In a New York Times article on university education there's a useful rule of thumb for students contemplating how much to spend on tertiary courses - don't spend more on a degree than you are likely make in your first full year of post-graduate employment (hat tip: Randall Parker).
For example, if you're likely to make $40, 000 in your first year as an English teacher, then try not to accumulate more than $40,000 of student debt in your four years of training.
While wages for some jobs do increase substantially with experience, for most graduates they don't increase enough to make up for high debt levels and interest payments. You've also got to factor in that you may not even get work in your chosen field of work, and that even if you do, you may grow to hate it and want to do something else.
This should of course be something that governments take into account in formulating education policy, which at the moment seems to be about what's best for university marketing departments.
Rather than continuing to promote a quantitative bums on seats attitude to education, it's time western governments were honest and up front with students about the pros and cons of university education.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think that's pretty much impossible. The average American 4 year university probably costs about $100K, some are up around $200K. That's not even factoring interest into the equation. And certainly the average starting wage of a college graduate is much, much lower than $100,000 a year ... even lawyers have to start out as barristers who tend to make a lot less than that.
Stopped Clock,
In that case, this advice sounds more helpful for New Zealand graduates than U.S ones.
A qualified teacher's wage, starts at around $40,000 NZ and a degree plus diploma will cost around $20,000 in tuition costs(goverment subsidised but not including living costs).
However, I don't think wages increase as much as in the U.S.
An average university lecturer for example probably makes about $80,000 NZ which is about$50,000 U.S.
Post a Comment