But What If I Don't Want to Go to College?: A Guide to Success Through Alternative Education

by Harlow Giles Unger

Describes a wide variety of careers that can be entered into without a four-year degree and discusses alternative and vocational education and where to get it

Genres: Education

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Harlow Giles Unger is an American author, historian, journalist, broadcaster, and educator known for his extensive work on American history and education. Educated at the Taft School, Yale College, and California State University, Unger began his career as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune Overseas News Service in Paris. He later wrote for newspapers and magazines across Britain, Canada, and other countries, while also working in radio broadcasting and teaching English and journalism at New York-area colleges.
Unger has written over twenty-seven books, including ten biographies of America's Founding Fathers and a notable biography of Henry Clay. His historical works include Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot, The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, and First Founding Father: Richard Henry Lee and the Call to Independence. He is also the author of the Encyclopedia of American Education, a three-volume reference work.
A former Distinguished Visiting Fellow in American History at Mount Vernon, Unger has lived in Paris and currently resides in New York City. An avid skier and horseman, he has spent time in Chamonix, France, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He has one son, Richard C. Unger.

Reviews

[Otis Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book “But What if I Don't Want to go to College” by Harlow G. Unger is a very informative book that helps you see the alternative solutions to college. The main purpose shows that you can acquire a well paying job from alternative education instead of going to college to obtain as the book refers to it as a “good job”. A very good portion of the book has been filled with statistical data that you can refer to, furthermore, this helps keep the author as a ligament source and can be trusted in what he says. Along with this it creates a source for jobs not needing collage so you can look in the book for a job that may interest you, then you can see how many job opening there currently are now and how many there will be in the future.
A theme that you don't need to go to college to have a fulfilling job is very prevalent. When the author starts the book he states many jobs such as nursing that are know to be well paying jobs, then informs you that collage is actually not needed for these jobs. On top of this he also talks about many alternatives to college such as tech school and apprenticeships.
The authors style is extremely prevalent right away as formal. This is most likely because like I mentioned earlier in the first paragraph that you take the author as a serious source. If he had used are more informal approach to writing this book it would have destroyed his credibility casting him more as a untrustworthy source. This formal conveying of words and his use of tables of data all flow very nicely. Along with this you can see that the book was written in an exposition style so you are able to see what alternatives to college are out there.
My opinion on this book is that it was written very well, however, because of the style it was written in it is very dry. Adding to this the main problem with this book is that it has already become outdated as the job and economic market change so will the projected amount of jobs in certain fields. This means that just a couple years after publishing the book you would need to create another book to update the old book with new data. Other than this main problem it still did a fantastic job at showing the reader that college isn't for everyone and alternative education can be just as benefiting as college. Finally between all the books i’ve read this was the first written like this so I couldn't think of any books that are similar to this book.