I use Robert Frost’s poem, “the Road Not Taken,” as a metaphor for the consequential decision we must make as young adults, in selecting a college. Effectively, students are put in the untenable position of having to make one of the most consequential decisions of their lives with no real experience and limited perspective. In fact, college bound students usually turn this consequential decision into a Hobson’s choice. Either out of ignorance or caution, students tend to pare down their options significantly, often by default or by the presence of bias and inertia. When we are young, we are fearless often out of ignorance, while our deliberating skills are poorly defined. We have this tendency to want to simplify our choices because in our youth we don’t fully appreciate that in making a decision, we are giving something up!

Alternatively, most college graduates experience the educational version of buyers’ remorse—the disappointment caused by the gap between expectations and reality. We’ve all been conditioned to think that a college education is the gateway to success and happiness or at the very least, it offers the promise to a pathway to positive outcomes in life.

But there is a gap between a student’s expectations and what colleges actually offer. The disparity is compounded by differences in perspective. The student thinks that college is not only going to assist them in developing a profession but also provide education, insights, and information on navigating life.

What most students discover (67 percent of Americans believe) is that colleges and universities put their own institutional interests first, compared to those who believe they put students first (some 9 percent), while 60% of graduating students end up working in jobs and careers unrelated to their major.

The target audience for my book are high school graduates and college students, but also intermediaries such as parents, grand parents, aunts and uncles!

Every year in the USA, approximately 2-3 million students enter college full of excitement and apprehension, with a shared expectation that college offers a gateway to success and happiness. But there is a gap between a student’s expectations and what Colleges actually offer. The disparity is compounded by differences in perspective.

These same students had to undergo a contest to qualify for one of the few slots to over 4,000 universities and colleges with total enrollment over 20 million students, 14.7 million in public colleges and a 5.3 million students enrolled in private colleges.

One million of these students are international students, including 370,000 from China, and 202,000 from India, and they have to contend with far greater challenges including cultural acclimation and language barriers.Z