Cameron Johnson's Blog

Who Are the Top Entrepreneurs in Your Community?

My friend Stuart Mease from my hometown of Roanoke just blogged on this and I thought I'd do just the same. Inc. Magazine regularly highlights their Top 30 under 30 and likewise, BusinessWeek started its own Top 25 under 25 last year. These lists aren't a ranking of entrepreneurs by total sales volume or number of employees or even profitability but they fill a great void which is providing inspiration to young entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs of all ages. Entrepreneur magazine does a similar feature titled Young Millionaires. Why isn't this done on the regional level in every community? It's one thing to hear of a young entrepreneur on the other side of the country who is a great success but it's another to find one in your own backyard. They are everywhere, why don't we highlight them?

One of my true passions is promoting entrepreneurship on every level possible. The media needs to do its part. Every major newspaper in the country offers a ranking of the top local athletes (football, basketball, baseball, and even swimming and golf). For those of us who aren't blessed with becoming the next NBA or NFL star athlete (ie. the majority), why don't we promote regional entrepreneurs so their stories can be shared? Their stories need to be shared and their success needs to be studied and taught. One of my efforts next year will be promoting entrepreneurship and making it so mainstream that it is the hot thing - and any newspaper or television station which chooses not to highlight the positive stories in their communities will be doing their community a disservice.

Smaller communities across the country are struggling with retaining young people and too few are taking the steps necessary to fix this growing problem. There's so much that can be done. Let's face it, my generation is the future. We need to be highly trained and highly educated, and then we will become highly recruited - and not just by companies, but cities also.

Higher College Tuition...What else is new?

New school year, same story. Every year college tuition and fees at four-year public universities increases. And it's never a small increase, it's always one that outpaces everything else. How? And more importantly, how do we stop it? This year, the increase was only 6.3%. What a relief! (I'm kidding). CBS News reported that college tuition and fees from 2000-2005 increased 57%. So this brings us to the unfortunate topic of private student loans.

The Fed decided to hold the rate today at 5.25% - amazing news for the millions of students who have private student loans (a figure that topped $17 billion this year). Generation Y (my generation), is the most leveraged generation in American history. Read this excerpt from an article today in the New York Sun:

"Today's young adults who borrowed money for college will be between 52 and 55 on average when they finish paying off their education," said the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the nonprofit Jump Start Coalition, Dan Hebert. "They'll be asking themselves if it was all worth it. The whole concept of college education is at risk."

DO WHAT? College debt is controlling the lives of recent college graduates and it's here to stay. It can delay relationships, force relationships, force bankruptcy, create undue stress, and so much more. In the article mentioned above, Michael Conrath a Senior Product Manager for College Savings at AllianceBernstein says, "Over 25% of the young adults polled said they have delayed getting medical and dental procedures. Many have put off getting married and having children. Because of college debt, many rites of passage are being delayed."

We need to quit pointing fingers and start finding answers. When I train salespeople, I always use the expression, "A sale is made when the value exceeds the price by 1 dollar." Meaning when the customer sees the value in the product/service you're selling and the value exceeds the price by $1, then they buy. Well very quickly it would seem that the value of college is diminishing because the price is becoming so exorbitant.

Another article interviews a recent graduate who considers himself "in financial ruin." Why? Not because he went gambling or risked everything on a startup (I can tell you how to not do that also), and not because of divorce or any other bad decision. In fact, it was simply because he borrowed money for college. He graduated in 2005 and found a job as a cook and his $35,000 student loan has already turned into $50,000 because of the 18% interest rate he received from private lenders. There are two many of these examples. These lenders and society is exploiting our young people.

So what's the answer? Well there are lots of them. One thing to realize, however, is that colleges must fill the seats. They must pay their bills and they must fill the classrooms. They're in competition with other schools in their state and across the country. They spend money advertising. They spend money building extravagant things to attract new customers (errr....students). Take Ohio State - they spent $140 million building a new recreation center which is 600,000+ square feet and includes plenty of important things (such as indoor climbing walls). Private gyms build stuff like this and charge memberships. Unless they offer access to this as a fee outside of the price of admission, then this might be permissible. This isn't the case - instead they raise tuition for every student. Likewise, they market it to prospective students as "no extra charge." Whenever I see "no extra charge" - I know I'm already paying for it, and usually I'm paying too much. $140 million could offered a lot of financial aid. A lot of additional professors... a lot of anything.

Washington State University took it a step further and built the largest indoor jacuzzi for their students. A 50-person hot tub. Sounds fun.

How can public universities fight for every penny in state funding, raise tuition to students, and then justify extravagant expenses such as these? We're in a society where a college education is virtually required to obtain a decent job and to get ahead in the real world. It just makes it extremely difficult to get ahead when you're starting off behind after graduating in massive student debt. The lack of financial education to high school students across the country and the uncontrolled spending of our public universities is literally drowning my generation in debt. I think it's time someone says something. It's really disappointing.

Freshman 15 Becomes Freshman 7.8!

I have great news for high school seniors. USA Today reports that average freshman-year gain is 7.8 pounds for both men and women. Many would argue this isn't newsworthy however I believe it is. Why? Because I believe our colleges are directly responsible for the Freshman 15 and in many cases, they deserve praise for this number falling almost in half. Many high school seniors have a very regular schedule. They wake up at 7 or 8am, eat breakfast before school, eat lunch at school, and eat dinner late at night. College freshman don't have this schedule. They wake up whenever they do, they eat when they want (and what they want) and there are many late nights of partying and the consumption of healthy alcoholic drinks (and no I'm not serious about "healthy") or late-nights consisting of studying or study groups which often include late night eating.

The college town where I live, is so service-oriented that our pizza franchises are open until 3 and even 4am. Taco Bell is open until 2AM some nights and we have plenty of other choices which are open 24 hours. Most colleges offer freshmen "meal plans" and many have a restaurant which offers buffet-style unlimited meals. If food was more expensive or less accessible, we'd eat less and be more healthy. Likewise, if gyms were free or required we'd live healthier lives. Not necessarily the free part because I'm a believer in things in which we don't pay for, we don't take an interest in. For instance, when I write the check to our local gym, this is my commitment to going as I now have a financial investment.

Colleges should continue to focus on offering healthier choices and even healthier late-night choices (versus 2 extra large pizzas for just $12.99 at 2:30AM). It's funny how we can have discussions on the Freshman 15 when an even bigger problem (which they also create) is the lack of financial education. The average college student (and yes, I mean average) graduates with more than $20,000 in college debt and the average starting salary is a mere $30,000. It'll take some time to pay down that debt, do the math yourself. I think this is an even bigger problem than just an extra 7.8 pounds. And this is something colleges are entirely responsible for creating and responsible for not educating our young people.