking.

00:42:17.280 | Personal finance class, right?

00:42:18.280 | We say we want to teach our children personal finance, have them take the DSST exam for

00:42:21.420 | money and banking.

00:42:23.100 | Personal finance, take the personal finance exam.

00:42:26.820 | Principles of finance, principles of supervision.

00:42:29.700 | Now the humanities, ethics in America, introduction to world religions, principles of public speaking,

00:42:36.840 | principles of advanced English, composition, math, fundamentals of college algebra, principles

00:42:42.100 | of statistics, math for liberal arts, physical science, astronomy, environmental science,

00:42:49.460 | health and development, principles of physical science one and introduction to geology.

00:42:54.440 | Social sciences, how about this?

00:42:55.440 | A history of the Vietnam War.

00:42:58.220 | I think that'd be super interesting, but take the class, get the college credit for it.

00:43:02.660 | Take the exam.

00:43:03.660 | Art of the Western world, criminal justice, foundations of education, fundamentals of

00:43:07.260 | counseling, general anthropology, introduction to geography, introduction to law enforcement,

00:43:12.900 | lifespan developmental psychology, history of the Soviet Union, substance abuse, the

00:43:18.060 | Civil War and reconstruction, and then technology, fundamentals of cybersecurity and technical

00:43:22.380 | writing ethics and technology.

00:43:24.480 | So now to your high school student, right?

00:43:26.060 | Why not go ahead and have them take the substance abuse class as part of their general understanding

00:43:31.580 | of the dangers of substance abuse and get some college credit for it.

00:43:36.420 | There are other options for education.

00:43:38.500 | I'm, for example, ignoring GRE subject matter exams.

00:43:41.820 | I'm ignoring dual enrollment, right?

00:43:44.340 | Your child could always just enroll in a local community college.

00:43:47.740 | There are many options.

00:43:49.060 | I'm just talking about taking exams.

00:43:51.900 | These are three broad sets of exams that you can simply take.

00:43:57.140 | Now conceivably, there's the limit as to the number of college credits that your child

00:44:04.260 | could get here is pretty high.

00:44:07.220 | If there is something like 35 exams available for each of these, in theory, if the child

00:44:11.100 | took all of them, that'd be 105 exams, which in theory would be 315 credit hours.

00:44:15.580 | Now we'll talk about the limitations of this, but so that you understand the American college

00:44:19.300 | system, in the American college system, a four-year bachelor's degree basically requires

00:44:24.060 | a student to complete 120 credit hours of instruction.

00:44:29.380 | A credit hour is considered to be one hour per week of class during the course of a,

00:44:35.460 | what is it, a 16-week semester?

00:44:36.820 | I don't remember, 12-week, 14-week, something like that, a semester.

00:44:41.220 | And so in the course of that semester, if you have a three credit hour class, you have

00:44:45.740 | class for three hours a week.

00:44:47.360 | Sometimes that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, sometimes it's Tuesday and Thursday, sometimes

00:44:50.000 | three hours on Saturday, depending on how the college is set up.

00:44:52.940 | And the average full-time credit load is considered to be 12 hours up to 18 hours.

00:44:58.440 | Of course, you can take more.

00:44:59.920 | I don't think I ever took more than 18, but I did take 18 some hours, as little as 12

00:45:05.880 | one semester.

00:45:07.000 | And so that's 12 hours in a week up to 18 hours in a week.

00:45:10.080 | Trust me, doing this on your own is far more efficient from a time perspective.

00:45:18.240 | And it's just a tremendous opportunity.

00:45:21.420 | From a financial perspective, what do these things cost?

00:45:23.520 | Well, every CLEP exam costs you, I think it's like about 90 bucks.

00:45:27.520 | AP exams cost you something in the range of 100 bucks.

00:45:30.360 | Let's just figure 100 bucks each.

00:45:32.600 | 100 bucks for three credit hours of class is a tremendous steal of a deal.

00:45:39.560 | You'll probably also need to pick up a couple of books, some review books.

00:45:43.320 | Of course, you'll need textbooks.

00:45:47.480 | Those vary in cost.

00:45:48.480 | You might need to enroll your child in a course, but this is nothing like the tuition costs

00:45:52.880 | that most colleges are giving.

00:45:55.680 | So there are plenty of options available here for college credit.

00:45:59.320 | Now, back to the opportunity of coronavirus.

00:46:02.060 | Why don't people do this more?

00:46:03.060 | Well, they say, "I need the benefit of being on campus."

00:46:05.360 | Well, you're not on campus right now anyway.

00:46:08.340 | If you're a college student listening to me, you're not on campus right now anyway.

00:46:11.520 | So why don't you just go ahead and take some of these exams yourself if you don't have

00:46:14.740 | a full slot of transfer credits by exam for your university and speed your way up?

00:46:21.760 | If your high school student is not in class anyway, just have them do this.

00:46:24.740 | If you're sitting at home taking classes online, what's the difference if you take classes

00:46:28.440 | online and then take the exam or not?

00:46:30.920 | Just do it.

00:46:32.320 | You don't need to be enrolled.

00:46:33.320 | Take the exam.

00:46:34.320 | This is a fast way to get a lot of college credits.

00:46:37.000 | Now what's the limiting factor here?

00:46:38.740 | What you need to understand is that of those 120 credit hours, most colleges limit the

00:46:45.580 | number of transfer credits that they will accept and they limit the number of credits

00:46:50.720 | by examination that they will accept.

00:46:52.960 | So if you go to the local state university, that state university says, "We think that

00:46:59.000 | the only – if we're going to give you a degree, then that degree needs to indicate

00:47:03.360 | that we've had control of the quality of your education because we have to protect

00:47:06.560 | the quality of our product," which means that we're going to require you to take 60

00:47:12.160 | or 90 hours of instruction here on our campus.

00:47:16.280 | Totally fine to do that.

00:47:17.840 | That's within their rights.

00:47:19.440 | Some prestigious universities – most universities will accept something.

