Why College Professors Want You to AVOID These Costly Mistakes?

Welcome back to another show with Don't Let College Bankrupt You. My guests as usual are two college professors who pay you back. During this series of shows, we will talk about colleges, what colleges don't want you to know, and provide some guidance on how to keep your college education costs down and prepare for a really more successful post-college career. In today's show, we're going to look at what our authors Bill Quayn and Joe Corabi call money trap. And today is money trap number 7, don't turn a minor into a major mistake. Don't turn a minor into a major mistake. It comes from the authors' book, Bankrupt You. And Bill Quayn, what is a minor?

Gary, first of all, let me say that this is one of my favorite money traps. I mean, if you can call a money trap a favorite, because this happens all the time and it really underscores just what's missing in colleges today. But so, you have a major, everybody knows about having a college major, you know, whatever it happens to be, math or business or, you know, whatever it happens to be. But in almost every college, you're given the opportunity to take a minor. And a minor, it might be 6 or so courses that a certain department puts out there. And I know Joe's gonna talk to about exactly why departments do that. But it's a series of courses that, like, let's say for example, if you got a minor in business, You would learn the basics about business in that. And so they're set out, you get all kinds of choices. And Joe, why don't you take it from there? Because colleges use this as a way to just grab money from you.

So yeah, Joe, who talks you into taking a minor? Who talks you into taking that minor?

Well, once you're out of college, Gary, normally it's It's, well, it's most likely your advisor. Remember that every kid who goes to college usually has an advisor, a faculty member for that matter. And Bill's correct. You know, it might take about 6 courses or so to, quote, get a title of a minor, but it's a little more complicated than that. When you look at, when you look at a value of a minor, all right, I think the first question you have to ask yourself is, If you need a minor to further enhance your maybe abilities to get a job, I think you better start questioning the value of your major. That's number one. But, you know, if you look at the number of required courses that you have to take for your major, there's probably about 24 credits that you can use to, I guess, enhance your, enhance your college experience. So what Bill and I always suggest is that you use, you should use those credits to enhance your personal skills, your marketability, your ability to get a job, and so on. And I know that we are going to speak a little bit more about that later on. But the person who most influences you to get a minor is your advisor and Look, there's a reason for that. If you encourage a student to get a minor within your department, it translates into job security.

Whether it's good for the student or not.

That's the— you know what, Gary? And that's the thing that always comes back to me. That's the scary thing for me. You know, we're supposed to be here so that the student maximizes all the opportunities out of college. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way.

Gary, if I could add something there too, that you have to remember that a college is not concerned about their students once they leave college, other than to turn their names over to the alumni department who can hound them endlessly for donations. A college is designed, unfortunately, to compete within each, it's in itself. So the art history department is competing with the business school and they're competing with the nursing people and they all wanna get student credit hours into their department area. And so they'll advise students to take all kinds of minors strictly to pull more of the power of the money that the students are giving up into their department.

So Bill Quayn, one of the co-authors of the book Bankrupt You, in that book, you have a quote, and that quote is, and that quote is, when you go to get a job with a theater company, a college professor might tell you, they will love your business minor. When you go get a job with a theater company or whatever your passion is, whether it's an income-earning career or not, that minor will help you get that job. True or false?

Well, probably false. I mean, uh, first of all, you got— I think Joe mentioned this earlier— if you're— if the major you're taking isn't good enough to to get you what you want. And for most people, they go into college to get a job, you know, they're there to make money and be able to support themselves. So if your major isn't doing that, you know, if you're a theater major, you know, you're going to take all these theater courses. Hey, it's probably a lot of fun doing that, especially if you, you know, you like that kind of stuff. But people take majors because the college says, you know, study what you're really interested in. Well, they don't tell you that what you're really interested in just doesn't pay. So then they'll say, "Well, study what you're really interested in, but then take this minor so that it's like a plan B." Well, plan B is going to hold you up. Don't forget, a minor is very structured. So it's not like you can just take 6 courses that you like. In a minor, you gotta go back to, like, if you're taking a business minor, you gotta go back to taking Intro to Business. So that starts every business major, that starts every business minor. So you're, and the minor courses, sometimes they're not offered every semester and sometimes that they're sequential. So in other words, you have to take, they say, oh, well, it's only 6, 6 courses that you have to take for this, to get this minor. It's going to look so valuable on your transcript when you're going to go to college. But don't forget, they might have some sequential courses in there. Like you have to take this course first and then a semester later you can take this course and then a semester after that. So you might end up being in school longer. So not only does do you have to question, well, then why did I take the major I took if I have to get a minor to go with it? But you might be in college longer and spending more, more time there and, and more money. And hey, guess what? That's the business plan of a college. Keep you there.

All right, Gary, can I jump in here real quick?

Please, Joe, please.

Yeah. And I think, you know, you've often heard us speak about the game within the game.

