Yup, this is a serious point: in many individual cases it would make better financial sense as an investment to get some sort of traditionally blue-collar vocational training, rather than an expensive university degree.
This is where non-financial, cultural factors also come into play. People from middle-class families are generally reluctant to do this, because whatever the actual financial rewards, their vision of their children’s future tends to favour careers involving higher education - even if being a plumber appears to make more financial sense.
It is a good question as to whether this focus is a better long-term strategy. I suspect it is, but of course cannot prove it.
Except that you may have to move to India in order to get a job in your vocational field. The other point is that most professional degrees do not limit you just to that field. A degree in law or accounting or an MBA will all work as a basis for a job like mine.
Further, once you have an undergrad degree the Universities make it fairly easy on you to get a Masters in your chosen field while working. So the best plan as I see it is a flexible undergrad like business management, and a minor in something you really enjoy. Then get out there, fidn your niche, and specialize at the Master’s level.
This plan also makes you far more likely to end up doing something you enjoy (or at least don’t hate) with the majority of your waking hours.
Most of the jobs at the bottom of your list are ones people go into out of a passion, not to make money. Only a nitwit gets a degree in theology to make money. Or in culinary arts, or in child care. If you told a person in one of those fields that she should have skipped college and become a plumber, she’d answer that if she wanted to do something she didn’t like she could have gotten a degree higher up on your list.
It is obvious that there is going to be overlap for the salary ranges of college and non-college jobs, but you can’t make sense of how people choose unless you factor in non-monetary things. And in terms of unemployment rates and average salaries, college wins.
I know someone who loved art history, but whose father, career Army, made her major in business. She made a lot more money during her career than she ever would have as an art history major - but she hated every day of it. That’s what happens when you make decisions based on charts like this.
Do you think she would hate being poor?
IMHO, if you are working any of the jobs in these charts, you are part of the “middle class”. You may be at the upper end of middle class making six figures, but it’s still part of the “go to college, get a degree, work the next 40 years as a cog in a big corporate machine so I can afford my mortgage” culture of the middle classes. Your status and livelihood can be taken away at any given moment by a downsizing or restructuring.
Those surveys is that they don’t really tell you anything about how to actually make real money. There are millions of people who make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year. I’m pretty sure they don’t do it just based on their college degree.
And I am not saying that people should not do such degrees - if that is your passion, go for it. I am saying that they should not borrow a ton of money in order to do them. For example, go to community college for two years then transfer to an in-state college for the remainder. In Georgia that will cost you about $25k in tuition and fees (which would mostly be free for anyone who meets and maintains the requirements for a Hope scholarship).
If people are not out to “make money”, they should recognize that it also means that they will not be able to spend a lot of money.
She might have hated living in her car a lot more than working as an accountant. 18 year olds all think they are going to be the one-in-a-thousand that makes it big out of Art History/Culinary Arts/Fashion majors. Unless you are independently provided for financiallu (trust fund or have good prospects to marry money) you had better major in something where you have a good chance of making money or have the confidence that you can make money some other way, outside your field. Actually when I worked in telecom sales in the 1990s, the most popular majors for our salespeople were Education and Art.
So you get a degree in something you love, and then you don’t end up working in that field very long anyway because you can’t make any money. Our EVPs admin just quit her job for the third time to see if she could make a living in the theatre. The first two times, she ran out her life savings, and came back to the corporate world. I mean the chances you will break through at 40, when you failed at 20 and again at 30 have got to be vanishingly small, but for some people, the seasonal gig at the community theatre is just not enough if they really have the bug.
Edit: I see that other people have covered this. But thanks for reading.
That’s not necessarily true. I know a number of people who make a pretty significant living in the arts. But they are professional graphic designers who after 15 years own their own firms and are highly talented. They design corporate logos, marketing materials, jackets and art for books, videos and games and so on. So it certainly can be done if you have real talent, drive and dedication. If you’re just a flake who thinks “art is cool” and just doesn’t want to enter the corporate grind, not so much. In the end, it all becomes a business.
But I am convinced that what keeps people in the middle classes is that overwhelming desire to “play it safe”. Go to the best bargain school. Study the practical major. Pick the practical career. Live in the sensible community. Comprimise your values to fit in. Don’t take risks. So on and so forth.
I dunno - that sort of goes for the majority of all classes. The blue-collar guy who wants to be a good union man is “playing it safe”, too.
Moreover, for most artists becoming a corporate logo designer is just as much compromising of values, if not more, than becomming an accountant.
The romantic notion of the artist as a rebel non-conformist who simply creates for the joy of creation is generally a myth - very few can actually attain that. Most have to conform to something to get paid - be it some corporate imperative, or a grant-providing cultural institution (which has its own hierarchies and often iron-clad rules of conformity which must be followed). The exceptions are either geniuses at self-promotion. funded by themselves, or extremely lucky.
