I was speaking to a young friend yesterday. She is one course away from finishing her masters and will owe about 50K when she walks out the door. She was lucky to have had scholarships and help from her folks to pay the undergrad degree so $50,000 is "all" she owes. She’s in kinesiology, has prospects and will likely get work right away but she’ll be paying off debt for a long time before her hard-earned money is hers.
If you never went to university, like me, then it's hard to imagine those first delicious pay checks being shared with someone else. My partying days, last minute trips to The Dominican, first second-hand car, studio apartment in downtown Montreal, dinners out with friends, futon ... I could never have done any of that on my radio station receptionist salary if I owed even a small amount of money.
If you never went to university, like me, then it's hard to imagine those first delicious pay checks being shared with someone else. My partying days, last minute trips to The Dominican, first second-hand car, studio apartment in downtown Montreal, dinners out with friends, futon ... I could never have done any of that on my radio station receptionist salary if I owed even a small amount of money.
There has been lots in the press over the last year or so about young adults graduating owing big dough but without jobs to go to. They work in coffee shops, grocery stores, retail outlets while their degree collects dust, their loan collects interest. If they decide to go back and take another program that holds a better promise of employment then they have take on more debt to pay for that.
More and more kids are choosing careers which are in need of people rather than follow their own interests. So we should expand our children's interests now, while they are young...
The jobs are our little kids will be doing have yet to be imagined let alone show a clear path to them.
One thing is for sure, there will be a huge need for coders. It may not sound like something your artists, musician, voracious reader, or ballerina may like but you may be very surprised. It's not just for mathmeticians. My kids have started fooling around here, at Code Academy, and love it. When I told them that learning code means they can one day develop their own app, video game, or Minecraft server they bought in big time.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg put this together and it's been all over the press and internet this week, I showed it to my kids and they couldn't get over how young all these millionaires are, how cool their offices are and, as my daughter pointed out - how many are girls.
We teach them to read, let's teach them to code. Here are some reasons why:
Sources: the College Board, Bureau of Labor Statistics
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