This is Roscoe and Rob again with lesson number four, Introduction to colleges. We now know that although there are arguments for and against college on balance, going to college is a better decision, especially if we can make it worth it. For the rest of this course, we will assume that our decision is to pursue college. Going to college is one of the most meaningful decisions you will make in your life. First, you need to research which college to go to and what you will study. Next, you need to figure out how you will pay for college.

And lastly, you need to market yourself so that you can stand out so that you are likely to be offered admission by the colleges that you choose. To do all of this, it makes sense to understand what college really is People generally talk about various terms which are exclusively used in the post secondary education world. private colleges, public universities, community colleges, career schools, credit hours, College Board transfers, endowments, budgets, institution and so on. We will learn about these terms in subsequent lessons. But first we need to understand an important thing. How is college different from high school?

In some ways, the two are similar. You get up in the morning, go to a campus, sit in classes, take notes, break for lunch, spend time with friends, go to the library or the computer lab and return home to do your homework and assignments. take exams regularly and once you pass you move on to the next subject. Remember how you selected your high school? Well, you didn't not if you went to a public high school, the US K to 12 which Education has been designed to remove key education decisions from parents and children. The only major decision that parents make about the education of their children is where to live.

From that point on a set of unbending rules takes over. Your elementary school is decided by public school districts solely using an attendance zone right down to street level maps showing well defined borders. Going to school in the US is not only a right but a duty mandated by state and federal law. Admission to school is guaranteed. What you study in high school is also largely decided for you through high school the regimen is fairly standard in that everyone studies the same topics is tested on the same material and is graded in a similar manner. For example, every high school in the country requires students to take three to four years of English science, social studies and math.

At least two years of a foreign language and a course in physical education. There are exceptions of course many high schools offer electives subjects that students like to focus on rather than take topics they are not good at. And these can be taken in school or at a different institution or even online. gifted and talented students are challenged with more difficult curricula, like AP exams and IB courses. The K to school deal that our society makes with children is simple. Follow our factory based one size fits all approach and you don't have to pay anything to earn a high school diploma.

Sure families pay real estate income and sales taxes, most of which go to fund public schools. But these taxes are not elastic. That is families don't pay more in real estate taxes if the household has more children or families don't stop paying real estate taxes when their children leave home after high school graduation. Okay, what about college? For the most part college is very different from high school. All of a sudden, there seem to be so many choices and decisions to make attendance zones and zip codes are meaningless.

Not only can a student decide to study in another part of the state, he or she can go across the country or even to another country to pursue post secondary education. And then there is the all important decision about what to study. No longer is it enough to simply check in with your guidance counselor once a year and follow a structured schedule of classes. It is now important to know who you are, what your interests are, and which careers are hot so that you can map interests to careers and study further in those fields. We know that this alone improves here return on investment sufficient to make college worth all the money, time and effort kinds of colleges Higher Education in the US is made up of four sectors. The majority of institutions or private nonprofit colleges and universities such as Abilene Christian university, or your college of Pennsylvania, the ivy League's and other elite schools such as Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, MIT, and Northwestern all fall into this category.

Public or state colleges and universities typically funded to varying degrees by their states and administered most often through a State System of Higher Education. These are the well known state schools such as the University of Washington or the University of California, Berkeley. Next are the proprietary or for profit schools, which often specialize in career and job related training and they generate profits for their owners. Examples are the University of Phoenix and div ry. These kinds of schools also include career schools which provide certificates for professionals. Training such as for hairstylists and chefs, there are also community colleges, which we will learn about later.

So how do you know which college type to pursue? The best way is to map your interests and strengths to careers in demand, and then evaluate what type of college education is best suited to meet your goals. For example, if you want to pursue a career as an aircraft airframe technician, you would probably choose a community college or a career. The training is narrow, specialized and focused, the time to graduate is a lot quicker, the class size will likely be small, and it will probably be less expensive than a four year degree. But if you want to pursue a career as a lawyer, you would choose public or private nonprofit college lawyers have to earn two degrees, a four year undergrad degree followed by a three year law degree. Or you could start off at a community college and then transfer into a four year degree college before going to law school.

In fact, 20% of community college students do this that is transferred to a four year college after earning a two year associate's degree. While an analysis thus far has been crucial, it still does not tell us exactly which college pathway to take. We need to consider other factors on a more granular level. These considerations are college selection factors are important. Each consideration is likely to have a cost or return associated with it. Some considerations have more of an emotional appeal, such as when you pick a college that your friends want to go to or your family members went to.

To help us choose better we will classify each consideration using our ROI formula that is whether the consideration affects costs or earnings. Call it selection considerations financially. Clearly this impacts cost in our ROI equation. cost of attendance clearly impacts cost, location, impact cost. If you can commute to your college from home, you could save on living expenses. Social Life doesn't really impact costs one way or another degree plans no impact class size.

Again, no impact living. As we said before, this is a big cost driver. If you must live on your own away from home. It matters if you live on campus and college housing or you can live off campus with your own roommates getting in for now we will assume that there is no cost impact networking. This can impact earnings. If someone you network with on campus can get you a campus job or an internship.

You could be earning money while in school. This experience could land you a full time job after graduation. All of these will positively impact ROI internships these can happen big impact on earnings and finally, Career Center. If your college can market you to companies, that is a great thing, it will help you find a job after graduation sooner. This can phenomenally impact your earnings and ROI. So here is the summary of our selection considerations table.

Remember, you could employ our considerations table to evaluate any post secondary institution including those which are located abroad. But our main considerations in choosing an institution and field of study would be those which maximize our ROI to get the most for the least cost. This is the essence of college financial planning, and we will learn how to maximize ROI in future lessons. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know. Thank you.