It's a fact that a University education is getting more expensive with each successive decade, far outpacing inflation, where the degree is no longer something to separate you from everyone else; instead you now need a degree just to be like everyone else, or as XXX states in his book College (Un)Bound, the Bachelors Degree is the new GED.
Everyone knows that people like nothing better than to correlate a degree from the top Universities with a dollar amount thereby provide proof of return on investment in your degree (although that's a whole other ball of wax that I'll address in another upcoming post). But with that in mind, there's an article I read recently which talks about the opposite, or to quote directly from the article "What about the least valuable colleges and majors in America?". The results as it turns out are pretty interesting reading, and if my suspicions about, what is at best, a tenuous link between the top colleges and pay performance prove to be correct I suspect the truth is much more dismal all around than this article implies.
There are other things to bear in mind too, like the duration of the validity of your degree. As I've mentioned before, that expensive MBA qualification that the guy just landed, might be valuable for maybe two years or so. After this, potential employers want to know what you've done with that degree. So in essence the value in degree you earn, is in how far it can get up the ladder initially, that you can springboard your career from. With that in mind, I have question the earning potential if the degree achieved doesn't actually get you as far up the ladder as you'd hoped and in correlation, has anyone (obviously Universities won't) actually looked at the link between cost of the degree and how long the Return on Investment is for those that aren't as fortunate with the application of their qualification?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/these-us-colleges-and-majors-are-the-biggest-waste-of-money/359653/
Hope you enjoy it.
How Not to be Stupid
I came across this video the other day; it's somewhat tongue in cheek but carries a serious message. It's well know that we're attracted to people, points of view, and arguments that strongly agree with our own perspectives on any particular subject; but as anyone who understands critical thinking already knows, these comfort zones are the enemy of critical thought.
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