00:47:23.880 | You go to the most prestigious university and you took all your AP exams, they'll usually

00:47:27.640 | give you some credit.

00:47:29.100 | But most won't give you more than 30 hours of credit.

00:47:32.800 | Certainly most won't give you more than 60 hours of credit.

00:47:35.240 | Here's where the opportunity is.

00:47:36.960 | There are a handful of universities that will give you more credit.

00:47:41.200 | There are a handful of them.

00:47:42.200 | They're discussed online.

00:47:43.960 | There's a few of them.

00:47:45.200 | You can – I'm just trying to decide whether to name names or not.

00:47:50.360 | I'll name one.

00:47:51.360 | One of the most popular ones is Thomas Edison State University.

00:47:54.400 | Thomas Edison State University, speaking broadly, does not limit the number of transfer credits

00:48:00.040 | they'll accept.

00:48:01.240 | So it's possible to go into a college such as Thomas Edison State University and possibly

00:48:08.600 | come in with 80 or 90 or 100 credits.

00:48:11.360 | I think they might limit it at 90.

00:48:13.000 | But you'll come in with a lot of credit hours.

00:48:15.160 | Now they will require some of the courses online.

00:48:17.200 | You won't be able to get a degree in a certain subject without taking more courses than is

00:48:21.200 | required.

00:48:22.200 | In a moment I'll talk to you about accounting.

00:48:23.200 | But for example, you're not going to get an accounting degree unless you take some

00:48:26.040 | upper level accounting.

00:48:27.440 | You can quiz out of possibly some of your lower information if you take the DSST exam

00:48:32.700 | on business or on financial accounting – sorry, the CLEP exam on financial accounting.

00:48:37.140 | That could help you to quiz out.

00:48:38.560 | That's great of the introductory one.

00:48:40.560 | But you're still going to have to take your advanced managerial, et cetera, accounting.

00:48:44.000 | So if you choose a school that will give you credit for those exams, you now have an interesting

00:48:50.680 | opportunity.

00:48:51.680 | I want to talk about Thomas Edison.

00:48:52.680 | Thomas Edison, one of the more popular, a handful of others that you can look into.

00:48:56.120 | But Thomas Edison is very popular because they allow you to take these courses.

00:49:02.480 | But what they also do is they do online classes for the rest of their classes.

00:49:06.280 | They have extremely reasonable tuition.

00:49:12.040 | So if you're going to take classes anyway and you're going to take all your classes

00:49:16.200 | online anyway, now all of a sudden the disadvantage of taking all virtual classes at Thomas Edison

00:49:23.160 | State University versus your local prestigious state university starts to disappear.

00:49:32.240 | So you transfer into Thomas Edison with 90 credit hours of examination by – of credit

00:49:38.980 | by examination.

00:49:40.480 | And then you go ahead and do another 30 credit hours with them towards a degree.

00:49:45.220 | You got to map your credits, of course, to a degree because they're an accredited university.

00:49:49.520 | They're going to make sure – they got to make sure that they – you satisfy their

00:49:52.160 | degree program so you got to map all your stuff out properly.

00:49:55.320 | But now you have one year.

00:49:57.480 | But here's the thing.

00:49:58.480 | These are online classes.

00:49:59.480 | And so if you've got time, you can do these fast.

00:50:02.040 | You can do these very, very fast.

00:50:03.040 | Now, there are a bunch of other classes out there.

00:50:05.800 | I've got tons of archives of this stuff.

00:50:07.920 | I should put it into a course at some point.

00:50:09.920 | But that's the basic concept.

00:50:13.040 | Quiz out of a bunch of stuff by just simply studying it, taking the exam.

00:50:17.160 | Study, take the exam.

00:50:18.540 | And then finish off at a university that will give you a huge amount of credit for a degree

00:50:26.600 | by examination and then go ahead and take your final courses there.

00:50:30.360 | And you can do this for a few thousands of dollars.

00:50:33.280 | Now let me give you an example.

00:50:35.480 | This doesn't, by the way, only apply to undergraduate studies.

00:50:38.140 | You can also do this for graduate studies.

00:50:40.360 | And I've talked over the years about my interest in accounting.

00:50:44.560 | I'm interested in accounting personally for obvious reasons, right?

00:50:47.160 | I'm a financial advisor.

00:50:49.680 | But I've often thought that accounting is one of those really nice careers.

00:50:55.120 | Some accountants really love their work.

00:50:56.440 | Some accountants don't.

00:50:57.960 | But accounting is one of those really useful practical skills to develop.

00:51:02.160 | Let me explain why.

00:51:03.720 | And this is, if I have a student who's mathematically oriented, this is the kind of advice that I

00:51:09.040 | would give my high school student.

00:51:11.080 | This would be bad for someone who just hates numbers.

00:51:12.880 | But for someone who's competent with numbers, this would be a perfectly good thing.

00:51:17.060 | Accounting is a career that is in demand.

00:51:19.200 | The only time that the demand for accounting is going to go away is if you go into a hyperinflationary

00:51:22.920 | world.

00:51:24.200 | In Venezuela right now, there are no accountants.

00:51:26.460 | All the accountants that previously were accountants, their business disappeared, and they are all

00:51:31.400 | farmers now or gardeners.

00:51:33.800 | Because it's impossible to do accounting in a hyperinflated currency.

00:51:39.160 | Just there's no way to do it.

00:51:41.280 | And what's interesting is even the whole concept of bookkeeping and accounting disappears when

00:51:45.280 | you're dealing with, because you're dealing with physical stuff, physical trade.

00:51:50.240 | If you're dealing with money at all, you're dealing with a backpack full of taped together

00:51:54.760 | bundles of useless bank notes.

00:51:57.760 | And so the whole concept of accounting just goes out the window.

00:52:00.680 | Absent that though, accounting is one of those professions that's in demand.

00:52:03.680 | You need accounting to make good business decisions.

00:52:06.440 | You need tax accountants who are going to prepare tax returns.

