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I do not think young people do have a clear understanding of the economics of the situation. I don't think most kids go to college with a clear grasp on finances or what their lives will actually be like once the loans stop and they have to get jobs and pay them back.

"They think that any want they have is just as valid as any other and that somehow everyone of them will get fulfilled. Reality is not a concept to them."

^^^I actually think this is a huge problem in our society. These same people have a hard time taking responsibility for their own actions. Maybe some adults grow out of it when they have kids or whatever and find out that no, they can't have everything they want...

But a lot of adults don't grow out of it and they end up fat / bankrupt / leaving kids with babysitter to party every weekend / etc., and then they are in denial that, in large part, their lack of prioritizing has caused whatever problems they now have.

Also...
I am a believer in the value of a Classical education, but I think this push to send everyone to university doesn't make any sense. A lot of people would be better suited to learning a trade or getting a certificate at a local community college.

I do agree with this, but guess I don't see this as limited to humanities students. This is, as Islandofapples mentioned, a broader issue. I used to manage an area that had a lot of gen Y staff (and I don�t mean this to be generation bashing, just an observation). Quite a large number of them had either just finished studying or were studying part time (in a range of fields). None of them had any real sense of what they were going to do with the qualifications they had obtained and I think (which I guess ties back in to the original intention of this thread), many felt that it didn't really matter what they studied. Studying anything simply helped them get 'a job', but to actually work in the area they had completed their undergraduate qualifications in was going to require postgraduate studies.

I read a study somewhere (sorry I can't cite it properly) talking about how Gen Y (in Australia at least) were the first generation where the majority aspired to individualistic, high earning careers rather than careers in service to others. Of course the reality is that there are only so many well paying jobs, there are only so many people who are actually temperamentally suited to succeeding in those kinds of jobs etc. When I think of my parents' and their siblings, all of them studied humanities disciplines and have jobs they are valuable and successful related to their initial qualifications. But they set priorities early on in fields that were - at the time - as good as any other. Thinking about your comments, I wonder if perhaps we have swung too far in one direction and what's happening is that kids are feeling like they have to follow a particular path to success and either don�t feel capable of reaching that point and so flail about looking for an alternative or, because it actually doesn't suit them, they�re unable to prioritise because their goal is actually not something that is intrinsically motivating to them. I have no idea if this is the case of course, just thinking out loud really.



I know a few of historians, all of whom do require degrees for precisely the reasons Val gave. My dad's work (which is not just oral histories) is used as evidence in legal proceedings and is required to meet very stringent requirements in order to be considered proof of a group�s historical connection with a particular area. His work can have huge implications for governments, landowners and the resource sector. Another is a history teacher and chief examiner of history for a state education board. A third is a senior advisor to Australia's Prime Minister, providing advice based in part on his extensive knowledge of the history of Australian politics. All jobs which I suspect many would consider useful and possibly even successful. However, they all had very specific aims when they undertook their studies.



This, I definitely agree with.

I was just thinking about the thread title and how now pre-k and even 3yr old pre-k are becoming so popular. � �I thought modern public grade school started up when everybody moved off the farms as a way to keep kids off the factory labor force and out of trouble. �That was just my vague impression. �More people are going to college now and staying longer. �Well, more kids went to grade school full-time back in the years machinery replaced so many hands on the farm. �Now the new electronics are replacing machinery. �Now we are into micro-biology and micro-physics and globalization and global warming:.,' eight hrs. a day of study for 30 yrs. a piece?! Nice.

Val, that was beautiful.

Oh yes, meant to say so too - beautifully put Val

I don't agree with your classification of careers. At least in the private sector, a high earning career is generally one that provides more service than a low-earning one, in return for which the worker is paid more. By training for high-paying careers, students are not only helping themselves but helping society. If petroleum engineers earn the most money http://blogs.payscale.com/salary_report_kris_cowan/2011/05/list-of-college-majors.html , that's because oil is vital to our economy. The "invisible hand" encouraging productive use of resources works in the labor market as well as other markets.