All right.

We all know that colleges are trying to draw students to their campus. But the game within the game is that within that college, that departments are trying to pull students into their departments. Look, it doesn't mean that, you know, the professors are, you know, inauthentic. I mean, they perceive value in their discipline. But the point very simply is departments within colleges are competitive. And they're vying for faculty members, they're vying for notoriety, and they're also vying for funds. And the more students you have, it really translates into more money distributed to your department.

So, Joe, let me do a follow-up on this. And that is, in the ideal world, we go to college for 4 years, we get a major, we get our minors, we get those 120-some-odd credits, and we walk out with a piece of paper that says we've got that bachelor's degree in whatever. But that minor may take you beyond 4 years. Talk us through that.

Yeah, and I think Bill's point earlier about how courses might be laid out, they may be sequential. They may not be offered in the same semester you need to take them. Because you're pursuing a minor, you may have to go an extra semester. Remember, every semester you go is going to increase your tuition by 1/8. Alrighty, so, you know, to calculate that, not only do you have to decide whether the minor is valuable, but now you have to piggyback on that and is the amount of money you're spending for that minor, uh, additionally, is that worthwhile?

So, Bill, I'm going to quote from the book, and again, the book is Bankrupt You, written by our two guests today. Bottom of page 82 in the book Bankrupt You, in quotes, "But wait, if I take a minor, it will make me more hireable." Huh?

I mean, maybe, but why does someone hire you? Someone hires you because you represent value to them. You know, you're bringing them something that they're going to give up money to get. You know, if I'm hiring you, I'm going to question, I think, you know, why didn't you major in this? If this is a key to you getting a job with me, you know, why didn't you major in it? Now listen, this is not to say that To go back to the theater and the business major, I've heard people say, well, I really love theater. I know that I'm going to end up being a server in a restaurant while I wait for my big acting break, but I also know that theaters are a business. And so, I'll take a business minor and then maybe I can get a job in the front office, that kind of stuff. And listen, we're not discounting that. What we're telling you is that the value it brings you, it could very well not be worth it, the investment you're making.

And Joe, I think it was last week, you were pretty eloquent in a discussion we had about 18-year-olds choosing a lifetime career by effectively choosing a college major. Let's kind of pursue that again this week. Is, is there a better way for students, 18-year-olds and their families and their parents, to look at college majors so parents aren't in a position where junior says, I want to be an art history major, like we talked about last week, or I want to do a theater major, when while there certainly may be opportunities, Joe, they are high-risk choices?

Yeah, and And that's probably a good idea to revisit that, Gary, right now. The, you know, we advocate that a kid should enter college and try to hold off on the declaration of a major. One of the things that you can do is try to knock off as many of those, you know, general level courses or core courses, whatever college refers to them as. And, you know, get your feet wet and look around, see what people who have degrees, see their lifestyle, see if that type of lifestyle appeals to you. Now, you know, I think it's also important here that, you know, not everything is money-oriented. We're not saying that, you know, you should select the major because it's going to give you the greatest financial return. That's not what we mean. But you have to at least go in with eyes wide open.

Yeah.

So one of the things that, that I always encourage as a high school principal, for that matter, was to, to get out there in, in work-related situations. And, you know, vocational schools do that. I think they do a phenomenal job with this. You know, they'll put you with a plumber or an electrician. A cosmetologist, whatever it might be. But you've got to explore the value of that, of that, that major.

So, Bill, Bill Quain, I'm going to go back to the days when I was 18 years old and I'm getting ready to start college. A long, long time ago when I was 18 years old.

History is a subject, but go ahead.

18 years old, and I'm going to go to college somewhere and I'm going to say, no, I don't want to do a minor. I want to take a set of courses to get to my 120 that I want to take. Kind of potpourri. Can I really do that in 2025?

Uh, yeah, you can. I mean, it's— at most schools will have some sort of, uh, you know, general degree, uh, and, and, you know, I, I've been, I've been known to, you know, I'm advising my students and, uh, on a number of occasions I see students that have all these credits and, you know, because maybe they changed majors or they added a minor at the last minute and stuff like that. And all that stuff, you know, if, if you're, if you're, if your college lets you graduate with 120 credits, stop whatever you're doing. Don't get more than 120 credits, you know, because you're, you're just paying money. So I, you can always check around your college. You, you can get a a sort of a generalist degree at a lot of colleges. And if you find that you're sitting there with 125 or 128 something credits, something like that, and you're not graduated yet, you know, go to an advisor and ask them for help. They may not be able to do it for you, but go to central advising at a college. Now, like not to a department, advising, but to central advising. And I don't know about every school, but most of the schools where I've taught, they have a central advising one where they're kind of agnostic, you know, and they're not, you know, trying to pipeline people into one department and say to them, look, I've got this many credits, how can I rearrange these and what kind of degree can I get? With what I got, you know, right now. I always advise my students to do that because no matter how great a, you know, you could be within 2 weeks of graduating with a nuclear physics degree, you know. Now, I don't know if nuclear physics is valuable these days. I don't know. But it sounds like something that would be in demand by somebody. You know, you could be within 2 weeks of, and you stop going to college for those last 2 weeks. That degree is worth less to you than a liberal arts degree in almost anything that's finished.