If she had been happier, she might have gotten married long before she finally did, and have been both happy and not poor.
And if you don’t go to college, the same thing can happen. Look at how screwed people in the building trades are, people who made good money during the boom. (And deserved it.)
I wasn’t implying that because people who get the bottom degrees do it out of love the people at the top do not. I got a CS degree not because it was going to make me money but because that was what I wanted to do. Back then it wasn’t so obviously a moneymaker - my father said I should take some business classes, just in case. I’ve worked for some of the biggest companies in the world over the past 30 years, and have never been a cog, because I didn’t let myself be a cog. I’d say those who do would be cogs wherever they are. Some guy who works 9 to 5, just follows directions and never comes up with anything new is not going to suddenly become a brilliant entrepreneur if released from corporate slavery.
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Those surveys is that they don’t really tell you anything about how to actually make real money. There are millions of people who make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year. I’m pretty sure they don’t do it just based on their college degree.
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No, but their college degree might be the admission ticket to the arena where they can make real money. Especially if it is from the right college.
My friend in no way thought of herself as an artist. If she had done what she had wanted to do, she would have tried to find work in a museum or something - much easier back then than now. And I definitely agree about the business angle. My wife is a writer now, and makes pretty good money at it, but she makes most of her money from every unexciting stuff which makes use of her college education - in science. She has a bunch of non-fiction books out from good publishers, but they don’t bring in the cash.
99% of all the people in the world do this. A lot of it depends on what is important to you. Most of the people we know wanted bargain schools for their kids - we wanted the best school they could get into. It cost a bit more (maybe a lot more) but it paid off. Our parents did the same for us, and it paid off for us too. However, if you buy into the notion that college is basically a ripoff, and that there ain’t a dimes worth of fundamental difference between Harvard and the local community college, bargain makes sense, doesn’t it?
Sometimes you can strike a balance. I went to high school with a guy who does some pretty awesome artwork professionally. He seems to mostly work creating art for books and videogames and whatnot, but he also put out a book of his own material. I don’t consider his corporate work a compromise. I consider it taking the necessary actions to ensure you get to do what you want to do. A compromise would be if he went and became an accountant or something.
I think the only people who believe a degree from Harvard is the same from the local community college are those who lack the vision and understanding to know what sort of opportunities those schools can provide.
I don’t think expensive colleges are a “ripoff”. But higher education is becoming part of a sort institutionalized class structure. Basically what it is effectively doing is creating a barrier where unless you come from a family that can afford the $100,000 price tag, you will not be able to go to a school that will open doors to eventual six and seven figure salaries in the nations top investment banks, hedge funds, law firms, management consulting firms and Fortune 500 management programs.
It’s like one of our sr analysts who informally told his performance manager he wanted to be like “John”, one of our senior managing directors (who probably makes over a million a year) in 5 years. “That’s easy” his pm said. Go to Harvard Law and get your law degree. That will take 3 years. Get a job at one of the top NYC law firms. Make partner in 2 years (a process that normally takes 8-10 or more). Write a book on our industry sometime during that period. Then you can be just like him.
I also knew an artist who was working for Hallmark. How he hated it! He would probably have been happier if he had been an accounting clerk and did his art on the side and tried to sell it. As it was, he felt like he was prostituting his talent, but he didn’t know anything about spreadsheets or accounting, so hard to get a job. I do know a couple of people who have day jobs and still produce a lot of art. One of them makes a pretty good income from the sideline, the other has probably sold a few thousand dollars worth in the last twenty years, and paid more to galleries than he has taken in. But they are both pretty happy.
I also have a cousin who used to make a sort of a living doing portraits (paintings). But she couldn’t deal with the monotony and the “input” she would get from the subjects (AKA the customer). Eventually she married someone with family money. They pissed away a couple of million in ten years, traveling the globe painting subjects. She did end up with some awesome landscapes of places all over the world, but which had little market value (a few hundred each, maybe). Ended up living in their mother’s basement.
Yes, I do also know someone who got a degree in graphic arts and designs corporate materials, makes a pretty good living. But if you ask him, he will describe himself more in technology terms than in artistic ones.
And experience. One of the teachers at the local high school said exactly this. You know it is not true, and I know it is not true, but if you went to Podunk U. who flouts the one professor who gets her papers in good journals, you probably don’t know about it. Both my daughter and I have had doors open because of where we went to college, but this isn’t something which gets broadcast to the world.
Expensive bad colleges are a ripoff, and appeal to those who connect quality with cost alone. A good state school, in a state that actually supports higher education, and a kid with a bit of push is an excellent deal - much better than a low quality expensive private school.