Interesting graph.

The run-up in education began at precisely the time that the US U.S. News & World Report began ranking US Colleges and Universities. We've paid dearly for the "jockeying for position" by these schools.

I think this is right. I've been thinking of my 24 year old sister for this entire thread, as she has been in college for 7 years and is only now finally getting a degree. She finally ended up with an English degree, because she decided to become a lawyer and wanted to work on her reading / writing skills. Now she may not do law school and has no clue what to do with herself.

I remember she played around with the idea of social worker or hair stylist, but these professions wouldn't give her the income / prestige? she wants in life. She is extremely good at selling and managing things and always ends up as a manager at every job she gets. I think she should start her own business. She has no clue what she wants to do with her life yet. I know how she feels, because I switched majors so many times myself. But I took a break so I wouldn't waste more money...

Thanks GeoMamma and everyone else.

I don't quite agree that high paying careers generally provide more service to society than a low-earning ones. As one example of a very high-paying career, bankers have done a tremendous amount of damage to our society in recent years, and very little good to society at large. They draw heavily on graduates in physics, which may be why physics is on the list of high-paying majors. Ditto for mortgage brokers as a highly-paid group that made a lot of trouble for us. Creating marketing/advertising campaigns for stuff that people don't need can be very lucrative, but this job does not provide what I would call an important service to society. This list goes on.

Compare with these private sector jobs: nursing, veterinary medicine, or teaching at a private school. Each job requires education and provides a critically important service, yet they aren't known as lucrative careers. Whatever debates we've had here about our education systems, I suspect we'll all agree that people don't go into teaching for all those stock options and those huge annual bonuses.

Other low-paying private sector jobs that provide essential services to society: garbage collection, vegetable or fruit picker, janitor, employee at recycling plant, etc. etc.

Seriously Bostonian, where would we be without even one of these groups? With respect, when you make sweeping statements about the greater service value of highly paid jobs as a general rule, you come across as perhaps dismissing the value of people or jobs that lack what I will call glamour. <3 <3 <== Loving disagreement.

At the same time, if we're going to define "service to society" as packaging mortgage securities or as a job creating software designed to get kids to pester their parents to cash in so they can buy penguin points or rainbow gold for some online game...well, maybe we need to re-think our definition of "service to society." But this is just one quixotic loudmouth's opinion!

I think we need to step back and ask ourselves a simple, but important question:

Why do we use tax payer dollars to educate people? (Public schools, subsidized loans, etc)

There are probably a lot of different answers to this question. Some people can probably tell us the causes that motivated people to start public education in the first place. Some people will provide an answer in terms of human rights. Some will make an appeal to the consequences of NOT funding education.

For me, the answer to that question cannot be separated from the answer to a similar question:

What factors are voters considering when they vote for a school budget?

If voters are aware that music programs will be cut without an increased budget, and they vote against an increased budget, then teaching music is not the purpose of school. At least, not in that area. If on the other hand, they vote to save athletic programs, then school is at least partly about athletics.

The purpose of public school is different to different people, and even individual opinions change over time. I can see that people in this thread hold drastically different opinions on the subject.

Is the purpose of public school to bring fulfillment to students?

Is the purpose of public school to reduce crime and welfare dependency?

Is the purpose of public school to funnel new workers into the economy with precisely the right skill distribution to match the available positions?

Is the purpose of public school to create an educated electorate?

Most people probably want their tax dollars used to fulfill more than one purpose, and they prioritize their lists consciously or otherwise. When money is tight, they may decide that they would rather defund something at the bottom of their list that they previously wanted funded.

Currently, we have an abundance of college educated people who are not putting their degrees to use in the economy. Either they remain unemployed, or they work outside the field in which they obtained a degree. Thus, if you focus on economics, it would make sense to stop subsidizing the study of fields that have the highest concentrations of people not utilizing their degrees in the economy. Also, I'm not sure it makes economic sense to subsidize the education of someone who has little talent in the area they wish to study.