The Creative Economy and College Grads (The payback period after graduation is getting longer)

Innovation and Growth ^ | 05/13/2010 | Mike Mandel

[rabscuttle385]

Many employers require that you take courses (leading to a degree or a certificate, or stand-alone courses in your field) to remain employed, get raises or to advance up the career ladder.

So?

[wombtotomb]

Will book mark and tell him. We knew we were in for it a few years back when we had yet another geek squad guy come to untangle our hard drive. He brought out his “microsoft master disk” (the one he went to school to the tune of 10 grand to get, so he could “fix” and override any problem in a hard drive) and the computer told his master disk, access denied LOL. He tried for an hour to coax it to listen, finally gave up and had to dump and redo my computer.

He looked at us and asked who was messing with the C++ on the computer. My son, at the time, 13, said he was working on a project and had partitioned off a sizable chunk of my hard drive (hence the access denied) and was writing stuff. The geek guy looked hubby and me in the eye and with a dead pan look told us to expect the NSA to ask our son to be part of their team in the near future LOL. He has a weird brain. Can’t wait to turn him loose in some computer geek school setting; let them fix his computers LOL!

[AussieJoe]

I would love to see this exact same breakdown but separated by major industry sectors. I’ll bet an ‘arts’ degree that qualifies you to do little more than the sort of job where you often repeat “would you like fries with that?” is going to work out very differently to something like an electrical, mechanical, or civil engineering degree. I’ll bet that at the masters level the difference will follow the same trend and be even more pronounced.

[wombtotomb]

yup. But just imagine the talent being passed over because they don’t have that piece of paper. Used to mean you had stick to it iveness to get a college degree. Nowadays, at least from what I have seen, read, heard, it is more the ability to go along to get along and give the proper opinion to your super progressive thinking professor, go to the most outrageous place for spring break, and not die of alcohol poisoning. Many are not even graduating with much more education than a high school diploma, and daddys money can make sure you get that degree if your grades couldn’t. Not saying that is true of all college students, nor invalidating the need that certain professions require them ( and rightfully so-doctor, engineer, accountant, architect etc.)

[rabscuttle385]

I would love to see this exact same breakdown but separated by major industry sectors. I’ll bet an ‘arts’ degree that qualifies you to do little more than the sort of job where you often repeat “would you like fries with that?” is going to work out very differently to something like an electrical, mechanical, or civil engineering degree.

The NACE (National Assn. of Colleges and Employers) publishes annual surveys of employment and salaries for fresh college grads. Usually, the folks with the highest compensation include engineering and the hard sciences. Business folks are next, usually led by accounting. Liberal arts (as a whole) usually is at the bottom of the pack.

The bottom line (no pun intended): borrowing $200K for a liberal arts degree that gets you a $35K/year post-graduation salary is generally not a good idea. Going to a state school and borrowing $20K/year might be justifiable if the degree holder actually finishes within five years and has a plan for playing the degree up into something productive. (There are, however, certain majors that can not be played up into anything productive. Think ethnic studies or gender studies, LOL.) Otherwise, borrowing $20K/year at a state school of repute for a B.S. in petroleum engineering is probably a very good idea, assuming you make it through, since starting post-grad salaries are in the $80K/year range.

[rabscuttle385]

Nowadays, at least from what I have seen, read, heard, it is more the ability to go along to get along and give the proper opinion to your super progressive thinking professor

I didn't have a lot of problems with that. (Might just be me, though.) Of course, the professors I interacted with were generally moderates or didn't care.

go to the most outrageous place for spring break

Only if you have money. Personally, if I had had money, I would have gone to battlefields and National Park sites.

and not die of alcohol poisoning.

Some people drink excessively. Others don't.

[Lorianne]

Tell me about it. CE cost me plenty in time and money.

[Intolerant in NJ]

I tend to view this divergence between rising real college costs and flat or falling real earnings for young college grads as insupportable over the medium term for an economy like the U.S....In fact, the next bubble to damage the US economy - what's left of it - is likely to be the collapse of the student loan craze - "Frontline" had an excellent program on a few weeks back looking at the for-profit college field - schools like DeVry University and Grand Canyon University which sell stock to investors to fund operations - the great majority of those attending such schools do so with student loans, are likely to have trouble finding good paying jobs when finished (one nursing school charged $30k for a year's training and didn't have their students inside a hospital once), and 44% eventually default on their loans vs. about 8% of those attending traditional colleges.

It's now obvious why the Obama crew was so anxious to take over the student loan field and make it a government program. Like they pushed Fannie and Freddie to take over all those bad home loans so they could eventually pay them off with taxpayer money, they will now "forgive" many of the non -performing student loans already out there and offer many more to students who eventually will default, covering the shortfall with more taxpayer money - it's called redistribution, sharing the wealth.....

[USNBandit]

Profs get to chose the book list. They can chose their own books, or their friends' books. I can't even remember how many books I bought for classes that I never even opened, and that was at Annapolis.

My father hated that racket so much that he wrote his own book for the astronomy course he taught. It was a paperback and came with a matching workbook for $20.

Another scam universities use these days is they make it almost impossible schedule the classes needed to graduate in four years.

[tiki]

Yes, that is one thing my DIL had was a book scholarship, she paid for the rest herself and took as many classes as she could afford each year, it has taken her 8 years but she finished the academic portion this week and has 18 weeks of internship and she’ll be graduating in December with no debt.

[tiki]

My DIL is getting her degree in Occupational Therapy, my son has helped her with her homework and quizzed her for tests and we joke around that he could pass the state test but there is NO WAY he could do the job. The first time he had to deal with a patient that had any problem he’d be running out the door.

[Domandred]

Another scam universities use these days is they make it almost impossible schedule the classes needed to graduate in four years.

Oh yea I've smack in the middle of that scam right now.

Even the two year colleges are doing that. My associates took four years because the classes I needed were never offered. One class I waited three years till it was on the schedule and it was a pre-req for a class I was supposed to take first year.

My Bachelor's some classes are offered fall, but not spring and visa versa. Class credits I have aren't counted towards major, but can't take the class I need for credit because I've already got credit in the other class.

I have three semesters of classes to take if full time (one and a half years) but due to scheduling and credit conflicts I already know it's going to take three years.