00:52:09.240 | Taxes are not going to become less complex.

00:52:11.500 | And so it's one of those things that's in demand.

00:52:13.360 | I think that accounting is a really good industry.

00:52:17.000 | It's a seasonal industry.

00:52:18.000 | It comes with a lot of work if you work for a big accounting firm, but it's a seasonal

00:52:22.160 | industry.

00:52:23.160 | It's an area of expertise.

00:52:24.240 | Not a lot of people are suited for it.

00:52:25.520 | Some people are.

00:52:26.520 | I've often looked at accounting as a really ideal kind of seasonal employment.

00:52:31.560 | If somebody is a seasonal tax preparer and they want to live that kind of seasonal employment

00:52:38.320 | lifestyle where they work six months, they're off for six months, et cetera, you can do

00:52:42.000 | that as an accountant.

00:52:43.000 | You can earn a reasonable wage in your months of work and you can take the other months

00:52:46.920 | off, go hang out in your RV in Mexico, that kind of thing.

00:52:51.040 | But accounting has significant licensing requirements.

00:52:53.440 | And so you have to have education requirements.

00:52:55.920 | You have to have licensing requirements.

00:52:57.620 | And as with any licensing scheme, that is a cartel that restricts the flow of people

00:53:03.580 | into it.

00:53:04.580 | So if you want to get into it, you've got to pass all of those licensing requirements.

00:53:07.640 | That means that the cartel can impose artificially high wages because there is a barrier of entry.

00:53:14.120 | So once you're part of that cartel, once you're part of there, you have a little bit of protection

00:53:17.920 | for your industry.

00:53:20.000 | But accounting is also one of those things that you don't need to be a certain age.

00:53:23.400 | There are young accountants, there are old accountants.

00:53:25.280 | And so let's say that you give me Joshua's hypothetical 14-year-old.

00:53:31.320 | And my hypothetical 14-year-old is interested in a lot of different things, probably going

00:53:35.920 | to do some kind of entrepreneurship or some kind of passion project or some kind of business

00:53:41.440 | that they're really into.

00:53:43.040 | But they understand that, "Hey, Joshua, just going to prepare me for a career.

00:53:47.440 | And I'm going to have a backup plan."

00:53:49.240 | So we work them through their high school curriculum, right?

00:53:51.680 | You want your children to have a well-rounded education.

00:53:54.020 | But what you do is you map their classes to these CLEP exams.

00:53:58.920 | And the deal that I would make with my student is this.

00:54:02.480 | Listen, if you want to get this stuff done fast, I've always been motivated by get this

00:54:06.680 | stuff done fast.

00:54:07.680 | If you want to get this stuff done fast, pass this exam.

00:54:10.920 | So let's say that you're not that into science, but I, as your father, believe that you need

00:54:15.080 | to know something about basic science.

00:54:18.200 | Great.

00:54:19.480 | Here is a biology textbook, and we'll sign you up for the biology CLEP exam.

00:54:25.080 | You read this textbook, you pass the exam.

00:54:27.400 | You can do it as fast or as slow as you want, but you're required to pass this exam.

00:54:32.520 | Some students give them the textbook, two weeks later, the textbook is read.

00:54:35.760 | They've memorized what they needed to memorize for the exam, pass the exam.

00:54:38.880 | They now proceed to forget everything about biology that they don't need for the rest

00:54:43.000 | of their life.

00:54:45.160 | Supplement that with, here's a psychology, right?

00:54:46.880 | You want to study psychology, pass this psychology CLEP exam, pass this AP chemistry exam.

00:54:51.960 | And now we've got everything mapped to them.

00:54:55.200 | Once they have a significant number of credits with broad credits, hopefully mapped to a

00:55:00.120 | degree so that we're not just taking every CLEP exam and every AP exam just because we

00:55:05.680 | can, we're going to map this to a degree.

00:55:08.120 | Then we go ahead and enroll them at something like Thomas Edison State University.

00:55:13.080 | So in this case, I would actually enroll them in the business degree that they offer there.

00:55:18.200 | Now I'm focusing on an example for accounting, but Thomas Edison University offers a Bachelor

00:55:23.360 | of Science in Business Administration with a specialization in accounting and CPA and

00:55:31.080 | certified public accountant specialization.

00:55:33.480 | And so let me just read you, for example, from their website.

00:55:36.240 | The Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Accounting Certified Public Accountant

00:55:39.680 | Specialization is designed specifically for accounting students interested in pursuing

00:55:43.720 | CPA certification.

00:55:45.280 | The program ensures college level competence of financial, managerial, and cost accounting,

00:55:49.880 | analyzing performance and auditing, as well as the principles of finance, business, and

00:55:54.000 | the arts and sciences.

00:55:55.520 | The BS/BA in accounting/CPA will provide CPA bound students with the prerequisites required

00:56:00.360 | to sit for the CPA exam in the state of New Jersey.

00:56:03.320 | The degree is a 120 credit program.

00:56:05.800 | Upon graduation, students can seamlessly integrate the program into the CPA and master's track,

00:56:10.840 | which I'll come to in just a moment.

00:56:14.280 | Now listen to the overall plan of earning this degree.

00:56:19.720 | Professional education requirements, intellectual practical skills, written communication, oral

00:56:24.320 | communication, quantitative...

00:56:26.320 | Let me pause.

00:56:27.320 | Written communication would map very nicely to something like the CLEP exam for American

00:56:34.520 | literature or for college composition or for English literature.

00:56:38.440 | The oral communication would map very nicely to the...

00:56:43.600 | What was it?

00:56:44.600 | The DSST exam in public speaking.

00:56:49.160 | Principles of public speaking.

00:56:51.320 | Quantitative literacy, that would map well to some kind of math course.

00:56:55.360 | Information literacy.

00:56:56.360 | Then, civic and global learning, diversity, ethics, civic engagement, knowledge of human

00:57:01.400 | cultures.

00:57:02.400 | Nine credits from that.

