I am going to rant a bit here over several days and then throw it open to discussion. Save your thoughts; do not email me.

Student loans are a disaster. There is more student loan debt than car debt or credit card debt. An entire generation of young people are being forced to delay marriage, family, and home ownership to pay for their degrees.

Some did things responsibly. Low-cost schools, apply for every scholarship you can find, work 20 hours a week, do not "live it up". But some went to expensive schools, got worthless degrees, and now face mountains of debt with low-paying middle class jobs.

Colleges made it worse, raising their prices at several times the rate of inflation in order to offer resort style living to attract students too stupid to realize that loans have to be paid back.

College isn't for everyone, nor is non-desk work demeaning. Lots of electricians and welders and diesel mechanics make more than lots of college graduates.

The mantra "follow your passion" led millions down a bad road to their financial doom. Not all that many got degrees in art history, philosophy, anything studies, underwater basket weaving, German polka history, and Marvel Comic Books, but some did. You can find them working in restaurants as wait staff.

The sales pitch that "our school has top ratings for this subject" is a lie; paying out of state or private school tuition for the same degree you can get at an in-state school never pays off.

Too many students went to schools that cost too much because their friends went there.

Too few students spent their first two years at community college where you don't pay tens of thousands of dollars for two years of room and board just so you can have a social life.

Too many schools just plain lied to students about how easily they would get a good paying job. Some schools can back up such claims, but lots of false advertising is done. A young person I know took a degree at a local college that promised "multiple job offers at $50K up" but not one student from that college got a job with that degree. The same professors were, a week ago, making the same sales pitch despite years of no one getting that degree actually finding a job in that field.

I got out of college with debt that in today's dollars would not exceed $5,000. Two years of junior college, three years of university, summer jobs, afternoon part-time jobs, and the Army which gave me a partial scholarship in exchange for five years of reserve duty (two whole weeks a year).

Dave Ramsey wants to shut down the program and let kids fund their college the way I funded mine. I think that is a bit harsh and want to keep the loan program but limit the damage it does. I'll tell you how a few days later.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - 12:02 am: Edit

Government forgiveness of student loans?

There are two things here. The current program of ten years of service in underserved areas and the often proposed but never passed program of forgiving some or all of the debt. I will deal with these in that order.

Some government drones told hundreds of thousands of graduates the job they picked would get them forgiveness. Now the first such students have finished their ten years only to discover that the drones that made the promise didn't actually have authority to promise anything and had no idea what they were talking about. Fewer than 1% of applications for ten year forgiveness are approved. This needs to be fixed by defining who can actually make such a promise and making sure people know who that guy is.

As far as a further program to forgive some amount ($10k per student?) or all of it, heck no. Here is why.
1. The government is broke and doesn't have the money. Printing fake money for this just drives up inflation and destroys your retirement savings.
2. What about the hard working smart kids who got minimum loans and paid them? Do they get the same small (or big) amount?
3. Doing that just encourages students to go to four year keg parties and get stupid worthless degrees.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - 12:05 am: Edit

The best thing we could do is change American universities to the European system. They only go to two years of college. Thus reducing the cost by 30-50%. If you took a course in high school (say, national history) you don't need to take it again in college.

Jean says that the US high schools do such a poor job of teaching that stuff the colleges have to do it over. Fine, fix the high schools. Or better, just get rid of that junk from college because nobody used their Texas History course in their career anyway and whatever you learned in high school about world geography is more than you need anyway.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - 12:06 am: Edit

Sometime soon I will show you my plan to fix the mess.

Then you can tell me why I am mean and hate education and how your plan is so much better.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, August 21, 2021 - 07:53 am: Edit

PART I OF THE FIX: Existing student loans

Something has to be done to get this debt gone.

We should tighten up on hardship deferrals, requiring those to at least pay the interest.

While radical, I would allow anyone with student loans to divert any money they or their employers send to their (non-social security) retirement accounts to being paid on the principle of their loans. Not the current payment but the principle. This will hurt them a lot decades later but they signed for the loans and getting out of them won't be pretty.

