Interesting contrast to my experience 50 years ago. A slot in a good college looked pretty attractive back then, that student deferment that would have kept me out of the draft and Vietnam. Still, after two quarters of Jr. college there simply weren't any courses that interested me, that pointed me towards something I wanted to do as a profession. Back then it seemed very likely that the country would see "apocalypse or revolution" within ten or fifteen years, I certainly didn't want to put a degree up against the challenges of either of those. Real life skills seemed more to the point. So...fifty years later I'm a retired carpenter/contractor, no apocalypse, no revolution, no degree either of course. Not many regrets, with better steering I might have been a journalist, maybe I still will be one. Your course sounds quite sane and constructive to me. Just don't count on that 8%, that's a pretty good return;)