"Money Magic" Author Argues You Shouldn't Borrow for College

With many elite universities offering online courses for dirt cheap, students can now pursue unconventional, affordable paths toward certification for in-demand skills. In this Motley Fool Live clip recorded on Jan. 11, Laurence Kotlikoff, economics professor and author of the new book Money Magic: An Economist's Secrets to More Money, Less Risk, and a Better Life, offers a fresh perspective on paying for college. 

Laurence Kotlikoff: I have a chapter entitled "Don't Borrow for College." If you look at borrowing for college, you have to start out with the proposition, the fact that 40 percent of the kids who start going to college never graduate. Here you are thinking about borrowing to invest in something that [inaudible 02:46:49] ahead of time has a 40 percent chance of paying back nothing. And we know we have so many kids over their heads and then parents are borrowing. The government is letting the parents borrow at a higher rate. Then maybe the parents are going to dump that loan and that borrowing repayment onto the kids obligation heads or leave them less money as an inheritance when they pass away. It may come out the kid's hide.

Even at a young age, at age 18, the parents need to sit down and talk to the kid about, does this make sense? That you want to go to this expensive place as opposed to going to the community college maybe for a couple of years and then transferring to a more elite school. We can get you through two years or help you, but not four years. Or you go to this community college, but take online courses which are dirt cheap at MIT, which you can do. I talk about that, as I give the example, if you took 20 quantum computing courses online and got certificates and grades, those courses being given by all the very top schools, Harvard, MIT, whatever, Stanford, Chicago, just do that from Podunk U. Then you take your 20 certificates and you go with the grades, go to IBM when you graduate and say, I graduated from this school that you haven't heard of, but here's my 20 certificates and you're looking for quantum computing people, they're going to hire you in an instant. They're not going to hire the guy or the gal from a Williams College, who majored in English to do quantum computing.

I think, you need to think about what it is you want to do. As soon as you can figure that out, at least to start out a career and then make the investments that are specific to that. It may be not going to college at all, it may be going into plumbing. The first chapter's called "My Daughter The Plumber." Jewish moms used to say my son the doctor, going back to the middle ages, Jewish mothers really wanted to have their sons be educated, but also be doctors to help people. I come from that background. I always heard my son the doctor. So I made "My Daughter The Plumber" the title of the first chapter.