Anyone who got a degree and then got no offers for a job in that field can take the university to arbitration to get half of whatever they paid the university (including room and board if they lived in university housing) refunded from the university's endowment. The university should not be selling degrees for which there is no market. Knowing that this is coming down the road, I don't think any university will ever enroll another student in art history, Marvel comic books, underwater tuba playing, or "something" studies. I can hear the universities howling already. but they are at least partly to blame for this mess.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, August 21, 2021 - 08:08 am: Edit

PART II OF THE FIX: New student loans.

1. No government loans. You have to find them on the market somewhere and the lending institutions would be idiots to loan money to people getting degrees in left handed basket weaving.

2. No co-signers. No parents on the hook for the children's stupid or overpriced degrees.

3. Borrowing for the first two years of college is (for students with a community college within 30 minutes travel of their parent's home) limited to the cost of community college. (*)

4. Borrowing for years 3-5 (and 1-2 if no community college in range of parent's house) is limited to the cost (*) of a state university in the student's home state. (If you want to go to Harvard, find the rest of the money outside of the student loan program.)

5. Total borrowing cannot exceed twice the average job offer to students who graduated with that degree in the previous year. (I might agree to an average of the last three years or the highest in that period to account for really strange years like 2020.)

6. No university can have students enrolled in a degree program in each year class that exceeds the number of job offers in that field given to the last graduating class with that degree. If only three art history students got jobs in galleries or museums, only three students per year class can borrow money for art history degrees at that school. If seven graduates in cyber security degree programs got 23 job offers then the next class can have 23 students.

7. Only one specific government office can rule on the acceptability of jobs for the ten year forgiveness program, everyone needs to know where that office is, and once they give you a letter of approval for your job they must accept it if you meet the requirements in the letter.

8. Universities must provide an on-campus or near-campus 10-hour/week minimum wage job to any students who wants one, but students who cannot do the job or have bad work habits can be fired and if fired three times you don't have to get them a job. Universities can partner with local businesses to create such jobs.

9. Student loans are not available to non-citizens without green cards.

(*) cost is defined as tuition, books, fees, average price of a dorm (not allowed for community college), average price of a meal card at state universities in home state, and $200 a month. You cannot borrow money for car payments, house payments, living expenses beyond $200, or vacations. Costs are frozen for three years and then allow to increase only equal to the consumer price index.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Monday, August 23, 2021 - 11:37 pm: Edit

I think that simply turning student loans into regular loans (as in the kind that go away during bankruptcy) would go about half the way on its own to removing the bad incentives around the student loan system.

The student loan crisis is largely a problem of incentives, and of the fact that a post-secondary education is (especially at elite schools) a positional good.

A positional good (for those who didn't take economics) is a good whose value is directly dependent on its unavailability. A Ferrari is extremely valuable because not everyone can own a Ferrari, since if everyone could own one it would lose its signalling value (although it would still be a useful high performance car that would be worth something). A degree in mechanical engineering is valuable only in so far as it is not available to everyone, since if it were available to everyone there would be a greater supply of labour compared to the demand of employers for employees with skills in mechanical engineering, and so it would lose substantial value as a signal of the possession of a rare skill (although the education and skills related to mechanical engineering would still have some value). A Harvard degree is only valuable in so much as Harvard is exclusive. This nature of higher education as a positional good is and always will be the case, it has to be.

One of the natures of a positional good is that market forces keep the price very high. This is almost a tautology. If a good's value is in its exclusivity, then it will be priced to remain exclusive.

What happens when you introduce an infinite supply of debt into a system with highly sought after positional goods? The price goes up. Forever. This is what is happening.

Because student loans are backed by the government, and carry virtually no risk to a lender (you will be paid back, even if you have to garnish the social security of the borrower), the student loans will provide a near unlimited pool of money for the producers of this educational positional good to extract.

If you make the loans into normal loans then the lenders must price in the risk that the borrower will not be able to pay them back. This will immediately price in the post-education income of the borrower into the system. If universities produce degrees of no economic value, then they will produce graduates with few economic prospects, and those graduates will default on their loans, and the lenders will suffer. If the lenders suffer, they will loan out money less freely, and that will cause the universities (for the first time in three decades) to respond to market forces and find ways to lower the cost to the consumer.

It is no coincidence that the student debt crisis and the infinite growth in the cost of university in the USA started in the wake of the 1978 student loan reform legislation and accelerated following the additional reforms of 1992 and 1998.

