How to Go to College and Stay Broke
The worst-paying college degrees, according to Payscale, Inc. are listed here. Among the worst? Child and Family Studies, Social Work, and Elementary Education. At the top of the worst-paying list? Music, Art History, and Graphic Design.
Education, in fact, is all over the list: Elementary Education is at the bottom, but Special Education is smack dab in the middle, and just plain old Education (whatever that means) is in the top third. Of the worst-paying college degrees, remember.
What's interesting is that the degrees are ranked two ways: by starting salary and by mid-career salary. The starting pay of the lowest-ranked college degree, Child and Family Studies, is $29,500. At mid-career, that becomes $38,400. The highest of the lowest is Art History. Starting pay is $39,400; mid-career is $57,100.
I wonder if students studying Social Work feel ripped off when they start paying their student loans. I wonder if Senator Harkin is going to hold hearings on this?
And finally, I wonder if this list should be required reading for every incoming college freshman this fall? Under the heading: Why You Need to Take Math.
Because -- surprise! -- none of the lowest-paying college degrees require any math skills at all.
- Comment (26)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Jul '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Close
How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Rob Long ·
I wonder if students studying Social Work feel ripped off when they start paying their student loans.
I wonder if students studying social work realize that being a professional hall monitor is an inherently obnoxious career.
Jul '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Sorry, Rob. I didn't intend to make it look like my less-than-chivalrous comment was yours. For the record:
"I wonder if students studying social work realize that being a professional hall monitor is an inherently obnoxious career."
is my comment, not Rob's.
Jun '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Like everything else, you compete in a free market, and Americans are luckier than most. We have a lot of entry points. If you want a career in TV news for example, you may have to start in Williston, North Dakota. You may never get the chance to leave Williston. But if you love the local TV news biz, that may be okay. Do what you love, and let the money take care of itself. That's the American advantage. You don't have to do what you father did. If you're a smart kid, willing to train and work overtime for ten years, because you want to transplant organs for a living, you probably can. Then your mother, who told everyone you were a genius, will be vindicated.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Rob Long:[...] surprise! -- none of the lowest-paying college degrees require any math skills at all.
So maybe it's best to keep them ignorant and happy. Afterall, the Child-and-Family-Studies guy makes $29,500, which isn't that different from the Finance guy who makes $295,000, because if you subtract 29500 from 295000 you get just one zero left over, which is so small that, really, those two incomes are practically the same.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
I wonder why any of those professions actually require a four-year college degree at all. Social work and education can be served by professional certification and an entry-level aptitude test. Music and graphic design would work far better if they were purely (or almost purely) based on merit and experience. I honestly don't know what an Art History major does with their degree but become an Art History professor or a museum curator.
I've come to realize, though my many years of trying (and failing, due to lack of time and money) to get that coveted sheepskin that's college is, mostly, a scam.
Jun '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
In periods when people couldn't be rich--most of history--they could still be rich in music and culture:
For example, Klezmer Constervatory Band - Rumania, Rumania
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeJGN9wUn5o
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Actually, math is going to be banned from the curriculum very shortly, because it has a disparate impact.
Aug '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Rob Long: And finally, I wonder if this list should be required reading for every incoming college freshman this fall? Under the heading: Why You Need to Take Math. Because -- surprise! -- none of the lowest-paying college degrees require any math skills at all.
Yay, math!
Now I will return to my little nerdy corner.
Nice Klezmer, etoiledunord. I like the coconutty patter at the end.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
My middle daughter and my best freind's daughter both graduated with a degree in social work. Neither worked in the field after graduation. I suspect that a college offering a 3-4 week practical at the beginning of its course of studies would see a change in majors from social work on the order of 90%.
As it happened, the practical application was at the end of both girls 4 years of "study" and was sufficient to convince both that this was not the road to happiness.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Scott Reusser
Rob Long:[...] surprise! -- none of the lowest-paying college degrees require any math skills at all.
So maybe it's best to keep them ignorant and happy. Afterall, the Child-and-Family-Studies guy makes $29,500, which isn't that different from the Finance guy who makes $295,000, because if you subtract 29500 from 295000 you get just one zero left over, which is so small that, really, those two incomes are practically the same. · Aug 8 at 9:02pm
It was a bit too early to snort my coffee this morning, Scott!