00:57:04.640 | Understanding the physical and natural world, four to seven credits.

00:57:07.080 | Mathematics, three credits.

00:57:08.720 | General education electives.

00:57:10.280 | So you could pretty much knock out those first 60 credits easily for Thomas Edison with those

00:57:17.680 | CLEP exams.

00:57:18.680 | Now, professional business requirements.

00:57:20.760 | Financial accounting, three hours of financial accounting.

00:57:22.840 | That would map very nicely to the CLEP exam on principles of financial accounting.

00:57:32.040 | Managerial accounting, that would not map.

00:57:33.560 | So you'd have to take the managerial class.

00:57:35.960 | Business law would map very nicely to the CLEP exam for introductory business law.

00:57:42.600 | Principles of management, that might map very nicely.

00:57:45.160 | And I don't know this, I'm just going based upon an educated perspective, but I haven't

00:57:48.520 | called them and talked to them.

00:57:49.520 | You have to do this with every college.

00:57:51.120 | But that might map very nicely of a business law to, sorry, principles of management to

00:57:57.000 | the, what was it?

00:57:59.960 | It was the CLEP exam.

00:58:01.280 | Yeah, principles of management CLEP exam.

00:58:04.920 | Computer concepts and applications.

00:58:07.080 | Introduction to marketing, that would map very well to the CLEP exam.

00:58:11.240 | Principles of marketing.

00:58:12.520 | Principles of finance.

00:58:13.560 | That might map well to one of these other ones.

00:58:17.120 | Business and society or international management.

00:58:19.280 | Macroeconomics, microeconomics.

00:58:22.600 | Conveniently enough, there's an AP macroeconomics and an AP microeconomics class or exam.

00:58:28.000 | Then business and managerial communications and business administration capstone.

00:58:31.680 | That of course, any university requires their capstone to be there in their local area.

00:58:36.040 | Then you've got 24 credit hours required of accounting.

00:58:39.560 | So those are the classes that you go ahead and take from the university.

00:58:42.280 | It's all distance study, intermediate accounting one and two, advanced accounting one and two,

00:58:46.440 | auditing, federal income taxation, and then advanced level accounting and collectives

00:58:50.160 | and cost accounting and advanced audit.

00:58:52.360 | At the end of that, those online courses would take, depending on the student, they're not

00:58:57.640 | easy, but they would take a certain amount of time.

00:58:59.960 | The end of that, now you have a bachelor's degree in accounting.

00:59:03.440 | Now in addition to that, Thomas Edison State University has options where they will give

00:59:09.120 | you credit.

00:59:10.120 | They have other examinations that they'll provide for you of the, what do they call

00:59:14.320 | the TECEP exams, where they'll give you, it's the, they call them the Thomas Edison Credit

00:59:19.760 | by Examination Program.

00:59:21.480 | So they'll take, they have hundreds of different subjects that they'll allow you to take an

00:59:24.760 | exam on and demonstrate your knowledge, which can help you to just skip to have to take

00:59:29.880 | the class and they'll give you credit for it if you credit by exam.

00:59:32.760 | But in addition to that, they'll give you credit for studying for and taking the CPA

00:59:36.840 | exams.

00:59:37.840 | So now let's move on to the CPA and master's track.

00:59:39.800 | The CPA and master's track provides accountants who possess a bachelor degree, but who are

00:59:44.360 | not yet certified with an opportunity to earn the extra credits needed to become a CPA and

00:59:49.000 | earn a master's degree at the same time.

00:59:51.260 | The university can award candidates up to six credits for passing the uniform CPA exam

00:59:56.240 | and enroll them in the Master of Science and Management Program, where they can earn the

00:59:59.800 | remaining 30 credits needed for certification, as well as the master's degree.

01:00:04.160 | The MSM program focuses on the organizational leadership and integrates management theory

01:00:08.400 | and practice as they apply to the accounting industry.

01:00:11.360 | The CPA and master's track provides an affordable, flexible method to earn the 30 additional

01:00:15.680 | credit hours needed to become a CPA and enables candidates to earn a master's degree at the

01:00:19.400 | same time.

01:00:21.960 | So a student who's interested in accounting, who's competent with math, who's able to pass

01:00:26.240 | the CPA exam, makes the CPA exam their project for one year, one and a half years, whatever

01:00:32.440 | it takes.

01:00:33.440 | They pass all four sections of the CPA.

01:00:35.600 | They go ahead and do these master's degree programs.

01:00:38.120 | Now they've fulfilled all the requirements of the CPA except the experience requirement.

01:00:41.240 | We'll get to that in just a moment.

01:00:43.000 | And now they have a master's degree.

01:00:44.600 | And this is not six years of work, right?

01:00:47.360 | This is not, sorry, this is not 10 years of work.

01:00:50.240 | The average track here is four years of high school, ninth through 12th grade, then go

01:00:54.920 | get four years of college degree to get a general business degree, take four whole years

01:00:59.120 | from that, and then go and take another two years to get a master's degree.

01:01:02.400 | Now, of course, somebody who's studying and gets a degree in accounting will probably

01:01:06.120 | start sitting for the CPA the year after they're done with the four years, but this can be

01:01:10.960 | done much more quickly.

01:01:12.600 | So you give me that 15 year old, that 14 year old, this could be done by 18, 19, 20, somewhere

01:01:17.920 | like that, depending on how diligent and motivated the student is to get this done.

01:01:22.760 | It's well within the competency of a motivated student who has good character, who's willing

01:01:31.320 | to study on a daily basis to finish this up in a few years.

01:01:36.620 | Could it be done by 18?

01:01:37.920 | Could be.

01:01:38.920 | Could it be done by 19?

01:01:39.920 | Absolutely.

01:01:40.920 | Could it be done by 20?

01:01:41.920 | Certainly.

01:01:42.920 | For a motivated, competent student, absolutely.

01:01:45.480 | And so now you have a student who has a master's degree in accounting, a CPA license, and the

01:01:51.280 | only thing that's missing for the CPA, of course, is you have to fulfill this experience

01:01:54.160 | requirement.

