This reminds me of “The Big Bang Theory” episode where Penny starts a home-based business selling Penny Blossoms hair barrettes. Sheldon gives her advice and help and the other guys pitch in too. She soon receives hundreds of orders but discovers that the orders mean much extra work.
Love that episode!
Plus on Friends when Monica realizes that she’d have to charge $17 per jar of jam to break even 
#monicasjamplan
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Oh yeah. I was just stating an amount based on the non-deduction of “only a few thousand miles” of driving.
I haven’t checked out the latest IRS rate, but even in the lowest brackets, “thousands of miles” translates pretty well to “hundreds of dollars”. If you’re not in the lowest bracket, it’s even more substantial.
And “home office” is a big one for me. Although we max it out; we actually use more space than the max allowed; no problem justifying it, just measure all the shelving units!
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Those of us who have been through the college admissions rat race recently see through this young woman’s resume-building enterprise, aided and financed by her family.
If her grades and SATs are good enough, her business building activity and national publicity will get her noticed, and likely admitted to some of the best colleges in the US.
Her parents know that really smart Asian kids are a dime a dozen when it comes to college admissions, and they are helping her rise above the crowd.
Admissions officers are unlikely to look at the numbers from her business when considering her application.
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I don’t believe most admissions officers know the first thing about business. Numbers?
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They don’t need business details; just the press clippings. That’s all that really matters.
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Well, the way you know it’s a ruse or not is if she goes to college.
If the business is really successful, with exponential growth, there’s no need to go to college.
The average college grad makes like what, 50 - 60K? And you spend 100-200K in tuition/student loans give or take. Looking at her products vs sale price, I don’t think it’s more than a few bucks in materials for few pieces of acrylic and some metal hardware, and it’s selling for $70, she should be pulling at least 100K / year in profit w/ the sky as the limit if the article is truthful. Seems like it would be a step back to go to college unless the business isn’t making as much as it seems.
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The thing is, with that kind of media attention she’s going to find her self with competition very quickly. Just glancing through the offerings she has, most of what she has is out of stock. It’s a very basic and easily copyable idea. (I have no idea if she patented anything but some countries don’t even respect patents so 
) Someone with more money and better connections to manufacturing can easily swoop right in on this endeavor.
Like more power to her, it’s great she was able to accomplish this…but I don’t think it is sustainable. I just hope she had some guidance and doesn’t go “all in” and reinvest all her money into the business.
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That’s a bit of a faulty premise albeit I agree with your that institutions are broken, are overpriced and aren’t emphasizing thought and learning.
An education is precisely that - the acting of rearing - it encompasses critical thought, and provides a world view at the highest philosophical, ontological and scientific levels as we currently have.
Most kids come out of college with an ROI mentality partly because its so expensive but there are options - like a community college where one can learn how to learn and then decides to specifically finish with a BA or BS.
Now one can learn outside of an institution but most people won’t. How many autodidacts do you know at that age?
Just a few thoughts since I often see the comparison being made by Entrepreneur bros when selling their $4997 courses - only $4977 for this course or $400,000 for College with $0 prospects - Copy writing bro, crypto bro, Drop shipping bro, Social Media Marketing bro. Etc.
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Yeah I know that it’s an oversimplified and somewhat flawed way of framing college, but for many people it’s a somewhat accurate representation of what it is for them. It’s more about the point that if someone actually has a successful business at that age it makes more sense to continue with that, and learn from experience than to drop it to go to college. While it’s possible to do both, a business, especially at the early stages, is more than a full time job if you want it to succeed.
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“Making money” isn’t the only purpose of or reason to go to college.
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Many people also don’t want to run their own business, even if they had success building pet cages in high school. What if this young lady in the article really wants to be an optometrist or is interested in immigration law or public policy?
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One is relatively less permissionless than the other.
I would say the barrier to entry for University is an X multiple higher than starting a business.
To add further to this complexity - how many of us are in the precise field we went to college for? I have a finance degree and I’ve used it, but its mostly excel and arithmetic - most of my forecasting I learned in my financial analyst roles during school - did I have to go through University to get there? No. Would I have gotten there, without it? Also, no.
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But wouldn’t have traded the experience for the world.
It’s not only about the money.
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But looking at college rates in 2024 and its asinine compared to 2008 when I graduated. Prices have skyrocketed and admissions fatigue has risen proportionately as well. It really boggles the mind.
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Worse still, it really stifles societal efforts to raise all boats - which is a particularly-pernicious development when one considers the underpinning fact that the drive for obtaining college educations for one’s progeny was founded upon doing just that.
Sadly, commercial interests have been allowed to become one of the overriding demands - if not, as is far-too often the case, THE overriding demand - in the administration of most all of our educational institutions.
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Well, I majored in physics. Ended up working in the Adult Beverage industry for many years.
So pretty close. 
(we actually had one class where the prof bought the first round).
More importantly, without college, I wouldn’t know as many people here.
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I’m all for a massive overhaul of the education system. I’m all for independent education for kids through tutors and allowing social time separately with minimal school time - maybe 3-4 hours a day as opposed to 7 + lunch…etc but that is a broader topic. My only point earlier was that education and especially the classics and therefrom is vital (costs not being considered in this point) - without which we’re producing mentally challenged beings in its widest spectrum of meaning (health/mental well-being issues not being considered in this point).
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I completely agree and was just showing that even cost doesn’t have to be a barrier.
Fun fact, in the normal course of typical development, it is not unusual for cognitive processes to continue growth and development to age 25.
Just because you turn 18 and/or graduate doesn’t mean you’re done cooking. Young adults continue to need school, skills training, structured intentional apprenticeship with accomplished mentors, and/or a combo–jumping straight to jobs without career empowerment or into entrepreneurship is rarely (not never but rarely, don’t @ me) the best use of those still-building synapses and neurons.
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