Education News has put together an video and accompanying infographics about the Education Bubble Crisis. They don’t separate out undergraduate from graduate education, but the basic principle the cite still applies: you need to do some real research into what your potential field actually pays. 25 years ago when I went to university these numbers were a bit harder to find, since you had to know to track down the US Dept. of Labor Statistics book hidden somewhere in the governmental reference section of the stacks.
If you not from the U.S., you may find all of this a bit bewildering. It’s the same process as in medical care, where Americans spend massively more on medical care than the rest of the G8 only to get much lower average health statistics. The other G8 systems get more overall for their money.
The video is at the bottom, after the jump.The real trick here is understanding what you really need and how to get ahead. As I stated in the first post in this series, if you are thinking of graduate school you have to look at the costs. This includes what you think schooling will get you.
The hard truth is that the realities of the Boomer generation don’t work any longer but it’s what Boomers, Silents and GenGIs still believe. They got subsidized schooling, where the costs were borne by the taxpayer through heavy school subsidies and massive outlays like the original GI Bill. That got changed into the guaranteed student loan (GSL) system almost entirely for GenX, which is also when we started seeing the cost run-up.
But it is the Millenials that are bearing the burden, because the Boomers and Silents are firm: “No one promised you anything when you took out these loans. So you damn well better pay them back!”
This the Silents from the most-subsidized and least-taxed generation that lived in the 20th century.
As you watch this, remember that the economy in the US is unlikely to get back to go-go times simply because the Boomers are entering retirement and will be hoarding their money. Unless some wiley GenXers figure out how to part Boomers from their dragon hoards, the economy will not have any strong drivers until they start dying off in larger numbers (2030 or so).
A few more examples and then we need to look at the Social Contract and what happens when you violate it.
Created By: Education News