01:01:55.160 | What I would do is I would make sure that I have my student working along the way.

01:01:58.760 | I would find a local accountant and I would have them volunteer and help volunteer and

01:02:02.560 | or help the accountant and do work as a bookkeeper in the accountant's office every afternoon.

01:02:07.200 | I would encourage them to devote the first half of their day to academics and then work

01:02:11.960 | from say one o'clock to five o'clock, four hours every afternoon for a local accountant.

01:02:16.520 | And over time they build up the accounting experience, they start working with clients,

01:02:19.480 | they do bookkeeping, they learn the relevant software.

01:02:22.200 | I would have them do a certification course in QuickBooks, et cetera, learn and get some

01:02:26.360 | certifications for the use of the applicable accounting software.

01:02:31.000 | And they could go ahead and build a little side hustle of doing tax returns for people

01:02:34.360 | on their own.

01:02:35.920 | They can do that locally, they can do that internationally, they can do the work right

01:02:40.680 | over the computer just like so many accountants are doing right now.

01:02:44.320 | So this is the kind of thing that provides somebody with a clear outcome and they can

01:02:49.720 | start their accounting career at with a master's degree at 18 or 20 instead of later.

01:02:56.000 | Now let's talk about a couple of downsides of this approach.

01:02:58.280 | First thing is what about the prestige of the degree?

01:03:02.120 | That does matter in some fields.

01:03:06.480 | It's extraordinarily important in some fields but in most fields it does matter.

01:03:11.800 | But in a situation like this, the couple of things I would point out.

01:03:17.040 | First if you do an undergraduate degree you can always then go on for a prestigious master's

01:03:21.080 | degree.

01:03:22.960 | It's the master's degree that you have that the brand name matters, not the undergraduate

01:03:27.600 | degree.

01:03:28.600 | It's the doctoral degree where the brand name matters, not the undergraduate degree.

01:03:32.080 | You can have an undergraduate degree from the local school but if you have a Harvard

01:03:36.040 | MBA, what everyone notices is I've got the Harvard MBA.

01:03:40.000 | Doesn't really matter what your local school is but if you got a decent GPA and you got

01:03:45.000 | a 180 on your LSAT and you went to Harvard Law School or to Columbia or whatever, now

01:03:49.840 | that's what matters for the prestige perspective.

01:03:52.080 | Prestige does matter but not in all fields.

01:03:55.200 | Number two, this kind of approach actually gives you a really valuable form of prestige.

01:04:00.720 | What my experience has been that people who are screening job candidates are often looking

01:04:06.720 | for these kinds of stories.

01:04:08.040 | For example, when I was applying for jobs after college I had an interesting story to

01:04:12.540 | present and I would put this on my resume.

01:04:15.520 | I would say I graduated, I self-funded my education at a private university and I graduated

01:04:21.780 | debt free.

01:04:23.080 | They would ask me about that and I would explain the story of how I got out of debt my senior

01:04:26.360 | year of college and how I worked 40 hours a week, I took 18 hours of class, I got straight

01:04:30.760 | A's and how it totally transformed my life.

01:04:34.280 | At that point in time, the career, the particular name of the college didn't matter nearly as

01:04:42.480 | much as the specifics of my story.

01:04:45.480 | In a situation like this, if I've got a degree from Thomas Edison State University and I'm

01:04:50.240 | applying for a job, I'm going to tell somebody I got my degree from Thomas Edison State University

01:04:53.760 | at 17 years old.

01:04:54.760 | Let me tell you how I did it.

01:04:55.760 | I wanted to save money and not come out of school with $80,000 of student loan debt and

01:04:59.040 | we did this, we spent a total of $7,822 on it and I would tell the story.

01:05:03.520 | It separates you as being a hardworking, self-starter, motivated, ambitious person and those are

01:05:09.360 | qualities that really are incredibly important in some careers.

01:05:12.540 | In addition to that, the reason I use the CPA example is that when you're in a field

01:05:17.440 | where there's a form of professional accreditation or certification, the particular degree doesn't

01:05:21.960 | really matter.

01:05:23.440 | If you're a CPA, it's the CPA diploma or certificate that you hang on the wall of your office,

01:05:30.280 | not the university.

01:05:31.620 | But the CPA requires you to have a four-year degree and to have accounting courses in order

01:05:37.680 | to get the CPA degree or credential and to pass the exam, but it's the CPA exam.

01:05:44.220 | So nobody goes into a CPA's office and says, "What college did you graduate for?"

01:05:47.400 | They look up and they see certified public accountant by the state of New Jersey.

01:05:51.440 | Boom, now we know.

01:05:52.720 | And then we come into competence.

01:05:54.140 | Is this person competent?

01:05:55.320 | Can they save me money?

01:05:56.600 | Do they know how to teach me how to set up bookkeeping, how to teach me tax savings,

01:06:00.120 | etc.?

01:06:01.120 | How good is their marketing?

01:06:02.120 | How did they find me?

01:06:03.120 | And those are the things that matter.

01:06:05.200 | So you can help a student to come out with a system like I'm describing here at 18 or

01:06:11.400 | 19 or 20 years old, and now instead of having to go to school for another two or three years

01:06:15.460 | and then start, they've already got an independent business.

01:06:18.520 | If that student has worked for an accountant locally during that period of time, they've

01:06:23.240 | built up some sideline accounting clients, that could provide the financial base that

01:06:27.800 | they need to then build on.

01:06:30.300 | Maybe they go start some other string of businesses.

01:06:32.360 | Maybe they're prone to entrepreneurship.

01:06:34.040 | Maybe they specialize.

01:06:35.040 | The world is open to them, but they've always got that college degree.

01:06:38.160 | Check, done, at an early age, with no debt, and they've got some sort of professional

01:06:42.960 | qualification.

01:06:44.320 | Now there are other careers that this kind of approach fits well for.