The class structure piece of it is hardly new - it is not like Harvard was less important 100 years ago.
Companies need to know where to focus recruiting efforts, and school quality is an excellent metric. Also not new - Bell Labs was doing it 25 years ago, and it was hardly new then. If you’ve got elite jobs to offer, why not offer them to those who pushed a bit harder than anyone else in high school and who survived the elite university?
The real sufferers are actually those families who make enough to not get good scholarships to the expensive, high quality schools, but not enough to afford them. And locally, good state schools have a lot of clout also, since lots of bosses will be alums.
I have a degree from a well-known, prestigious private college that regularly ranks among the top ten schools in rankings such as from U.S. News, etc. (But not Harvard.)
A few months after I started working at my first real job, my boss happened to mention to me that when I was being interviewed, some of the others were reluctant to hire someone fresh out of school with very limited experience. What convinced them was the name of the school.
I did well there, and that job was right on a career track to my current position.
I’ve also found that really good state schools have clout even in other states. My undergrad and grad schools were good state schools, with well-known reputations. When I was in NJ, people were impressed by the instititution I attended in Georgia. Now that I’m living in VA, people are impressed by the state school that I attended in NJ. They always mistake it for an Ivy League. But I’m always quick about correcting them, because I’m proud of having taken advantage of the public university system.
It’s funny, though. If you ask GA and NJ residents about the schools I attended in their respective states, most would probably just shrug their shoulders. It’s like they don’t realize that they don’t have to go to Harvard or Cornell to get a high quality education. And opportunities and connections? It may be easier to find these at a name-brand institution, but with enough moxy, a good student can find plenty of opportunities at a state school. Actually, the effort of finding these opportunities is a lesson in and of itself, because you really have to prove yourself to get them (instead of people handing them to you because they think your academic pedigree is the end-all, be-all).
If I had a kid who showed academic prowess, I would tell them to shoot for the stars, but make sure they can afford them! I was raised by college-educated parents from poor and working class families–which meant they could not rely on their parents to pay for their tuition. My own parents expressed a desire to “help out” because my father’s salary put us solidly in the “middle class” bracket, but there was no assumption that they’d be writing my ticket to school. So even though Cornell offered me a partial scholarship (a kind gift, but a drop in the bucket), I sent my ass to the good state school just down the street…a place where I could attend for practically nothing because I qualified for a scholarship funded by the the state lottery. Maybe my life would have turned out differently if I had gone to Cornell, but I’m satisfied with where public education has taken me.
I wish there were more opportunities like the one I received, so that more students could graduate without debt and use any saved college funds for graduate school or unpaid internships. Student loan debt, especially now, is really what is holding a lot of college graduates back from reaping the full financial benefits that their education allows for.
Ok, so I realize I’m an outlier. But I have friends with advanced degrees from Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge. The highest makes half what I do. I went to George Mason for a while but never finished.
This idea that a college education is a financial investment is a low/middle class idea. Some people do actually think that education makes life better.
It’s really more complicated. In my own case, all my life as a child I loved science. I knew I wanted to be a scientist. But what can you do in science without going to college? Nothing. So I knew that I had to go to college. Not for the financial investment, but to learn as much as I could in the field I was interested in.
As it turned out, I was accepted to a very prestigious university which later in life opened a lot of doors for me, so it did turn out to be a very good financial investment as well.
My father grew up very poor - he came from a rich family, but his father died and his mother lost everything even before the Depression. My mother’s father was a plumber, and she and her three sisters all got degrees from the City University of New York, which was totally free back then.
I started saving for college for my kids when the youngest was about 3, and they both have now graduated with no debt. The oldest is in grad school at that state university in NJ, on a fellowship/assistanceship. The younger is in a Masters program in Germany, which is costing all of 38 Euros this term, (low, low introductory price) and goes up to 750 Euros a term thereafter.
As for Cornell - 4 or 5 kids from my high school class went to Cornell for a summer program. None of them was even interested in applying to it after they were done. I think you might have come out even further ahead than you think you did.
The reason college as an investment is a low/middle class idea is because wealthy kids have the option of having everything handed to them. They can go start some business with their trust fund money. Their uncle the managing director in some Wall Street firm can get them a summer internship. Or they can just go be a fuckup if they choose.
Wealthy people have the luxury of pretending like money and education doesn’t matter.
Some have to face the cold, hard realization that if they goof off and fuck up, or simply fail to earn enough money, they could easily end up living in a hostel or on the street: others simply don’t. Their family can, and generally will, support them through whatever they want to do.
Those that don’t have to really face that realization are naturally going to be much less concerned about the financial side of things. The good part is that in theory they can concentrate on self-improvement and matters artistic and philosophical. The bad part is that they can just as easily become partying slackers.