College....a path to success or a setup for disappointment

I've been kicking the notion of "higher education" around lately. Is it truly all that it's cracked up to be? It seems to me that many a professor has painted a picture of post-college life through rose colored glasses. For those four or five years of your life, anything seems possible. The criminal justice major is going to work for the FBI, the poli-sci major is going to be the next president and the English major is going to be the next Jack Kerouac. What they fail to tell you is that for the first 10-15 years after college (and grad school, if you go that route), you'll most likely have to wade through an awful lot of crap....and with a less-than -glamourous salary. I know many lawyers coming out of law school right now who are starting at $30-35,000 a year. Hardly the "Boston legal" job you thought it was going to be, heh?

I know I shouldn't complain. I could be working on an assembly line or out plowing the fields like my grandparents did. It's just that I think our society is too fixated on college, particularly high school guidance counselors. Here's a thought.....rather than encouraging someone to plop down $50,000 for a college degree, how about first determining what your interested in and then taking the most logical route to reaching that point (i.e. apprenticeship, tech school, military, mission work).