01:06:49.000 | I'm using a financial career, but another good career would be something like IT.

01:06:54.200 | What you want to look for when you're doing these kinds of things, you want to look for

01:06:56.800 | some kind of credentialization system based upon skills and knowledge, not based upon

01:07:02.760 | age.

01:07:03.920 | And so IT is a really good scenario.

01:07:06.480 | Thomas Edison will give you college credit for IT certifications.

01:07:11.280 | Other schools will as well.

01:07:12.680 | So if you have certifications from, what are the IT ones, Cisco, or you've got Microsoft

01:07:21.160 | certifications, all those certifications qualify you for a job, first of all, a very decent

01:07:26.400 | good job, but they additionally then get you college credit, and they can work back and

01:07:30.840 | forth.

01:07:31.840 | And so you can build something like IT.

01:07:33.480 | And if you have an 18-year-old who's got a college degree done, now they can always check

01:07:39.160 | the box, "Yep, I've got a four-year college degree," whether or not they're applying for

01:07:43.520 | a job in IT, they can do that.

01:07:46.040 | If you've got that 18-year-old also has the knowledge acquired and the professional certifications

01:07:51.560 | where they can get an IT job, nobody cares about their age.

01:07:56.080 | Now when you put this into a spreadsheet and you look at how much money somebody can have

01:08:01.160 | by starting early, it's powerful.

01:08:05.000 | One of the things that I've done, I did spreadsheets in the past, and I would say, "What if I started

01:08:10.280 | an 18-year-old and they skipped college, and they just simply started in the trades, right?

01:08:15.360 | They became an apprentice for a carpenter or an electrician or something like that.

01:08:19.280 | And instead of paying money for four years, they earn money for four years, and they come

01:08:26.720 | out, it takes a long time for the college graduate to beat them.

01:08:30.000 | Even if you assume the college graduate has a higher starting pay.

01:08:34.000 | If the person going into the trades makes $30,000, but the college graduate comes out

01:08:39.320 | four years later and makes $45,000, it takes a while for the college graduate to earn the

01:08:43.600 | extra $120,000 that the tradesperson earned from 18 to 22.

01:08:48.560 | Now in time, if the tradesperson doesn't increase their income, the college graduate will pull

01:08:53.600 | ahead.

01:08:54.600 | So we can generally assume and understand that a college graduate will earn more money

01:09:00.520 | throughout the course of their lifetime.

01:09:03.080 | Now one of the things that I've often troubled when doing these comparisons is, "But who

01:09:07.640 | are we talking about?"

01:09:09.400 | Because the kind of people who are likely to go to college are also the kind of people

01:09:13.800 | who would likely be very successful even if they didn't go to college.

01:09:16.560 | So it's kind of a survivor bias, right?

01:09:18.520 | I went to college because I was under the basic idea that only losers did not go to

01:09:25.080 | college and I wasn't a loser, so of course I went to college.

01:09:27.360 | But I didn't really have any vision for it.

01:09:29.480 | And I don't think that college made any really meaningful impact on my overall career choice,

01:09:35.280 | all that much.

01:09:36.280 | Now it's hard.

01:09:37.280 | You go back and you look and you say, "But this, I met this person and this class impacted

01:09:40.640 | me, blah, blah, blah."

01:09:41.640 | I don't know.

01:09:42.640 | It's just I can't trace any knowledge that I gained from college to my current life path.

01:09:47.920 | I trace people, I trace a little bit of exposure, I don't trace any knowledge to my life path.

01:09:52.360 | And I think that if I'd had a coach or a mentor who was knowledgeable about how to build a

01:09:57.800 | career path and get those same things without college, I think I could have had a lot more

01:10:00.480 | success at an early age skipping college.

01:10:03.680 | But I still get nervous about, "What about the credentialization?

01:10:06.600 | At least having a backup plan."

01:10:08.440 | And so I would be nervous to tell my children, "Yeah, don't go to college.

01:10:12.680 | Just don't even bother.

01:10:13.680 | I'm not there."

01:10:15.240 | And so I see this as a really cool way if it works out, if the student is amenable to

01:10:20.280 | it, et cetera.

01:10:21.280 | I see this as a really cool way of satisfying those things.

01:10:23.520 | Where now you can coach a bright 18-year-old to, "Hey, they got the college degree, maybe

01:10:29.600 | even a master's degree, CPA exam, get them those experience credits during their teenage

01:10:34.200 | years and they can start earning at 18 years old.

01:10:37.660 | And they can avoid student loan debt.

01:10:39.060 | And we did this whole thing at a total price tag of say under $10,000 total instead of

01:10:43.880 | $80,000."

01:10:45.840 | This is powerful for the right fit.

01:10:48.480 | Now, are there other things about college that are helpful other than academics?

01:10:53.040 | Certainly.

01:10:54.400 | Social dynamic, having fun, meeting people, expanding your influence.

01:10:59.560 | There's lots of other considerations.

01:11:03.560 | However, even if one of my children needs that college experience, I would a lot rather

01:11:12.200 | they just skip the entry-level stuff and quiz out of those first couple of years and go

01:11:17.480 | right into the upper-level electives.

01:11:20.280 | College is not a healthy place for young people, especially in those entry years.

01:11:24.860 | It's a very good place to make a whole lot of stupid decisions and wreck your life.

01:11:30.720 | But that starts to change as you get to upper level.

01:11:32.920 | And so even just for the moral rectitude of your child, if they can quiz out of the first

01:11:36.760 | couple of years of college, maybe do an online degree and then go into a master's degree

01:11:40.640 | in a specialization where they're on campus in a traditional format, there's a huge value

01:11:44.200 | in that kind of education for some fields.

01:11:48.160 | In those situations, I think it's much better for them to go into the advanced-level courses

01:11:53.280 | than the entry-level stuff.

01:11:54.600 | I mean, there's just so many dangers of the stupidity that happens with 18-year-olds in

01:11:59.000 | those first few years.

