College Education – Smart Investing
by Paolo on Jul.12, 2009, under Meanderings
College Fund
Continuing my articles on college and computer programming:
In an article I uncovered from MSN Moneycentral, the author examines if a college degree is a smart investment, even though a college degree will earn you twice as much money in terms of revenue. Interestingly enough, the article shows that at 2007 dollars, the person who starts off in highschool with no debt and invests his money will have saved nearly triple the amount that the person who has a degree.
This is because the college graduate, though earning twice as much as the highschool graduate, has a substantial debt to pay off before he starts investing in his own retirement.
This all falls back on simple principles of saving your money and living well below your means of earning. In general, people live at a cost of living that is equal to their revenues. It is a painful lesson to learn, especially in the age of credit cards and easy mortgages. Something I wish I learned earlier in my life.
A question was raised on government-subsidized education in allaying the costs. Personally, I would disagree with this. Knowing myself (and lots of my contemporaries), I squandered my time in college. I had to personally answer for it to my parents who helped foot the bill. And even though thousands of college students have to personally answer to their parents for their time in college taking classes on Starcraft, how much easier it is to slack off when the money isn’t personal? The best and most responsible students I met in college were the ones who had to pay 100% of the bill themselves.
And this isn’t even getting into the problem that if college education was no longer special and voluntary, but expected and mandatory, it lowers the standard of learning. Every year we are churning out thousands of college graduates a year, and already we are seeing a growing phenomenon of post-graduates living at home saddled with debt and who are unable to really go somewhere lives – even with a college degree.
This is a powerful lesson to learn and really watch, especially for those of you who are in the computer field.
The computer is really freedom. Many people take the freedom of the computer and bury themselves in countless hours of time playing games. But for those of us who know how to program, the computer is financial freedom, especially in the midst of one of the worst economies in our lifetimes.
We don’t have to play by those rules. We can educate ourselves. We don’t have to accumulate massive debts before starting out careers. All we need is a computer, a connection to the Internet, a lot of determination, hard work and the world is ours for the taking.
July 12th, 2009 on 7:09 am
So if I understand your logic here correctly, you are saying that people are too lazy when they are given the opportunity, “freely”; however, when all they have is self-motivation, they will suddenly become motivated gods? Most people, I would argue, especially when younger, do not have the discipline, nor the inclination towards long-term financial decision making. Hell, we don’t have an inclination to anything that isn’t an immediate threats, numbers don’t chase us down, so we haven’t evolved a response to them.
Plus, I would argue that computers are really good at teaching us facts. They can be good at teaching us how to turn those facts into data. However, where they fail in a number of situations is giving people the skills to turn data into knowledge.
Let alone everything that isn’t a number driven field. Within my MBA program I am scary good. Part of that is my drive. Part of that is the fact that since college, I’ve become far more comfortable talking in front of large crowds (mostly by teaching and educating in a 1 to many situation), but a large part of it is become comfortable with the give and take thanks to having a BA undergrad which taught me to how to interpret and respond to information within a everyone present.
The computer is a useful communication and information tool, but it is not going to the panacrea for everything – every single class that I’ve taken electronically has been less useful than a similar class in person, because I find that the key is the interplay and experience of the professor to bring knowledge, versus mere data and facts to the classroom. Yes, there are professors who only do that latter, but you know what, I call them crappy professors.
July 12th, 2009 on 1:07 pm
Actually, I think you are missing the context of my previous posts regarding college. Most of what I had been writing was in relation to computer programming as a career path. I explain first that I believe that computer programming is more a technical field than an academic one and that the best programmers I’ve known don’t even have a degree that is related to computers.
I don’t dispute that for many other fields that it requires college training – especially with the sciences. And most of all, I don’t discount the necessity of human coaching and interaction in teaching and encouraging a student. Personally, I do horribly with computer-based training, but that could have also been the fact that it was for subjects I held no interest for. But when it comes to computer programming, I simply do a search on a topic and read tons of blog posts, tutorials, forum questions and documentation on the subject. Practically anything that you need to solve in a computer program has been solved somewhere else before.
I know that when it comes to my children, it is my responsibility to help them become motivated as well as financially savvy at a young age into adulthood. But that is my personal responsibility. I am uncomfortable with the idea of subsidizing everyone else’s children with whom I have no relation, nor influence, nor insight into their upbringing. All the more reason that I think that the few who are responsible should not pay for the many who aren’t. I think that people should be self-determined both in their successes and failures.