The value of a college education
Nov. 30th, 2005 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat_sochoJane Galt talks about what a college education is really worth these days - her take on it is that it's more of a signaling mechanism of good work habits and the ability to work well with others than an actual indication of marketable skill. This follows a post by her fellow blogger Winterspeak on the same topic.
One thing that bothers me about the studies they cite on these things (expected income and all that) is that we never see a breakdown of categories. The anecdotal evidence is fairly strong that many college students are wasting their money going into liberal arts majors -which have pretty much zero market value- instead of just working their way up through the ranks to that assistant manager's job at Hardee's/Checker's/Popeye's. I suspect that what goes on with these studies is that the income of accounting, engineering, pre-law and pre-med majors really pulls up the mean income, so that even the worthless Engllish and Fine Arts degrees appear to be worth spending all the zoobs on. Long time readers of my LJ know that I think the current practice of trying to get all high school kids on the college prep track is a very bad idea, and studies like this one just make me sad, because they get misused to convince a lot of people to waste time and money on college when they could be off making money and being happier unclogging toilets, fixing tanks or trucks, or killing people/breaking things for their Uncle Sam. It has always struck me as significant that the two wealthiest men I know are both college dropouts...as is the wealthiest man in America.
One thing that bothers me about the studies they cite on these things (expected income and all that) is that we never see a breakdown of categories. The anecdotal evidence is fairly strong that many college students are wasting their money going into liberal arts majors -which have pretty much zero market value- instead of just working their way up through the ranks to that assistant manager's job at Hardee's/Checker's/Popeye's. I suspect that what goes on with these studies is that the income of accounting, engineering, pre-law and pre-med majors really pulls up the mean income, so that even the worthless Engllish and Fine Arts degrees appear to be worth spending all the zoobs on. Long time readers of my LJ know that I think the current practice of trying to get all high school kids on the college prep track is a very bad idea, and studies like this one just make me sad, because they get misused to convince a lot of people to waste time and money on college when they could be off making money and being happier unclogging toilets, fixing tanks or trucks, or killing people/breaking things for their Uncle Sam. It has always struck me as significant that the two wealthiest men I know are both college dropouts...as is the wealthiest man in America.