This will still leave the issue of inaccessibility of education to a large chunk of the population. I don't know how to solve that, but I think that removing elite universities from the scope of the solution (let Harvard, Yale, Brown, etc grapple with their not representing anything but the highest economic strata of society, and the horrible PR that will cause them) would probably handle the lion's share of the positional goods issue.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Monday, August 23, 2021 - 11:42 pm: Edit

Oh wait, was this not opened to discussion? I assumed that it was since the comments were open. If not, my apologies.

IT WAS OPENED TO DISCUSSION. NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR.--SVC

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 01:22 am: Edit

All three of my brother's daughters put themselves thru college using grants and scholarships, plus whatever they earned working part-time. One did get a bank loan for something like $5,000 once when there was a gap between grant payments, and then immediately paid back the loan once the grant money came in.

IT CAN BE DONE!


Garth L. Getgen

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 05:43 am: Edit

A little background about me:
I worked for the Purdue University system here in Indiana for nearly 9 years, and I have student loans from my time there as I was a student as well, so given that I'm going to use that as my example.
To start, Purdue University has faced a number of budget cuts from the state as tax revenue fell over numerous years, and then there was this one time that money "got lost" from the education budget for the state then magically "reappeared" a year later only to be thrown into general funds. This forced the university to cut faculty, then staff, in order to keep the university above water. Then, tuition had to be increased *again* in order to attract and keep staff and faculty. The current president of the Purdue system has put a moratorium on tuition increases into effect for the university as of last year, but it going to spell bad things for the university in the future (that's another story, as is his legacy when it comes to higher ed in general).
Additionally, as Shawn stated, it is illegal to discharge student loan debt without being able to prove undue hardship that would prohibit you from paying back your loan. However, the burden of proof has become extreme, so much so that it is nearly impossible to discharge your debt for any reason. In addition to that, many student loans that are guaranteed by the federal government are sold off to private banks as mine was. I am *not* paying the federal government back for my education, but a third party that my loan was sold to.
If you want to understand what causes a problem to exist and/or persist, look at who is profiting from the problem.

Some off of the top of my head potential fixes:
1) Increase public spending in higher education. Bring the percentage of a universities revenue that came from taxes back to where they were in the 1950s and 1960s. This will greatly reduce tuition rates, thus helping to prevent obscene amounts of student loan debt carried by people who attend in the future.
2) Make student loans dischargable again. This is not optimal for anyone, but perpetual debt is a known stressor that.
3) Eliminate all interest on student loans. Yes the financial industry will whine and cry about this, but education to do a job should never be a commodity that enslaves people to debt.

I should have more to offer when I'm dead tired from working all night if anyone's interested.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 06:22 am: Edit

Good to see some comments.

Existing loans cannot be changed to dischargeable loans because they are contracts and contracts cannot be changed without consent of both parties. (Not unless you're talking about some science fiction beneficent dictator who has no limit on his authority.) Same answer to a moratorium on interest. The only way to do that is to have the government (taxpayers) pay the interest, and that is not in the interest of the taxpayers.

Changing future loans to dischargeable effectively ends the student loan program. Banks won't give loans to students without knowing they will get paid and you just made it so they won't. If the loans aren't guaranteed and non-dischargeable they won't be made. Which might not be bad, but it does end the program and few students would be able to get loans at all.

Something a lot of people don't understand is that the current system has a taxpayer guarantee of payment. If I had student loans and never paid them, they would eventually garnish my social security. But if I die without paying them, the taxpayers pay them.

A couple of years ago an investment broker tried to sell me an investment (which is mostly sold to long-term trust fund sorts of money pots) which bought defaulted student loans for 10% or less of their face value and then waited (possibly for decades) for the students to die and the taxpayers to pay off. Since the financial company that owns the loans can keep stacking interest, penalties, and interest on penalties, the return on investment was hundreds of percent. I could invest $1000 today and my grandchildren would collect $15,000 a few decades later.

Purdue's situation is not that unique since lots of states cut funding from the general tax fund when the student loan money train left the station. But the idea that 50 state legislatures are going to increase public spending for universities is fantasy of the worst order. They just don't have the money and cannot get it. States must have balanced budgets (it is in their constitutions) and they're spending the money on something else that has a political power behind it. I don't want to get into the fact that something like 18 states are de facto bankrupt due to public sector pensions they did not fund but those states are never going to be able to increase spending on anything until they break those pension contracts. (NO DISCUSSION OF THE PENSION CRISIS.)

