Should My Life Insurance Pay for College?

One of the primary reasons why people buy life insurance is to pay for their kids’ college. Let’s suppose Mom and Dad have been putting away money for that expense. Tragically, one (or more horribly, both) meet an early demise. Life insurance would pick up the slack and complete the college fund for the surviving children.

For the past generation, this type of planning has been central to family finances. But these days, should it remain so? Here are some developments that could cause parents to think twice about sending their kids to college:

1. There are a multitude of blue-collar jobs that need to be filled.

A college degree may not even be necessary to make good money. Check out this interview with “Dirty Jobs” guru Mike Rowe by Nick Gillespie in Reason Magazine. To quote:

Rowe: You have right now about 3 million jobs in transportation, commerce, and trades that can’t be filled.

reason: This is anything from carpentry to being an electrician, a plumber, construction-

Rowe: Heating, electric, truck drivers. Welders is a big one. There’s a long list of jobs that parents typically don’t sit down and say to their kids: “Look, if all goes well, this is what you’re going to do.”

2. Many colleges have a bias against certain well-paying industries due to political ideology.

This means that even though these schools are supposedly committed to helping students launch careers, they may deliberately steer new graduates away from well-paying opportunities purely out of prejudice. See this assessment by Paul Tice in the Wall Street Journal:

Here is a college quiz. While many parts of the U.S. economy struggle to recover from the Great Recession of 2008-09, one domestic industry is experiencing a technology-driven expansion in which American innovations have led to countless new company startups, a surge in hiring and some of the highest-paying entry-level jobs for graduating college seniors.

How are the nation’s universities responding so students might prepare for a promising career in this growing and intellectually challenging field? By largely ignoring it. Why? Because the industry is oil and gas.

Is college for some people? Most certainly. But each child should be presented with all options, and informed about the realities of the marketplace for each. Some could end up in higher education, and others trade school. Still others could even start their own business. Everybody wins if the parents provide the counsel and the finances to support what is right for the individual child. And life insurance can secure that investment.

Does this make sense to you?