So, I'm going to follow up, Bill. So, let's keep it with you. In today's market, and we all know that it is a market where there are way too many colleges, way too many college seats, and I make the argument regularly that students are now in a position to be a little bit more demanding along the lines that we just talked about and say, I'm not going to take a major if If I come to your college, I'm going to pick that last set of 8 courses, whatever that number is, that I want to take. Is that feasible or am I kind of off in Never-Neverland?

It really depends on the college. Uh, uh, you know, but I found that the colleges where I taught, they always had some sort of like catch-all type thing. You know, certainly at Stockton University where I am now, we have that. Yeah. Where you can get just a general degree. You know, I think they call it Bachelor of Arts and I don't even think they call it in anything. You know, they just say it's a Bachelor of Arts degree. It can be done. But you know, you bring up a great point here that Joe and I make to people that rather than taking a prescribed minor, I mean, you might have to decide on some kind of major, you know, just because the school doesn't have the formula for you to do something else. But you're always going to have, Gary, you're always going to have electives. And Joe and I usually look at them about being 8 courses, right, Joe? About 24 credits.

Yes.

And we tell students this, and you'll see that in this part of the book where we actually give you 10 courses we think you should have. To graduate from college because they're value-generating courses and design your own minor. You know, you can go to an employer with a major you took and you say, listen, this is the major I took. And you know, I was pretty far into it or when I realized I needed some other things. And so what I did was I searched through my college catalog with the eye to becoming valuable to you. As a prospective employer. And I selected some courses that I thought, you know, this would really help me fulfill the expectations that someone had in wanting to hire me. And that's a powerful thing you can do because now instead of saying, oh, well, I, you know, I took a theater major and I majored in business just in case. Now you're saying I was purposeful. I looked at my college time here and I picked these courses that I think make me valuable. And let me tell you why I think it is. And now, as an employer, you're thinking, uh-oh, this is somebody pretty good. Joe, I'll throw it back to Gary, but I think Joe would have some comments on that too, and Gary.

So, Joe, before we do that, let's take a look. And Bill just mentioned the 10 courses, 10 topics in the book Bankrupt You. I'm going to talk about a couple of those. And And so instead of the minor, you write in the book, fill your open credits, those 8 courses, 24 hours, something like that, with courses that add value. Now, of course, this is your interpretation and that's certainly fine, but the first one is Accounting for Non-Accountants. I'm going to step through maybe 4 or 5 of these, Joe. Why does Accounting for Non-Accountants, excuse me, Accounting for Non-Accountants have value?

[Speaker:JOE] Well, it's like anything else. It's learning how to manage your own personal finances, keeping track of your expenses, You know, it just shows that, you know, that you took courses with purpose, right? And I'm going to jump in here, Gary, and just also add, you know, one of the courses that Bill and I advocate is a course on financial literacy. You know, these are important courses. These are— Bill had mentioned, you know, how you could add value, and certainly these courses should should be able to be used to add value to a future employer, but they also add value to you. All righty. And courses like financial literacy, understanding technology, the use of AI, public speaking, presentation skills. One of my favorites, believe it or not, is personal wellness. You know, looking at yourself from a nutritional aspect or Physical fitness. You know, remember, if you're going to work for somebody, that person wants you to show up and be healthy and not miss time. You know, believe it or not, showing up and being in great shape with good health habits increases your value to an employer.

So, Joe, of course, I looked over that list and I'm going to— excuse me, Bill, excuse me. I've looked over that list and Joe just talked about some of the open credits you could talk about. And there's a couple that I want to throw out at you just for your comments, Bill. And that the first one is AI. And as we have teased earlier in the show, I'm old, but I have found the utility and value of AI to be almost unmeasurable, to be just the kind of stuff that I do. And I like your comments on that. And the second one is Excel. And again, I will tell a story. 30 years ago, somebody showed me Excel. I cannot think of a more valuable, more, more a skill that has more utility than being able to crunch numbers in Excel. And yet, how many folks in your classes, Joe and Bill, have said, I don't like numbers? Bill, your comments?