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 06:38 am: Edit

The system in the USA may well be different (or not, from some of SVC's comments) and so these views are from the UK.

I think part of the 'problem' is that jobs go through phases and so I will use my own examples.

When I left school (in 1990), in the UK the Financial Services, Banking and Finance was the latest craze and everyone wanted to do it.

We then had the IT craze in the late 1990's (which has continued to some extent)…

...and combined with the above, we had Governments promoting University Education for 'everyone'.

There in effect therefore was a huge double push to get people into 'white collar professions', but as not everybody had 'academic knowledge' which traditionally was required for a University Education - and so Uni's created 'sexy' buzz words courses which allowed everyone to go (and yes, SVC's 'joke' courses, aren't too far off the mark, IMHO).

So we had people leaving Uni with Degrees which didn't demonstrate a general level of knowledge (which Employers wanted - so didn't take them on).... and a large mountain of debt.

Equally, due to the rush to Uni, several 'Blue Collar' professions (Plumbers and Builders being two good professions) became massively understaffed - as no one wanted 'unsexy' jobs - and in the UK from about 2010 there has been huge demand for these 'manual' professions.

Vocational (i.e. Skills based) courses seem to have come back on the market, via Colleges rather than Uni's - and it seems the UK Government realised its mistakes and in effect people leaving school have 3 or 4 choices

1) Go to University for a Professional Degree
2) Go to College for a Vocational Qualification
3) Become an Apprentice
4) Commence work

Option 1 is the most expensive for the individual and 2 to 4 get progressively cheaper.

Hopefully the crowbar attempt to get everyone to have a Degree is therefore over, and over the coming years the work force will be more balanced - and so Students will have less debt.

Perhaps what is also needed, is a system which forgives debt in the Caring professions - which generally don't have significantly above average earnings (i.e. Nursing being a good example), for the knowledge level required to do that job?

(Others have mentioned it - especially for Armed Forces - do 10 years of 'service' you get your Student Loan forgiven - similar approaches would work with Nursing and Care).

So as SVC said

1) Stop the stupid Degrees
2) Equally promote College courses with Degrees
3) Promote Apprenterships (which basically combine 2 and 4 from the above list - you get a low salary and over normally over 3 years you lean both a vocation and practical skills in that job field)


On quality of 'Degrees' and costs - that's probably always going to remain as people will pay more to go to MIT or Harvard (or Oxford or Cambridge) - because of the history associated to those places and the belief 'it will get you a wrung up the ladder quicker'.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 07:12 am: Edit

Paul, in the US the public perception of the difference between "college" and "university" is zero. There is one, but few know what it is and in the common vocabulary there isn't.

In the US, nursing is a high-dollar degree worth what you pay for it. Nurses earn very nice salaries. (In my mother's day there was only one kind of nurse RN. Now, there are at least five PA, NP, RN, LV, NT, costing/making lots more on the PA end and less on the NT end.) Nursing isn't a job that earns loan forgiveness unless you do it on a low-paying Indian reservation or Appalachian clinic.

Fads are always going to happen. Colleges are still selling graphic degrees that promise big bucks but nobody finds a job with such a degree any more. My plan would tie loan availability to the number of people who got jobs with that degree. Which would mean nobody going to college could get loans for a graphics degree as none of them are going to find graphics jobs.

Your experience of the "skilled trades" is spot on for US and UK alike. Jobs that work with your hands were seen as beneath the millenial bunch. That was just stupid. Diesel mechanics made several times what people with philosophy degrees or degrees in art history or women's studies make. I think you should be able to use student loans for skilled trade schools (plumber, electrician) but appretiship is actually the better way to do that anyway.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 08:00 am: Edit

SVC

I suppose it depends on what is considered high-dollar degree?

Good examples - 5 jobs all needing a Degree (or equivalent) and 'once trained' : - (All approx)

Solicitor £100,000+
Doctor £80,000+
Accountant £60-80,000+
Nurse £40,000
Teacher £35,000

Nurses/Teachers will earn more if they become Heads of Departments etc.

So not low paid (Average UK salary is about £30K pa) - but in comparison to say an Accountant - it's a lot less.

