Really, the potential for, first of all, any college graduate today is enormously good. These are good times for anyone with a college degree today, particularly African Americans. With a college degree today, you really breach the unemployment rate.
I tell my grandchildren - I've got seven of them - to go to college and get that degree first. I could have stayed in college and still recorded. Isn't that something? The kids of today are doing it.
For me specifically, it was important to graduate. In my family, I was one of the first graduates. My mom did not have a college degree. My dad did not have a college degree.
I don't have a college degree, and my father didn't have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, 'My boy's got learnin'!'
I don't have a college degree, and my father didn't have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, "My boy's got learnin'!"
The ticket out of the Depression was an education, a college degree. It really didn't matter if you knew anything. You just had to have the degree. My dad, up until the last two years of his life, thought he had failed miserably with me 'cause I didn't go to college. I mean, you've seen postgame interviews with the star of the game and the players always talk about how proud his parents are because he's the first guy in his family ever to attend college. I'm the first in my family not to! I'm the first of my family not to have a degree. It's thrown everybody for a loop.
You can't have 23 million people struggling to get a job. You can't have an economy that over the last three years keeps slowing down its growth rate. You can't have kids coming out of college, half of them can't find a job today, or a job that's commensurate with their college degree. We have to get our economy going.
My college degree is from a great university in 1944. I got my master's at Harvard graduate school, completely co-ed, in 1945. My mother got her college degree in 1920. What's the problem? Those opportunities were always there for women.
Everybody had to go to some college or other. A business college, a junior college, a state college, a secretarial college, an Ivy League college, a pig farmer's college. The book first, then the work.
It is virtually impossible to compete in today's global economy without a college degree.
I am a first-generation college graduate, and I'm proud to say that most of my other siblings have college degrees as well. Our parents taught us to work hard and never forget our family roots, where we came from, and how much effort it took to get to where we are today.
Universities used to prepare young adults for the real world. I dare say the graduates today go in without a clue and graduate without a clue. It's time to acknowledge the college degree is not worth what it was in the past. Times are changing, and so is the way we prepare our youth to survive in a competitive world.
I didn't go to film school. I didn't graduate college with an acting degree or a theater degree. I didn't have the traditional route of training.
I'm the first person in my family to go to college, and I'm an immigrant. My aspirations coming out of college weren't particularly lofty. I wanted a good job with a good company.
When I was in college, I was in the theater department, which for anyone who has been involved in any kind of theater program, you know that it's really wacky and tight-knit, a real family. Me and my good friends from college would do random shows and plays that were sometimes serious, but most of the time really goofy and funny.
I like school very much, and I'll go to college if my career slows down. But kids go to college to be where I am today. Not to put college down, but for me, it would be digressing.
A college degree is not essential, but if you're already in college, and if it's at all possible, you should definitely try to finish. In college, you have a very supportive community right there, and it can give you opportunities to try out new things.