01:12:00.560 | And so this is even just a way of helping your children avoid some of those dangers.

01:12:06.660 | Not a perfect system.

01:12:09.400 | Not going to work for everybody.

01:12:11.760 | We shouldn't try to make it work for everybody.

01:12:14.080 | But for a motivated person, if you can, and I believe that you can motivate people.

01:12:20.720 | If you lay this out to them, show them the benefits that will accrue to them if they

01:12:25.040 | take this course of action, it can change everything.

01:12:27.280 | And I'll tell you, if I had come along to the 13-year-old me and laid this out for them,

01:12:32.960 | for me, I would have gone with this.

01:12:35.360 | And I've done this.

01:12:36.360 | I've done this in the classroom.

01:12:37.360 | Just tell you, I'll close with one story.

01:12:38.800 | I used to teach junior achievement, and I loved to do it.

01:12:42.000 | And I would go in, and I wasn't a great junior achievement teacher because I would do the

01:12:44.800 | curriculum for the junior achievement, but I frankly, I kind of was just a motivational

01:12:49.440 | speaker instead of doing the junior achievement curriculum as much as I should have.

01:12:53.860 | But I loved it.

01:12:54.860 | And I went into junior, high school seniors, high school juniors.

01:12:57.840 | And I just remember how there's one young man, and it was a local government school,

01:13:05.480 | and we went into the classroom, and I was talking about goal setting.

01:13:10.400 | And the specific example, I picked on him.

01:13:12.800 | I like to pick on students in the class.

01:13:15.520 | And I picked on him, and I said, "Give me a goal that you have."

01:13:18.240 | And he gave me a flippant goal.

01:13:20.160 | And he said, "I want to have a Shelby Cobra Mustang."

01:13:24.400 | And I said, "Cool."

01:13:25.720 | I said, "Shelby Cobra Mustangs are awesome."

01:13:28.280 | I said, "What year?"

01:13:29.480 | And I went through goal setting.

01:13:30.920 | I said, "What year?

01:13:31.920 | An old one or a new one?

01:13:33.840 | What color?"

01:13:34.840 | And I laid it out.

01:13:35.840 | And I said, "Okay, how much does that cost?"

01:13:36.840 | He's like, "I don't know, 60 grand."

01:13:38.880 | So we laid it out, and we started talking it through.

01:13:41.000 | And then I said, "Well, how are you going to do that?"

01:13:42.120 | And I said, "How much money do you have?"

01:13:43.120 | "I don't have any money."

01:13:44.120 | "Do you have a job?"

01:13:45.120 | "Yeah, I worked at the local ice cream shop."

01:13:51.960 | And I said, "Well, you're making, I don't know, $8 an hour?"

01:13:53.880 | And I said, "Well, that ain't going to work."

01:13:55.400 | And he said, "That sucks.

01:13:56.400 | You're not going to get a Shelby Cobra Mustang working at the ice cream shop earning $8

01:13:58.920 | an hour."

01:13:59.920 | So I said, "What could you do?

01:14:01.040 | How could you make more money?"

01:14:02.720 | And he's a high school senior, kind of a goofy kid, not really engaged.

01:14:06.400 | That was why I picked on him.

01:14:07.400 | He was like, "I don't know.

01:14:08.400 | I guess I could go to college."

01:14:09.400 | I go, "All right.

01:14:10.400 | Well, how are you going to go to college?"

01:14:11.400 | He said, "I don't know."

01:14:12.400 | I said, "Have you taken the SAT?"

01:14:13.400 | I can't remember if he had or hadn't.

01:14:16.840 | So this is directionally accurate, but I can't remember the specifics at this point.

01:14:20.480 | But he said, "No, I haven't taken the SAT."

01:14:22.200 | I said, "All right, well, take the SAT."

01:14:23.880 | Or maybe he did, and he got a bad score.

01:14:25.840 | And so long story short, I laid out the success path for him.

01:14:29.360 | And I said, "Listen, you can get the Shelby Cobra Mustang, but you ain't going to get

01:14:33.920 | it working at the ice cream shop dipping ice cream for $8 an hour.

01:14:37.120 | That's stupid."

01:14:38.120 | I said, "But what you can do is you can get a great score on the SAT.

01:14:42.800 | With a great score on the SAT, you can go ahead and get a college degree.

01:14:46.700 | You can work your way through college."

01:14:48.360 | And I showed him how the SAT score would impact his college tuition.

01:14:51.560 | I showed him how he could make a lot more money.

01:14:53.400 | I laid out a budget for a young adult.

01:14:54.840 | And I said, "You can have this Shelby Cobra Mustang."

01:14:56.920 | I think it was like by age 23, five years, and you have this Mustang.

01:15:00.960 | And the exact details are not important.

01:15:03.360 | You know the path I set him on, because it's what I talk about here every day.

01:15:08.120 | But one of the most meaningful emails of my life came in a year and a half, two years

01:15:12.720 | later, something like that.

01:15:13.720 | And he said, "Joshua, I don't know if you remember me."

01:15:15.400 | I did.

01:15:16.400 | But he told me what happened.

01:15:17.680 | And then later we got together for lunch, and he told me all about it.

01:15:20.920 | But he said, "After you showed me that path, after you showed me that success path, how

01:15:26.480 | I could do that?"

01:15:27.480 | He said, "I decided to do it."

01:15:30.200 | So he started studying for the SAT.

01:15:31.520 | I can't remember if he'd taken it already and gotten a bad score or hadn't taken it

01:15:34.960 | all.

01:15:35.960 | But he took the SAT.

01:15:37.040 | He got a great score.

01:15:38.080 | He said, "Before you came in, I wasn't planning to go to college."

01:15:41.680 | He said, "But I've gotten a full ride to a reasonable middle-range school."

01:15:47.480 | It wasn't an Ivy League, but it was a reasonable middle-range school.

01:15:50.560 | He said, "They gave me a full ride based upon my SAT score."

01:15:54.760 | And he told me what he's studying.

