What's a college degree actually worth?
A recent study linking college majors to lifetime career earnings has rekindled the long-standing debate over the economic value of higher education.
By Elizabeth G. Olson, contributor
FORTUNE -- Any student or recent graduate knows the awkward college major conversation
all too well: "What are you studying? Oh, interesting. What are you planning to do with that?" Translation: Will you actually be able to pay your bills with a liberal arts degree?
all too well: "What are you studying? Oh, interesting. What are you planning to do with that?" Translation: Will you actually be able to pay your bills with a liberal arts degree?A recently released study linking college majors to lifetime career earnings has rekindled the long-standing debate over the economic value of higher education.
The roots of this debate run deep. John Adams, the second U.S. president, even offered his view in the late 18th century. His generation and his sons' generation studied practical subjects "in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelaine," he wrote his wife, Abigail, in a 1780 letter [sic.].
College remained, for decades, a privileged aerie, populated largely by scions of wealthy families. Following World War II and the passage of the G.I. bill, a four-year college education became accessible to the middle classes, allowing a more diverse group to follow Adams' vision and study painting, poetry and other areas not offering certain financial futures.
Even so, generations still debate the practical worth of university degrees -- in everything from drama to French -- at many a kitchen table. Rising education costs, weighty student debt, and the paucity of jobs have given the discussion even more urgency.
This post was allowed to rot, and I hate that.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if you're purely talking about money, petrochemical engineers (i.e. the people who design and run oil extraction equipment) seem to be on top, followed by mechanical and civil engineers. There are some hyped fields that have high unemployment (Nuclear Engineering, Social Psychology, and the Law), but the less it has to do with dealing with people and more with machinery, industrial processes, and energy, the more the graduate makes.
[All this came from a Georgetown U. study.]*
But even then, this is all based on projections that might not come to fruition; I knew a math tutor who began his working life as a civil engineer but he could not stand that CEs are hired for a job, do the job, oversee the job, then are fired when the overpass, highway, or tunnel is complete. So he was tutoring for far less money, but the hassles of constantly moving or living out of rented rooms were not his. My grandfather lived that sort of life; he would go up and down the coast doing engineering at shipyards, Naval bases, etc., returning to his house every couple months. He never talked about that. I've also known mathematicians who could never get in "the Big Time" and were splitting their work lives between the community college and the local polytechnic....it's not just education, but luck, that seems to get people ahead in the massive clusterfuck that is America.
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*The study was looked at with great snark by the person who runs the "Outside Lies magic" blog at:
http://outsideliesmagic.blogspot.com/2011/06/you-and-your-parents-are-retards.html