Price tag for the American dream: $130K a year

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

78. My advice to any new parents at this point

would be to start working on figuring out what your kids want to do while they're still in early grade school and working with them to start developing skillsets and knowledge bases early, outside of school. Kid wants to be in healthcare? Start them on nutrition, anatomy and physiology in the grade school years, so they know it six ways to Sunday before they ever hit high school, get em into microbiology, pathology, and pharmaceuticals during the high school years. Have them ready to ace any pre-med testing, intro classes before they ever get there.

But for any student, realize that the point of college is not to be in college, but first to learn the things available to learn, and second to get out with that degree. Find out in advance what intro level text-books are used in classes in the areas they want to go into, and buy those texts early and start working on learning. Do that, and the classes that come along will essentially be formalities, and fill in some gaps if they didn't quite study what's being taught in all cases. If you simply wait until you get to college and pick a degree by tossing a dart at something 'interesting', you'll always be at a disadvantage to those who've been learning the field they want to go into from a young age.

I'd even say that for adult learners switching fields. Start on your own, in advance, before you ever take a class.