Don't Send Your Kids to College

b. Take half the fee for one semester, give it your kid, and tell him or her to start a revenue-generating business. Not every kid has entrepreneurial sensibilities, but it's always worth it to at least try once. And the cost for starting a business is next to zero, so it's a very viable alternative. What business should she start? For one thing, now that Facebook and MySpace have open development platforms, spec out a few applications for these platforms; for a few hundred dollars outsource development of these applications to India, and get your friends to start trying them. Make sure they are viral (i.e. a message should appear "click here to get all your friends to try XYZ") and see which ones are a success. I mention Facebook and MySpace because every kid is familiar with these sites and comfortable with the subtleties, and it's this comfort that can create the best businesses.

c. Spend a year trying to get good at one thing. Whatever your child's greatest interest now is, whether cooking, chess, writing, math, there are so many resources on the Internet available for learning that college is almost the last place a kid should go to pursue a passion. Intense, several-hour-a-day immersion in a favorite topic is the surest way to become an expert in that field.

d. Charity. Pick a favorite cause and do nothing but that for a semester or a year. Build houses in Appalachia, for instance. Feed dinners to the homeless. Or take one semester's tuition, set up your own micro-charity and give the money out in $100 increments to good causes or situations your child thinks are worthy. Write up each situation in a notebook, and by the end your child will have a whole life of lives changed.