Jul '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
A few years ago, a neighbour in my building, head of the social work dpt at a major university, threw out a copy of a PhD dissertation sent to her by a former student at her old school. (I shd point out that in the bldg people put books in the basement for others to pick up and this was part of the bundle, though probably included inadvertently.) The dissertation was a 100 page review of literature. No original thought, no independent research, just regurgitating what sounded like publishers's blurbs. A freshman in high school could have assembled that. The author, one learned from the attached letter, was getting a tenure track position at a fancy school on the East Coast. Frankly, Rob, $29,500 a year is way too much for that nonsense. Actually, it is not just nonsense, it is pernicious nonsense.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
The WSJ reviewed the book, The Five Year Party, in this morning's paper. Apparently a significant percentage of students are not there to earn a degree anyway. I only wish the author had released his list of the top 400 "party schools."
From the WSJ review: "If you have a child in college, or are planning to send one there soon, Craig Brandon has a message for you: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
"The Five-Year Party" provides the most vivid portrait of college life since Tom Wolfe's 2004 novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons." The difference is that it isn't fiction. The alcohol-soaked, sex-saturated, drug-infested campuses that Mr. Brandon writes about are real. His book is a roadmap for parents on how to steer clear of the worst of them.
Many of the schools Mr. Brandon describes are education-free zones, where students' eternal obligations—do the assigned reading, participate in class, hand in assignments—no longer apply. The book's title refers to the fact that only 30% of students enrolled in liberal-arts colleges graduate in four years. Roughly 60% take at least six years to get their degrees."
Aug '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Cindy,
One of the best ways I kept out of mischief at college was to volunteer for Sunday-morning duties at church, so that if I was late or didn't show, someone would miss me and call me on it.
I escaped many a shady Saturday-night situation with the truthful words, "But I do have to get up early tomorrow. Gotta go now!"
For those not religiously inclined, sports could serve the same purpose. And colleges offer tons of service projects, too. Some kids always schedule some classes before noon for the same reason.
There are ways to keep yourself out of mischief in college, even if you're tempted...
Jun '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
When kids get abused and mistreated to the extent that even the state claims their living situation to be unsafe, somebody has to go in to the trailor where the kids are being abused and physically take them often with cops - often from the violent parents who are often drug addled. These people are called...social workers. At the hospital where I work, when people are told they have debilitating and terminal diseases, somebody has to sit with them in their sad, broken state and try and figure things out a bit... social workers again.
See, social workers do the work nobody else really wants to do, and they get paid balls for it. So, the next time one you math majors wants to go in and take abused kids from the pissed off parents, go for it.
Some social workers are lazy agents of the state, but then, so are a large number of other state workers (postal service, cough, congress, cough). However there are a large number of them that do great work.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
If anyone wants to see an interesting discussion, check out Power Line's link to Glenn Reynolds's prognositication that higher education costs will the next bubble to burst.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Since we're speaking about higher education and bubbles bursting, I should point out that I misspelled "prognostication" in my previous post.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
The problem Etoile is that most college educations today are underwritten by the government -- either through the Title IV program or through state and municipally-funded schools. Title IV (Pell & Stafford loans) works like a voucher, but the Obama administration and Senators Harkin and Durbin don't like this. They have proposed rules and possibly new legislation that aims to restrict access to some programs. But notably nothing offered by a not-for-profit school is being restricted -- only vocational & for-profit school programs. So to Rob's point -- it doesn't matter if you study Art History or Social Work. But dental hygienstry? Well the government wants to get all up in that!
Aug '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
So music is at the bottom of the list, along with education. I wish I'd known that before getting that Music Education degree.
Jun '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Trace Urdan
The problem Etoile is that most college educations today are underwritten by the government -- either through the Title IV program or through state and municipally-funded schools. Title IV (Pell & Stafford loans) works like a voucher, but the Obama administration and Senators Harkin and Durbin don't like this. They have proposed rules and possibly new legislation that aims to restrict access to some programs. But notably nothing offered by a not-for-profit school is being restricted -- only vocational & for-profit school programs. So to Rob's point -- it doesn't matter if you study Art History or Social Work. But dental hygienstry? Well the government wants to get all up in that! · Aug 9 at 7:16am
I don't know what they're proposing, but isn't that based on recent experience? Based on who tends to pay back student loans, and who doesn't? There were a lot of bad vocational schools out there, that collected lots of government-provided tuition money and didn't produce many employed graduates. That was the impression I got.
May '10
Re: How to Go to College and Stay Broke
Those who cannot do a simple path integral, do not deserve to vote!!!