"Hire" education

Sarcasm aside, my point was there should be some thought to what kind of return you’re getting for your education. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that an engineering degree costs the same as a communications degree. Or, rather, that people are willing to spend the same on them.

I’m not convinced college is a good investment for many that attend.

The problem here Ohai, is that your 50% of kids being less successful than parents or whatever assumes a normal distribution. What Bchad and many others are getting at is that an increasingly skewed wealth distribution towards the proverbial 1% means 99% of children may be less successful than their parents on a real earnings level, while 1% of kids (children of the 1%) will be more successful due to access to capital and compounding effects of modern technology.

But is that really the case? Once you adjust for the bad economy for the past 5 years, are a small percentage of kids really taking all the wealth at the expense of others? Or would we really prefer a society which does not have Zuckerbergs and Google guys who skew the distribution, but also create large economic activity?

I do think it’s really the case, and evidence overwhelmingly supports the fact that the middle class has been pounded on a real earnings level over the past 30 years. It’s not even debatable.

Interestingly you chose Zuckerberg, perhaps the greatest single outlier in history to attempt to validate an entire system. And yes, I would be fine in a Zuckerbergless society. Great example there, OMG No FACEBOOK! What would society do?! And facebook, an ad firm, creating large economic activity? Really. Unless you’re refering to the 26% loss their IPO shareholders took. I guess that had some economic impact.

I’m not saying that technological feudalism is fully established… we’re just heading that way. And my argument isn’t about how awful the 1% are, and more about how the gains from specialization are increasingly turning into a winner-take all game where if you aren’t already well endowed financialy, it’s extremely difficult to compete on talent alone, let alone acquire talent. There will be competition among elites, and rotation of power and influence, and so we won’t devolve to medieval kings. But if you weren’t set up through the proper channels, it doesn’t matter how good you are anymore, because there are only a few companies or locations or brands that matter, and these now have global reach, so you can’t even be a star in your local system anymore.

Affirmative action may be like the medieval priesthood… a way to influence that doesn’t entirely depend on being born to the purple. But that doesn’t really change the major structure of society.

It’s not here, but we’re drifting this way, and I don’t see what’s likely to stop it. The internet was in some ways liberating and freeing, but then those with power and influence figured out how to use it effectively.

I would happily trade Zuckerberg and Larry Page for larger economic activity and a smaller gap between rich and poor.

Believe it or not, some places actually have that and don’t pat themselves on the back about “free enterprise”.

Heh, I think I get a shout out every 2 years or so here on AF. Been using the name since middle school, but felt a bit guilty when I found out there’s actually a “Matt Calamari” out there that works in finance. I get his happy hour related emails sometimes… awkward.

But how many jobs have been created b/c of these two entrepreneurs? Certainly those at the top, including these two named individuals are now filthy rich, but how many engineers, finance back office types, sales people, administrative assistant posiitions now exist that wouldn’t otherwise? Google has tens of thousands of employees. Not to mention how many service providers have jobs b/c of these firms; yes this includes lawyers, accountants, bankers, but also includes UPS and Fed Ex drivers, and all of the other services needed to operate any business. Regular people are benefiting too…

Jobs in a company =/= net job gain or loss from displacement.

Furthermore, somehow you and Ohai have confused the increasingly skewed wealth distribution towards a small percentage as being caused by entreprenureship, which is simply not the case.

Hudson_Startup_Jobs_Per_Capita.PNG

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/julyaugust_2012/features/the_slowmotion_collapse_of_ame038414.php

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-30-year-decline-of-american-entrepreneurship/262831/

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-21/why-entrepreneurship-is-declining

More importantly, you seem to be arguing the case of a system using “outliers”, which by definition lie outside the system:

Noun

  1. A person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system

And lastly, your argument pointing towards job creation and economic benefit to the “average” American is completly baseless when examining the erosion that has occured over the past decades:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/30-statistics-show-middle-class-dying-right-front-our-eyes-we-enter-2012

One of the problems that I see when people talk about the gap between the “rich” and the “poor”, is that being “rich” is not like being “black”. When a person is black, they are born black, remain black when they grow up, then they die black. Unless you’re Michael Jackson, there’s nothing you can do to change that.

