From Bill Gross, Chairman of PIMCO:
“A mind is a precious thing to waste, so why are millions of America’s students wasting theirs by going to college? All of us who have been there know an undergraduate education is primarily a four-year vacation interrupted by periodic bouts of cramming or Google plagiarizing, but at least it used to serve a purpose. It weeded out underachievers and proved at a minimum that you could pass an SAT test.”
From Gil Weinrich at AdvisorOne:
The medical profession may be no better than law from a financial perspective, according to Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff. Crunching the data for Forbes, Kotlikoff found that a doctor comes out only slightly ahead of a plumber in terms of lifetime earnings once you factor in the physician’s many years learning instead of earning; tuition; loan interest; and taxes paid. For all his effort, the doctor comes out with just a $500 a year advantage over the plumber.
But...but...but... my guidance counselor had a chart that said I'd make way way more going to college! How could it be wrong?!?! It was laminated and colorful!
As far as I'm concerned, people who still claim blindly that one should go to college - even graduate school - to make more money in the future are little better than strict creationists, "no plane" conspiracy theorists, numerologists, UFO watchers, objectivists, trickle-down economists, the jackasses who try to "fix" homosexuals, the anti-vaccination crowd, etc.
What worked in 1980 clearly doesn't work today. Wake up, people.
The devaluation of higher education began in 1980...
ReplyDeleteSome money was made, a dot.com bubble and a few more. But first with the expansion of women in the workforce, then by use of credit cards and finally real estate equity grab: the middle class have been losing ground in the USA for a long time.
My plumber would beg to differ. Trades are highly cyclical. In this area, you can have your own small business and then be bankrupted by laid off union plumbers willing to replace sink traps and such.
ReplyDeleteNo such worry for doctors.
Does this mean that people will choose to be plumbers rather than doctors? I guess they share similarities, a Vascular surgeon and a plumber sorta connect a lot of pipes.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's the status, and social strata that attracts would be doctors as well. That's why there is a premium on Med school, super expensive.
We should not be so surprised about the decline of America. We can scale back on mass consumption, save the nice things for the ultra wealthy, let the common folk get back to rustic (medieval) living standards, learn much needed lessons in humility. Big country, lots of space, rough living.
LOL at Anon about Womyn. Were they not supposed to enter the workforce? Would we be a stronger nation if they did not? Not sure about that, but I hear you bro, sometimes it feels like guys are being left out of the equation, women think they can do anything because they heard about "sperm banks".
The whole problem with higher education are student loans. It has paying so easy that the customers don't properly evaluate what they are getting in return. Get rid of Gov-sponsored student loans or have them only under the supervision of a loan officer.
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