Degrees Are Just Paper / Happy New Year

I found this reprinted article by Elizabeth Ellis of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder simple and pointed enough to pass along here. I don't know who Ms. Ellis or or what the Spokesman-Recorder is, but this piece, titled "College degree is no employment guarantee" is more true in theory than almost any hack mainstream editorial I've read in the last year. While not about law school, this line jumped out at me:

Competition among recent law school graduates is so intense that one I know of is a groundskeeper.

Pre-law students, this woman is not a disgruntled law grad or student with a bitter axe to grind. She is merely an observer who notes that it's the out-of-whack ratio between graduates and jobs that caused his predicament and not his own personal failures.

I cannot say this enough times: a degree is just a piece of paper. It does not reflect any intrinsic value or relay any particular effort to the world. Like any other commodity - including money - its value is not constant, and it may be absurdly overvalued as the laws of supply and demand may dictate (although money is a bit different when it comes to that, but moving on...). Growing up, we (children of the 80s and 90s, maybe others) were all shown a chart eerily similar to this ungodly, misleading mess:

These charts are foul, far worse than Joe Camel advertising or cartoon pornography or anything else we tried to keep from the eyes of impressionable children. Their massive proliferation amongst enthusiastic guidance counselors trying to persuade kids to go to college reveals a society not only flooded with the materialism of thinking a salary determines one's prestige, success, and worth as a human being, but also reveals a society ignorant of the laws of economics and statistics.

Instead of teaching children the laws of supply and demand and that being in an in-demand field means more for one's salary than level of educational achievement, we gave them the most lazy directive possible: go to college and make more money. Instead of teaching them that the correlation between degrees and earnings does not mean that the degree causes the earnings, we told them having a degree would surely make them more money over their lifetime. Instead of realizing the investment lesson that past returns do not guarantee future results, we ignored making any kind of projections; surely, we told the leaders of tomorrow, a college business major would make more than a plumber or an electrician or a mechanic or a garbageman. Surely! We systematically set aside professions that simply weren't for mommy and daddy's high achievers, and as a result two whole generations went (and are going) to college to get the B.A., the B.S., the J.D., the M.B.A., the Ph.D, the M.A., the whatever.

And now there's such an overpowering supply of them compared to the demand that the laws of economics have caused a new reality to dawn: the degrees are not a one-way ticket to a better financial life, that the chart is and always has been utter bullshit, and that education is not the same thing as useful knowledge. The world needs smart, hard-working people, whether they have degrees or not. We need to realize that despite their marketing ploys, colleges are a business, students are consumers, and often times the colleges flood the marketplace with completely useless and grossly-overpriced products. If someone calls education an investment, apply investment principles; ask him if he would ever take a 30-year mortgage to spend $150k on property upgrades that had no guarantee of ever raising the market value of the property. No one in their right mind would do that.

But useless ornamentation are what college degrees have become in many cases, thanks to a decades-long propaganda effort. And because everyone saw the same chart and rushed to school, we have an oversupply of educated people, many of whom are destined to failure by sheer numbers. Many of the remainder are left depressed and anxiety-ridden by the intense competition. In both sets, their ability to have and sustain families is greatly hampered.

Prevailing wisdom is a powerful force, especially since the baby boomer generation is replete with morons who C-averaged their way through God-Knows-Where State and now make $90,000 and act as if it should be just as easy for any college graduate today to excel while continuing to propagate the myth that a degree equals a brighter future.

But a degree only raises your economic value if it makes you an in-demand economic commodity. There are always professions that need degrees: doctors, architects, engineers, researchers. If that is your dream, go for it. I even think law school still makes sense for the right student. I won't even tell you that money is an improper motivation. Sometimes, it can be, especially if the degree is cheap in comparison to the projected lifetime earnings/in-demand nature of the field (nursing, for example).

But I will tell you it's a small, small minority of those currently applying to be part of next year's massive flock that really need to be there, maybe only 1/4 or a 1/3. Most degrees do not really give you any prestige anymore in an age when PhDs and J.D.s are given out like candy. Nor will you really become a more well-rounded individual as a result. If you have the thirst for knowledge, you will become a bright individual whether it comes from some overpaid jackass snob who wears a scarf and a beret indoors or from a book you read on your own. As Will Hunting noted, a good library can give you the same education as paying full tuition. As someone who went to a USNWR top 15ish undergrad school, I'll tell you that there's nothing special about my education in the liberal arts I couldn't have learned - likely quicker - in a good public library.

At the end of your life, no one will give a shit what degree you had except maybe the college that gave it to you, and that's only if you're rich enough they can beg for some of your estate to build something new. Do not lose sight of what is really important in your life to chase that stupid sheet of paper. It is nothing more than a product, an investment, a commodity, and for the average student right now, I'm not sure many post-secondary educational programs are really worth the purchase price.

I don't care what choice you make, but if I can get just one 18, 22, whatever-year old to think of their degree as a product rather than as just "the next thing to do" in a series of pre-ordained life steps, this blog will be successful. You would never pay $100k for a used Kia Rio, would you? Why do it with a sheet of paper?

If you are 18, 22, whatever, and you feel like you have no direction, nothing else to do, no job, let me tell you this: you are surely creative enough to find something better to do than overpay for the "privilege" of sitting in an English 101 or Torts I class that may never make you more marketable or increase your chances of getting a job. Don't be lazy; that was your parents' and your guidance counselors' mistakes and we can't afford to perpetuate the silliness.

Originally I planned this to be a very short entry, but then I done gone a-rantin'. Sorry about that, you ADHD folk, although most of you have probably clicked elsewhere by now.

I'm out until after New Year's, probably well after the new year. I hope everyone has a happy and safe end to 2010. I've had a great first few months on the blog and I'm looking forward to 2011; I have a project that I've been working on that I'm really looking forward to. 'Til then, take care, and Happy New Year!