You can go from “poor” to “middle-class” to “rich” and vice-versa. In fact, I think that’s the norm. Sure, there are some people who are rich through no merit of their own, and there are poor people who are poor through no fault of their own.

My point above was, if kids had to pay for their own educations, you would see a lot of rich people staying rich (i.e. perpetuating their wealth) because they can afford to buy degrees for their kids. And you’d have a lot of poor people staying poor because they could not afford to buy a degree for their kids. The poor will have a harder time moving up to “rich”, and the “rich” will tend to stay “rich”.

For example: If it weren’t for my military experience, I would be in the latter group. Through no fault of mine, I grew up in a poor family. I did not have the financial resources (even with Pell Grants) to go to college. I believe I have what it takes to survive at HBS or Wharton, but I never did (and now I never will) get the opportunity. On the other hand, I know plenty of people who went to top schools, but had no business being there. (I’m looking at you, George W. Bush.) So a really bright Greenman stays poor while a really mediocre W becomes president of the US.

Actually poor people can actually attend elite private universities for nearly free…financial aid is really that good. It’s upper middle class people that get hit pretty hard.

@BS - Whoa! Didn’t intend to elicit that strong of a reaction. My point was simply that entrepreneurs do create jobs. I’m not here to argue wealth or income distributions and how they compare to decades past, I get that there is much more skewness today than during our parents’ and grandparents’ generations (and I firther agree that these are not good new trends). But I’m also not ready to trade in the Zuckerberg’s of the world.

Interesting that you didn’t learn the proper use of “neither” in your liberal arts education. What they should have taught you is that it is neither appropriate to use “neither” to group more than two things nor to pair “neither” with “or” instead of “nor”.

poor kids could take a loan?if that loan is on their head they would choose a degree with relevance to the job market.

for example the most employable degree is probably comp sc engineering.you could go to a decent state school and you’ll be fine.

This is certainly more true now than it was 15 years ago when I was planning to go to school.

When I was a senior in high school, my mom and dad made $15,000 between the two of them. I grew up in a town of 2000 people, with 35 kids in my graduating high school class. We had two stoplights. The closest McDonald’s was 30 miles away. The closest town of more than 100,000 people was about 100 miles away. No, we never went to the “big city”, because we couldn’t afford to. Going to the “big city” was scary to me, because it was scary to my mom and dad.

Even if Harvard paid for my education, how could I afford the plane ticket to/from Boston? And once I got there, how well would I have survived in a city like that? I wasn’t prepared for it. And by the time I was prepared for it, I was 25, had a Bachelor’s in Spanish from a diploma mill, and had five years of experience in the Marines. Harvard was not going to accept me, not even in the name of “diversity”. (I’m a male WASP–that doesn’t help.)

I’m not trying to whine. I’m just trying to call attention to the fact that there are a lot of people like me who will never get the chance to go to Harvard, for whatever reason. George W. Bush had a free ticket to the college of his choosing as soon as he was born–whether he deserved it or not.

Right, wrong, or indifferent, I think that mobility between the classes in America is possible, but would become harder if we had to pay for our own school. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than the dumbing down of the curriculum and the lower job prospects that we would face.

Anybody without the means to repay can take a federally subsidized student loan. That doesn’t mean that they have any idea what they want to do, where they want to do it, or whether there’s a job market for it. I, for example, started at a community college majoring in Psychology. What the hell do you do with a Bachelor’s in Psychology?

If I had known at 18 what I know now, I would have picked Accounting and either Finance or Economics from the start, and gone to the best state school possible. But at 18, you don’t have the advantage of hindsight. I think that’s what the Governor was trying to hint at.

^ I don’t disagree with your point, I’m just pointing out that these elite level opportunities simply aren’t taken advantage of enough by people. They just look at a college and say “It costs 45,000/year!”.

I think we can all agree that

(a) based on intellectual aptitude, some people have no business being in college and should be encouraged to go professional schools

(b) the notion of college has been turned from an educational institution to a 4 year party with football. That has to change.

When your parents are making $22,500 per year, and college costs $45,000 per year, how much further analysis do you really need to do? It’s not affordable–period. Regardless of NPV or IRR or ROI, it is not an option.

I agree, and I don’t think anybody’s arguing that, at least not on this thread. I’m not sure what the conversation has evolved into, though.