01:15:55.760 | I've forgotten what he was studying at this point.

01:15:57.200 | But he told me what he was studying, and he was excited about it.

01:15:59.000 | It was something he was genuinely interested in.

01:16:01.720 | And he said, "I never would have done that if you hadn't showed me how to get that Shelby

01:16:04.920 | Mustang."

01:16:05.920 | And I've often thought about him.

01:16:10.120 | His email is in my smile file somewhere.

01:16:12.000 | But I've often thought about him.

01:16:14.600 | Here's the perfect example of a goofy kid, just goofing off, came to his stupid junior

01:16:22.840 | achievement business class that I'm going to take, goofing off, about to graduate high

01:16:28.280 | school, just looking to have fun.

01:16:30.080 | And when you show him, "Look, here's how you can get fast success," all of a sudden, they're

01:16:35.720 | willing to work and willing to spend Saturdays studying for an SAT.

01:16:39.600 | And I feel like we don't do that enough for young people.

01:16:42.320 | We don't show them that what they do matters.

01:16:46.000 | And yet that's the basic cornerstone of behavior change is to see, "If I do this, I may get

01:16:52.200 | that.

01:16:53.200 | Whereas if I do this, I may get that.

01:16:55.480 | And I don't want that, but I do want that.

01:16:58.240 | So I'm going to do these things that are probably going to lead to that."

01:17:02.920 | So what I would do if I were teaching this to students is I would say, "Let me teach

01:17:07.640 | you how to be financially independent and rich by 30."

01:17:12.400 | And I would use this as the foundation.

01:17:14.040 | I would get put in a 10-year career as an accountant from age 20 to age 30, plus the

01:17:20.360 | savings that come from the high school point.

01:17:22.760 | I would layer that 10-year career of an accountant onto an investment plan.

01:17:26.480 | I would lay out a real estate acquisition plan for them to acquire five to 10 houses

01:17:31.280 | from 20 to 30.

01:17:33.880 | And now at 30, you're financially independent, hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank,

01:17:38.160 | five to 10 houses paying you money, and a career that you got as a backup option.

01:17:43.960 | Got it."

01:17:45.440 | And so don't just write off my ideas here just because you say, "My 13-year-old just

01:17:52.480 | wants to play video games all day.

01:17:54.440 | My 13-year-old says they want to be a YouTuber.

01:17:56.840 | They're not going to take exams."

01:17:58.080 | First of all, don't write off any child, right?

01:18:01.360 | Don't write off any student.

01:18:02.360 | They're all important, and we need to find out how to work with each one of them.

01:18:05.980 | But this success path is totally doable.

01:18:08.920 | These exams are not tough for someone who's academically oriented.

01:18:13.480 | This is doable.

01:18:16.720 | It may even be easier since your child is already doing distance learning.

01:18:22.480 | So do some digging.

01:18:23.680 | Read some CLEP exams.

01:18:24.760 | Look around.

01:18:25.760 | If you want more on this topic, if you want a course with all the universities and all

01:18:28.920 | the stuff that's in my files, I'm happy to...

01:18:30.760 | I don't know.

01:18:31.760 | If there's interest, I could do that.

01:18:33.800 | But lay this path out.

01:18:38.520 | Weigh the potential downsides.

01:18:40.280 | It's not perfect, but I think it's really good.

01:18:44.600 | I think it's really good from an academic perspective because most college degrees are

01:18:49.160 | not going to feed academics.

01:18:50.880 | You need to learn, you study on your own.

01:18:53.380 | To get a degree, you study in a college, with the exception of some hard sciences.

01:18:58.760 | Generally, to learn, you study on your own.

01:19:00.800 | To get a degree, you go to college.

01:19:04.320 | Not perfect for all situations socially, but man, it's a lot safer environment to have

01:19:08.040 | your 18-year-old living at home in a safe environment, somewhat insulated from some

01:19:15.920 | of the pressures of that age group at college.

01:19:21.000 | You got to make sure that your students are getting social engagement, but that can be

01:19:24.320 | accomplished in many ways.

01:19:25.400 | You got to make sure that they're being exposed to potential marriage partners.

01:19:28.560 | Those are all things, but they don't have to happen in college.

01:19:32.000 | You tell that 18-year... that student of yours who's struggling and is just ticked off because

01:19:36.120 | of having to go to school on Zoom, "Listen, buddy, why don't we swap this in for a few

01:19:39.920 | years and you go ahead and get a college degree by 18?"

01:19:41.960 | Yeah, if you want your GED, you can do that too, but you don't need it because you have

01:19:45.000 | a college degree.

01:19:46.000 | All of a sudden, it might change the motivation of your student.

01:19:50.600 | Hope these ideas have been helpful to you.

01:19:53.080 | Thanks for listening.

01:19:54.080 | Remember, I've got some courses available at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.

01:19:57.560 | Best one there would be the career and income course, Radical Personal Finance Guide to

01:20:00.600 | Career and Income Planning.

01:20:01.960 | Put simply, if you get your career right and your income right and you start early and

01:20:05.760 | you get something that you can work late, finances are amazing, but you got to do some

01:20:10.280 | thoughtful analysis.

01:20:12.160 | Don't forget that if you're in a career that you feel stuck in and you want to rework,

01:20:16.680 | remember that this is not exclusive to children.

01:20:20.120 | This is not exclusive to teenagers.

01:20:22.560 | You can do this too.

01:20:23.560 | So, if you're 49 years old and you're just annoyed and you feel like you need a college

01:20:28.120 | degree, get cracking on the CLEP exams, go to an institution like Thomas Edison, see

01:20:33.120 | what they'll give you for credit by examination, see what they'll give you for life experience,

01:20:37.960 | see if you can trade in some of your professional certifications for some college credit, and

01:20:42.240 | then get to the online learning.

01:20:43.560 | It's quite in vogue these days.

01:20:44.800 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

2020-07-27_Why_Not_Skip_High_School_and_Take_College_Classes_Instead