It always amazes me when, when students say, you know, I'm, I'm kind of afraid of math. And I, I say to them, oh, what, what, which part are you most afraid of? Subtraction? You know, addition. I mean, it's like when you say I'm not good at math or I'm afraid of math, you're just, you're signaling to people, I am just not going to be a good person to have around when you need somebody. I mean, it's just crazy. So, so you get to like, I want to go back to accounting, accounting for non-accountants. Joe and I are amazed. Now, we wrote a book a number of years ago called Debit and Credit Cards 101. And I think we subtitled it, it's a driver's ed course for plastic or something like that, you know. It's amazing. My one daughter, she wanted to become a communications major in college. And I said, okay, that's fine, but you need to take an accounting class. And I required actually both of them to take an accounting class. And I said, because your whole life you're gonna be dealing with debits and credits. You're gonna go work for an organization that's dealing with debits and credits. And, and if you don't know the basics of that, like how, how do you live? And you, you're using something called a debit card, you're using something called a credit card. You have no idea what a debit and a credit are. And then you, Gary, you mentioned AI. My gosh, how, how could you? Well, first of all, Joe and I laugh about this all the time, but colleges look at AI as the students are going to cheat, you know, and, and that's their view of AI. So they're setting up all these rules. Well, you, you can use AI, but, um, but, you know, you can't use it for this, this, this, and this. And, and your employer, your employer does not care if it's your idea or an idea that AI came up with, you know, that, that makes money for the company. They just don't care. They're so excited. I just heard, we just had an alum from Stockton University come back and he was talking and this guy is in the healthcare business and he says, we are desperate to hire somebody that knows how to use AI because he said, we want to streamline our call service, our call answering service. We get all these people calling us. He was at a hospital and he was director of patient experience or something like that, just a really cool title. And he said, you know, we have all these people calling in and we're wasting so much time trying to decide which, who we should forward them to. And I was just talking to another person who, a college graduate, and she's working as a salesperson and they're using AI to do a recording of the sales calls they make with people and come back and with an analysis of how much time they spent listening and the client spent talking. And when did you fail to mention something that we, you know, when it's incredible. The power, the leverage of this. Joe and I use it to create titles for our books and stuff like that. You know? I mean, and you do too, Gary. Yeah. And the fact that colleges are afraid of this, well, and the reason they're afraid of it is because they're afraid, the professors are afraid because they're gonna lose their jobs. Yeah. You know? And then what was the last thing you talked about, Gary? That was the—

The Excel. The Excel is a very util— Very, very, very important skill.

Here's the thing, and I don't— people don't know this. Do you know you can use AI to create Excel spreadsheets? Yeah. I mean, this is incredible. Now you just tell AI what you need and AI says, okay. Now they don't actually create the spreadsheet for you, but they, but they, they, they describe how to lay it out and which formulas to put in which cell.

Right.

I mean, it's crazy. And now, I'll give you another personal example of Excel. So my younger daughter got her master's degree and she was applying for a job as a director of business analytics for a big company. And she had these incredible spreadsheets she had created in college in her master's degree. She's really a whiz at Excel. And so she said to me, I think I'm gonna send Ahead of my interview, I'm going to send an Excel spreadsheet. And I said, okay, let's think about this something. And Gary, there's a course in there called User Interface.

Yeah, right, right.

You know, this is the magic. Joe and I were just talking about this this morning. This is the magic of creating value that colleges have there for you, but they don't teach you how to do it. So my daughter was saying to me, I'm going to send this very complicated spreadsheet to show them what I could do. And I said to her, well, here's a danger. Maybe they don't understand what you did. So what she did was she sat down, she used a screencast video recording thing, which is free, it's called ScreenPal. And she explained her Excel spreadsheet to people. In other words, she turned this Excel spreadsheet into a presentation and called out certain formulas from— she didn't get the job. They said to her, listen, you would be okay at the job, but we had this other job which we didn't even know what kind of person we needed for it, and she got hired for that. So, you know, this is magical stuff here. And it's— Joe, you described it this morning as the force, right?

Yeah, unleash on, yeah, take off on the force, the force be with you, you know, release the force within you is what I say, release the force within you.

So guys, as we wrap up this show, I've got an idea for the title for your next book. And it's going to be AI for College Professors or something like that. And the subtitle would be Don't Discourage Your Students from Using It.

Well, yeah, that book won't sell, so I don't think we're going to write that book because—

I don't think we should put that one in the college bookstore. I doubt if— I'm not quite sure that would work. But I love the angle, Gary. And let me just tell you something, man. You want to talk about fighting an uphill battle? That would be a tough one.

I could write it.

Well, I, I, and I would probably buy it.

So, so our topic today has been from the book Bankrupt You. The co-authors Joe Corabi and Bill Quayn are the authors of that. They are themselves college professors. And we talked about don't turn a minor into a major mistake. On the next show, we're going to do money trap number— we'll screw this up— we're doing money trap Number 9, you're paying an extra $20,000 for the spring semester of your senior year. I have an idea where this is headed. So for Joe Carabbi, for Bill Quain, thanks for watching. We are always grateful, and we'll be back next time with another show.