Is College Worth It? A Father and Son Disagree on Whether to Finish Their Degrees

Ed Surge

Jeffrey R. Young

December 20, 2022

Finishing a college degree is hard. It’s an endurance race: It takes determination to keep going, and a belief that it will all be worth it in the end.

But what if the current generation of students is just less sold on needing a college degree than their parents are?

That’s the case for one family outside of Detroit. The father, Paul Carr, is 47, and he’s pushing to finish a college degree he started right after high school but stopped pursuing when he found out his then-girlfriend was pregnant with their first child. Today, that child, Qayyim, is 25 years old, and he, too, recently put college on hold. But unlike his dad, Qayyim isn’t nearly as sold on going back to finish.

These two have loads in common. They both attended Morehouse College. And they even chose the same major, political science. But when EdSurge talked with them as part of our Second Acts series about returning adult college students, it was clear their views on the value of college are vastly different.

This dialogue was part of the third episode of that series that ran in September. This week we’re rerunning that episode, and we’re bringing you the transcript of that section. It has been lightly edited for clarity.

When we connected via Zoom, Qayyim was wearing a Nintendo 64 shirt, referencing a classic video game system that his dad might have played back when he was in his 20s. Qayyim, whose nickname is Q, says he is passionate about jobs and gigs that just don’t require a college degree. He’s been building a following on Twitch, the streaming service that encourages people to watch users play video games as they give color commentary or otherwise engage with their audience online.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts, or use the player on this page. Or read a partial transcript below, lightly edited for clarity. If you want to skip right to this conversation between father and son, you’ll find it at about 34 minutes in.

Continue Reading