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Who cares? Most Standford MBA graduates make that back in no time. The more worrying thing, IMO, are the people paying a bunch of money for Journalism or Engl

Who cares? Most Standford MBA graduates make that back in no time. The more worrying thing, IMO, are the people paying a bunch of money for Journalism or English Literature degrees.

gutnor 14y ago
That is indeed worrying. It is worrying that our society has no place for Journalism, Literature, History, ... We are building a society with an extreme focus on personal wealth. Since we are stuck on a single planet with limited resources, that type civilization will not end well.
- smsm42 14y ago
  Our society has plenty of place for Journalism, Literature, History. The question is if you want to study Medieval poetry, who's going to pay your bills? If you manage to have gainful employment while studying Medieval poetry, all power to you. If you come to me and say I have to pay your bills via taxes, while you enjoy reading poetry, then we have a problem here. The problem is not the focus on personal wealth. The problem is that some people think that if they like doing something, its the reason enough to force other people to pay for it, just because that people have personal wealth and thus by definition are soulless fatcats whose property has to be "redistributed" because it's not fair that their pursuits are profitable and poetry reading is not. This is the real problem we are having right now.
- pjlegato 14y ago
  There is a place for those things in our society, and indeed a much larger place in today's society than there has ever been in the past. Even 100 years ago, the study of any of those things was mostly limited to a very tiny elite who could afford entry to the very tiny number of universities. Now, we have numerous state universities that have created far, far more paying jobs available today for someone with a degree in liberal arts or humanities than has ever been the case in the past. The problem is rather that even with this historically high number of jobs available in history, literature, and so on, the universities are now producing people with degrees in those fields at a much higher rate than there are jobs available. Each faculty member added supports the creation of that many more new degrees in the field every year. Our society currently has a place for n historians (and that's a bigger n than ever before), but there are now also n^2 (or whatever) people with history degrees competing for those slots. There is a place for professionals in these fields, certainly; but there is not a place for every single person who thinks it'd be fun to be a professional historian. The number of people interested in doing that is just far larger than the number of people our society needs to do that. Not everyone can be an astronaut or a rock star, and being a professional in the liberal arts is not different.
smsm42 14y ago
Any data to back it up? I.e. any comparison, ceteris paribus, of Stanford MBA graduate income vs. other MBA graduate income and non-MBA graduate income that proves, say, if we define "no time" as 5 years, that 5-year income of Stanford MBA graduate is at least 185K higher (after taxes, of course, so before taxes, given federal & California taxes, it'd be around 400K or 80K per year) than the income of other people mentioned above? I imagine you should already have a substantial income to qualify even for 185K loan (in most places, it's a mortgage-size loan, with over 2K per month payments), let alone paying 185K in cash, so the improvement should be from the level of people that are already capable of spending 185K - i.e. either having current income substantially higher than, say, level of experienced software developer, or somehow having amassed 185K in cash that they can invest in their education.
- rayiner 14y ago
  GradPLUS loans = guaranteed to be approved unless you have major credit problems.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    So you're saying you can get 185K unsecured loan with no proof of income to back it up? I heard in some country they recently got into big problems with giving large loans to people that couldn't pay for it under the premise that the property they buy with these loans is going to raise in value so much that it will cover the loans anyway. But this time I'm sure it would work out just fine.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Yes, and it's a bubble waiting to pop. It's alleviated somewhat by the high interest rates (8%) and non-dischargeability in bankruptcy, but yeah...
    - kyllo 14y ago
      It works in America because student loans are non-dischargeable. It doesn't matter if you are penniless and have filed for legal bankruptcy, the lender can still keep coming after you and even garnish your wages for the rest of your life. It is extremely difficult to escape an American student loan obligation, basically you will pay it off, with interest, unless you die first. This system is what enables American universities to put such high price tags on education, and also what allows the students to actually get approved for such large loans. Almost all of the risk is assumed by the borrower. Even if the graduate cannot find sufficiently gainful employment to repay the loan, the lender still eventually gets a return on their investment. If they were forced to take a loss, that would cause lenders to make their approval processes more stringent, and would limit most students' ability to attend these universities. So it becomes a political issue because no politician wants to be perceived as being responsible for limiting students' access to higher education. The fact is that the risks and costs must be absorbed by someone--under the current system it is the students' future selves. (My personal opinion is that this is a form of modern indentured servitude and should be outlawed.)

