I see this sentiment quite a bit on CB. You're not doing your child any favors by paying for their school for 4 or 5 years. They're not going to suddenly gain workplace skills they will need to succeed just because they have a degree.

I recently talked to a guy whose job involves hiring decisions for a division of a fortune 500 company. He's been with the company working in HR and hiring for years. He's at the point where he will rarely give an interview to someone who comes out of college with zero work experience. His comments (I'm paraphrasing a bit because it's been several months since we had the conversation) were basically that he doesn't care what type of job you had. He doesn't care if it is in any way relevant to the job you're applying for. He just wants to see someone with work experience. He doesn't care if it's working at a gas station or delivering pizzas. He also said that new hires who worked only a summer job during college have a reasonable shot at being successful employees, but over the years he's found that employees who worked while going to school were much better employees and were more successful in his company.

I can see where he's coming from and why that would be the case. If you're working a job and trying to take classes, you are forced to learn time management and other valuable skills. You also learn how to do hard things that kids who have parents who pay for school don't.