What Can You Do With $20,000? • Blake Boles dot com

Consider the $20,000 that the average family spends in one academic year (nine months, not including summer) on college expenses.

At a traditional college, this money would go into classes, living expenses, library access, professors and support staff, and a hearty amount of socializing and partying. (All of this would take place on a single college campus, of course.)

At ZTC, $20,000 might be spent like this:

$4800: Six months of independent living expenses (room & board @ $800 per month) in a thriving city, living with inspiring friends, project partners, or interesting strangers.
$3000: One hundred hours of mentoring, tutoring, or a la carte classes (@ $30/hour average) in various sports, art forms, academic disciplines, writing, entrepreneurship, and hobbies. [Don’t forget to work with a ZTC mentor!]
$2000: A three-month international budget backpacking trip in both developed and developing countries. (Three months traveling + six months independent living = a nine-month academic year.)
$2000: A new computer, software, and/or equipment needed for various projects.
$1000: Seed money for one or two shoestring business ventures (including website, start-up fees, consulting, advertising, and inventory).
$1000: Three coast-to-coast roundtrip plane tickets, or ten Amtrak trips, or one road trip around the continental USA, to visit friends, family, mentors, conferences, competitions, and big events.
$600: A literary feast composed of a one-year university library membership ($100), 20 new e-books (@ $10), and 20 new paperbacks (@ $15).
$300: Six months of high-speed internet access, opening the door to Wikipedia, Google, TED Talks, YouTube, university webcast courses, blogs, podcasts, and everything else on the Web.
$130: A used bicycle or bus money.
$100: One year of website hosting for a blog, photos, portfolio, résumé, and writings.
$70: Running shoes for getting exercise or playing pick-up sports games.

But wait, that still leaves $5,000!

Put that $5,000 into a mutual fund at 4% yield, do that each year for four years, and you’re left with almost $22,000 upon completion of ZTC.*

Four years of high adventure, great books, independent living, mentoring, tutoring, classes, business ventures, and travel—with a $22,000 nest egg to boot. This is one way that ZTC can offer more than traditional college. And, perhaps most importantly, you won’t graduate with $20-30,000 in student loan debt that plagues most college graduates today.

But we haven’t yet mentioned the ZTC activities that cost virtually no money—only time and opportunity.

$0: Volunteering or interning with an enterprise that you admire.
$0: Interviewing, shadowing, or apprenticing with an expert in your field of interest.
$0: Networking with friends, mentors, and workplace associates.
$0 (or positive income): Working for an enterprise that you admire.

By focusing especially on these low-cost and high-value ZTC activities, you don’t have to spend $20,000 a year to spend on higher education. With creativity you can do ZTC for $10,000, $5,000, or $2,000 per year. And some ZTC students fund their educations entirely by their own efforts: working, learning, fund-raising, and living frugally, without a dime of contribution from their family.

(And let’s not forget some of the oldest forms of self-education:

$0: Conversing with strangers.
$0: Long walks and exploring nature.
$0: Quiet meditation.
$0: Building relationships with loved ones.

…each of which pay dividends in ways that we can seldom measure or predict.)

* This number was previously (and incorrectly) displayed as $27,000 (Changed Feb 2012)

Top photo: another.point.in.time