(Legal is perhaps the weird one - it can start off at £0 to gain the required experience in Chambers)

As a comparison on Vocations - I think good Builders can get around £50,000 in the UK at the moment - and Plumbers £40,000 (employed roles - Self Employed might earn a lot more!) - so do you leave Uni with £40K of debt and be a Nurse or train to be a Builder and get paid to learn?

General Nursing in the UK is perhaps not as well paid as in the US (noting, Specialist Nursing or those with a lot of experience, can earn closer to what a Doctor earns)?

So, yep going to be tough for those who have a Degree in Left Handed Mouse Control....and £40K of Debt.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 08:06 am: Edit

And MAKE colleges/ Universities that get ANY Federal Funds reduce the number of "administrators.

The bloat of "staff" is out of control.

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 08:42 am: Edit

A couple of ideas;
1) Far too many jobs in the US now say degree required to do jobs that do not need them, lets trim that back so that people do not run up a life time of debt, just to get a job that will not pay for the required degree.

2) The NFL and NBA need to create their own farm teams. A lot of the dorm amenities, and such, started as a way to side step NCAA limits on recruiting players, once available, they had to be offered to everyone, and eventually we got to the point where they are so wide spread they've become expected.
Then there is the issue with how many sports coaches are often some of the highest paid folks in the university system.

Aside, I was waiting for you to post all six of your points.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 09:09 am: Edit

Had the thought years ago ---

Professors shouldn't be employees of a/the school...
Let the schools rent/lease classrooms to them....
Students would then know exactly what they were paying for the instruction they were getting....

Take the Government out of the loan business and make it where only the schools could give education loans....
Colleges would then have a stake in getting their students educated and to work....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 09:53 am: Edit

Not sure what the pound/dollar rate is today but doctors in the US start over $100,000 and go up a lot depending on specialty. Accountants about $60-$80K, lawyers about like doctors, engineers $60-80K, Nurses over $60K for 36 hours a week and with overtime (almost standard 48 hours per week) they get $70K+. Teachers vary all over but I have seen teacher salaries $40K to $50K. Nurses in the US are about as good a check as you will get without being a doctor or lawyer. They are rated as scientists. It varies a lot by city and region. New York and California have monstrous salaries but monstrous costs of living.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 10:51 am: Edit

I'd love to see two things:

1) Someone with more power, data, and computational ability than me does an analysis of courses and degrees vs. earning potential. Those figures are then used to determine a bare minimum value for each degree.

Then those same awe inspiring people and computers look at marketability of each college. The amount they can charge goes up based on how many people actually get jobs soon after graduation. Harvard is allowed to charge a premium for business degrees, MIT for tech, etc. Joe's Bait, Tackle, and Underwater Basket Weaving Extravaganza is screwed.

2) The denigration of good old-fashioned work disappears. People are taught that apprenticeships, vocational schools, and certifications can get you good work. That's already true but we're taught from an early age that you die penniless and destitute if you don't go to college. You'll be flipping burgers until you're 85.

My dad went to college but not until he was in his late 50's. Before that he did construction and delivered newspapers. We never went hungry, weren't starved for entertainment, and were able to take 2-3 week vacations every year thanks to camping and backpacking instead of glamping and overpacking. He only went back to college after he got a job on campus that also paid for my degree.

My mom worked in, managed, and owned bars for decades. She even danced topless for a while because she was more interested in providing for her family than pride. We never went hungry, weren't starved for entertainment, and were able to make big fun trips to Six Flags and the State Fair. The only college she ever took was a few art classes because she enjoyed them, not because she thought they'd get her an amazing job sending sculptures to art museums.

Unfortunately while both of those things are technically possible they're incredibly unlikely to happen. The first because of the difficulty of the task, cost, and political ramifications. The second because public opinion is entrenched (albeit can be changed slowly).

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 11:10 am: Edit

Yeah. It doesn't make sense when there is a government job that pays $50K per year but requires a $75K Master's Degree to apply.......


Garth L. Getgen

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 11:24 am: Edit

I was CRUSHED by student load debt for decades. It really dominated the entire course of my life. This is a quite personal subject to me.

First, and foremost, CONTROL SPENDING by the colleges. It is asnine that the rate of the cost of college increase is several times that of inflation. I hate to say it, but cost controls are required here.