Who cares? Most Standford MBA graduates make that back in no time. The more worrying thing, IMO, are the people paying a bunch of money for Journalism or English Literature degrees.

gutnor 14y ago

That is indeed worrying. It is worrying that our society has no place for Journalism, Literature, History, ... We are building a society with an extreme focus on personal wealth. Since we are stuck on a single planet with limited resources, that type civilization will not end well.

smsm42 14y ago
Our society has plenty of place for Journalism, Literature, History. The question is if you want to study Medieval poetry, who's going to pay your bills? If you manage to have gainful employment while studying Medieval poetry, all power to you. If you come to me and say I have to pay your bills via taxes, while you enjoy reading poetry, then we have a problem here. The problem is not the focus on personal wealth. The problem is that some people think that if they like doing something, its the reason enough to force other people to pay for it, just because that people have personal wealth and thus by definition are soulless fatcats whose property has to be "redistributed" because it's not fair that their pursuits are profitable and poetry reading is not. This is the real problem we are having right now.
pjlegato 14y ago
There is a place for those things in our society, and indeed a much larger place in today's society than there has ever been in the past. Even 100 years ago, the study of any of those things was mostly limited to a very tiny elite who could afford entry to the very tiny number of universities. Now, we have numerous state universities that have created far, far more paying jobs available today for someone with a degree in liberal arts or humanities than has ever been the case in the past. The problem is rather that even with this historically high number of jobs available in history, literature, and so on, the universities are now producing people with degrees in those fields at a much higher rate than there are jobs available. Each faculty member added supports the creation of that many more new degrees in the field every year. Our society currently has a place for n historians (and that's a bigger n than ever before), but there are now also n^2 (or whatever) people with history degrees competing for those slots. There is a place for professionals in these fields, certainly; but there is not a place for every single person who thinks it'd be fun to be a professional historian. The number of people interested in doing that is just far larger than the number of people our society needs to do that. Not everyone can be an astronaut or a rock star, and being a professional in the liberal arts is not different.

smsm42 14y ago

Any data to back it up? I.e. any comparison, ceteris paribus, of Stanford MBA graduate income vs. other MBA graduate income and non-MBA graduate income that proves, say, if we define "no time" as 5 years, that 5-year income of Stanford MBA graduate is at least 185K higher (after taxes, of course, so before taxes, given federal & California taxes, it'd be around 400K or 80K per year) than the income of other people mentioned above? I imagine you should already have a substantial income to qualify even for 185K loan (in most places, it's a mortgage-size loan, with over 2K per month payments), let alone paying 185K in cash, so the improvement should be from the level of people that are already capable of spending 185K - i.e. either having current income substantially higher than, say, level of experienced software developer, or somehow having amassed 185K in cash that they can invest in their education.

rayiner 14y ago
GradPLUS loans = guaranteed to be approved unless you have major credit problems.
- smsm42 14y ago
  So you're saying you can get 185K unsecured loan with no proof of income to back it up? I heard in some country they recently got into big problems with giving large loans to people that couldn't pay for it under the premise that the property they buy with these loans is going to raise in value so much that it will cover the loans anyway. But this time I'm sure it would work out just fine.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Yes, and it's a bubble waiting to pop. It's alleviated somewhat by the high interest rates (8%) and non-dischargeability in bankruptcy, but yeah...
  - kyllo 14y ago
    It works in America because student loans are non-dischargeable. It doesn't matter if you are penniless and have filed for legal bankruptcy, the lender can still keep coming after you and even garnish your wages for the rest of your life. It is extremely difficult to escape an American student loan obligation, basically you will pay it off, with interest, unless you die first. This system is what enables American universities to put such high price tags on education, and also what allows the students to actually get approved for such large loans. Almost all of the risk is assumed by the borrower. Even if the graduate cannot find sufficiently gainful employment to repay the loan, the lender still eventually gets a return on their investment. If they were forced to take a loss, that would cause lenders to make their approval processes more stringent, and would limit most students' ability to attend these universities. So it becomes a political issue because no politician wants to be perceived as being responsible for limiting students' access to higher education. The fact is that the risks and costs must be absorbed by someone--under the current system it is the students' future selves. (My personal opinion is that this is a form of modern indentured servitude and should be outlawed.)