College in America does not work the way it used to. Only one in four college enrollees will graduate and get a good job in today's economy.Every May approximately three million teenagers graduate from high school to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.” Given the mediocre quality of K-12 education in the United States today the vast majority of these kids are lucky if they are prepared for a minimum wage job at McDonalds. Since flipping burgers doesn’t sound very attractive, all of these young folks are open to suggestion. What sounds better than, “Go to college and earn$1,000,000 more than a high school graduate?” Everyone is doing it, and it is "free." The government will loan you the money, and you don’t have topay it back for years.Sound like a plan? Here is the stark reality:It is highly unlikely that your student is going to make $1,000,000 more than the average high school graduate.Financing college with student loan debt is not “free.” In fact it is dangerous.There are many options that don’t require your student to sit in a classroom for years that can result in her getting a great job. If your student just graduated from high school, the challenge now is how he or she will become a financially self-sufficient adult in the next few years. College may be the right answer, or maybe not.