Second, students must be made to have AN APPROVED PLAN to repay the debt BEFORE they incur the debt. If they don't have an APPROVED plan (by a committee or whatever that understands the way the real world works) they can't get loan. Counseling will be required to demonstrate expected earnings for their career and the REAL IMPACT the debt will have on their life. The cost of the committees is borne by the student loan providers, because they are the ones that need to protect their investment - not some guarantee from the government.

Third, it should be *slightly* easier to provide a reason to discharge some or all of student loan debt in bankruptcy - but not much. Things like disability, career issues, life state issues, etc. Basically a good, proven story to a bankruptcy judge that has the power to either reject the petition or give the debtor a smaller reduction in debt. Student loan providers must have security in their investment or else they either won't lend or they will charge exorbitant interest - and either of those is bad.

Fourth. Additional government involvement is BAD. The government is already guaranteeing many loans and funds a tremendous amount of them. Paying more from the government is only going to encourage students to take on debt for impractical college degrees. If you want a student loan, you need a plan and the *ability* to pay it back. Without the government's help. Caveat for #5 below.

Fifth. Military service. This is already true to some extent. However, if you want the government to pay for your education, then you serve your country. Perform military service for 4-8 years (depending on how much you want) and get your education paid for. As I said, this is already true to a lesser extent, but I want to make it *required* if you want a degree that won't pass the mustard with the loan planning and application stage and/or if you otherwise can't pass that stage. Basically, you EARN that educational expense BEFORE you undertake the education by performing military service. I would also like to see the loan industry push more people towards military service first.

Sixth, apprenticeships. This was already suggested on this site. However, not everyone needs a college degree. Some kind of certified apprentice program should be made a legal structure so that you can become a Journeyman and that is the equivalent of a bachelors, and a Master and that is the equivalent of a Ph.D. (or graduate degree). This is PERFECT for jobs like plumber, electrician (not electrical engineer), construction (not architecture), business management, lawyer, etc. Yes, I said lawyer. I *AM* a lawyer, and I promise you law school does NOT train you to be a good lawyer - you learn that on the job, so just skip the bull**** degrees it currently requires. Law school should only be for people who want to actually study jurisprudence as an academic subject, or who want to hyper-specialize in a subject.

College should be for fewer people that want to pursue rigorous academic studies, not for "getting a job". If you want to "get a job" then apprentice for that job. If you want to become a professor, engineer, designer, physicist, philosopher, etc. THEN go to college.

As a culture we need to stop mandating a college degree to get a job (except for those jobs that truly need the rigorous academic study) and instead go to an apprenticeship/journeyman/master paradigm.

My fifty cents.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 12:16 pm: Edit

My sense as to the two biggest levers which will improve student debt/college in the US:

1. More cultural change about the value of non-college work, such as trades.

2. Tying qualification for financial aid (including loans) to a clear financial plan with realistic expected job opportunities and salary.

--Mike

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 12:27 pm: Edit

I'd modify "military service" to "public service." We need mail carriers, orderlies, library staff, etc.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 01:04 pm: Edit

Haven't seen a stat in more than a decade, but it used to be that nearly 50% or more at times, people with degrees never worked in their field of study...

Yes, probably a lot are useless degrees to start with.... but many business, tech etc degrees are never used...

The Sheepskin has become a key to get in the door, but overall, mostly useless in the job market....

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Tuesday, August 24, 2021 - 02:26 pm: Edit

Ginger

Actually, it's pretty easy.

Top 3 courses are

1) Law
2) Law
3) Law

Law by far generates the greatest 'bang for your Uni Buck'.*

Health Care Doctors (rather than Drs of X) probably come in at number 4.

Individuals may well do very well other professions (IT for example) - but as an average, Law and Dr's are what pays back the most.

(Once qualified - you don't see a Poor Lawyer or Dr).

Chartered 'Anythinks' (Engineers, Accountants, Architects) are also generally above the curve.

* - Hence getting into the good Law Uni's is very very difficult.

On which Uni's are better for prestige - other than Law it's actually very much course dependent (from what I know) in the UK.

For example - Reading Uni (UK) used to be the best in the UK for Cybernetics - not sure who they lost it too.

So, doing course M and Uni Y might be better than course N at Cambridge/Oxford/Harvard etc.

About the only exemption to the above, is probably Business Colleges (Henley in the UK for example) - where they do a very small range of courses in a particular field.