College isn’t worth it. Except when it is. (Hint: College is an investment.)

“Now can you believe it?  After only five years of playing football, I got a college degree.  Mama was so proud.” – Forrest Gump

This bridge is based on one I sketched one day.  Oh, wait, it was built before I ever sketched it.  Nevermind.

The easiest way to determine a lie is to see what everyone believes in.

Almost always they’re wrong.

The delusions of crowds are nearly legendary.  Teenage girls are suddenly transformed into witches in colonial Salem, rather than in Middle School, like normally happens.  Stock prices always go up.  Until they collapse in a pile of hope-flavored rubble.  Housing prices always go up, until they don’t and cause the government to throw piles of money into the air hoping that it will hit someone on the way down.

“Everybody should go to college” is another one of those things that “everybody knows”.  And it’s just as wrong as the examples listed above, and a lot more damaging.  And I firmly used to believe this, as well – I was a part of “everyone believes”.  The idea that everyone (well, most people) should go to college was just ingrained.

Why would I believe that?

Well, in my mind, college was a useful experience that helped people to be prepared to be of value to society (and themselves!) through education and progressive exposure to responsibility.

To a certain extent, that was true.  But most people I know and work with have at least a bachelor’s degree.  And most of my friends from high school have at least one if not multiple degrees from college.  And I have a masters.  And The Mrs. has a masters.  The odds of that randomly happening?  1 in 17,232,000.  Okay.  I made that number up.  But the odds are pretty low, given random selection.  In reality?  It happens a lot.

Before 1980, about half of the guys who graduated from high school (which is not everyone – only 70% or so people graduate) went to college.

So, if you simplify a bit – 50% of 70% is 35%.  The top third (or so) of your group went to college.  Historically, about a third would drop out.  That left 20% or so of the population with college degrees, which made them relatively more valuable.  It meant that you could work at a goal for four or five years and accomplish it.

Now, however, about 70% of high school graduates go to college, and women outnumber men (which we may or may not get into on this post).  Now, 70% of people (still) graduate from high school.  So, roughly 50% go to college.  That’s a huge increase (40%+!) in just a few decades!

And the college graduation rate is going up – now about 35% (total) of the younger generation has a college degree.  That’s a whopping 75% increase in the number of people with degrees.

Great news, right?

Oh, heavens, no.

Part of the problem is that the population isn’t really getting smarter.

If you look at the average SAT verbal score, it’s going downhill.  I would guess that at least part of that is there are more people taking the SAT than before – it’s not just the top 35%, it’s now the top 50%, so the data implies that we’re regressing to the mean with people going to college.  There is even evidence that the population is getting (overall) dumber on a worldwide basis.

SAT scores peaked about the time that Nacho Cheese Doritos™ were introduced.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Graph via Zero Hedge

I’d suggest that most college degrees today are . . . not particularly worthwhile.

Previously, even a degree in a subject without a lot of economic demand, say, Anthropology, would indicate that you were in the top fifth of the population as far as the ability to commit to a goal for four years or more.  Now it’s more than a third of the population that has a degree.  For your degree to mean something today in 2018, the degree has to be in something useful.  Medieval French Art History Studies won’t really cut it for, well, almost any job outside of a museum where Ben Stiller works as a plucky night watchman.

I could keep going, but if your degree ends in the word “studies” then you don’t have a real degree.  You just spent five years and either family money or college debt (which is the worst possible debt) getting a degree that qualifies you for exactly the same number and type of job that you could have gotten without that degree, namely positions in the food services or housekeeping industries.

And that’s why this is a Wealthy Wednesday post – you want your degree to be of value to you.  Of course you want to go to college to have fun.  But the purpose of college isn’t to have fun – it’s to get a credential that allows you to 1. get a job where you can be of value to mankind, and 2. to make connections with people that can help your career down the line so you can be of value to mankind.  Since I was too dumb and not enough of a weasel to try to be friends with someone just to create an advantage for me, if you’re my friend and you’re reading this . . . it’s because you’re my friend.  I really suck at Machiavelli.

But if your goal is to find a job where you can be of value to mankind (and using the scorekeeper as dollars, which is a pretty relevant scorekeeper) – people are generally (though not always) paid more when they impact more human lives.  If, as an engineer, you can help everyone in the world save a nickel a day?  Wow.  You’ve managed to change the world – and you get more money.  Hence the people (like Bill Gates) who have saved literally billions of hours of mankind’s time?  Yeah, he’s got the cash from that, plus the khakis.  And a manservant who can kill you in 347 different ways with a hotel coffee machine.

The current list of top college majors to make good money (LINK from salary.com – it’s a slow-loading slideshow, so I don’t recommend it) is:

1. IT – yes, they are the wizards that support our FaceBorg® addiction. Thankfully, they have no idea of the power they wield – the power of the Search History.  Yikes!
2. Economics – this was a bit skewed – all the job titles were successful economists, managers and stuff, not the economics majors you see working at Starbucks® or playing no holds barred ping pong in Ding Dang with their lives on the line.
3. Engineer – Also skewed, but downward. They picked next to entry level positions.  The average is much higher, and this should be number one or two.  Why?  You can live without aluminum, baby, but not without engineers.
4. Math – I met a math graduate when I was in college. He was working at a bookstore.  Selling me books.  Call me dubious.
5. Marketing – Again, skewed – these were all “Marketing Director” type positions, of which there might be one in a company, and not all the marketing drones that end up giving free shots of Jägermeister® to drunken college girls on spring break in Florida.   Maybe they figured in the perks.
6. HR – It’s always good to be the group that figures out what everyone in the company should be paid. And to know where all the bodies are buried.  In some cases literally.  Career tip:  remember HR works for the company, and NOT the employees.  They will bury your career for another 0.1% annual raise.
7. English – I call bogus. I speak English.  They don’t give a degree in the language that you speak.
8. Biology – Seems legit. But they have squishy things that are made of slime in their labs.  No thanks.

And that’s the job market today.

That’s the rub – the job market today doesn’t look like the job market from forty years ago, and none of it resembles the job market from 100 years ago.  Forty years ago, to put up a bridge a group of engineers would spend thousands of hours working calculate the forces, stresses and angles required for the bridge to be safe.  And a good bridge can last thousands of years – Roman bridges are still in use today.

Now?  A software program analyzes the forces and stresses and optimizes the sizes of beams and trusses to make the bridge as safe an economical as possible.  The thousands of hours of engineering time that previously went into the bridge is now compressed into a (complex) software package that designs and specifies all the components of the bridge.  Now when the engineers using the software don’t know how to build a bridge, well, that bridge won’t last 1,000 years.

The point, however, is that engineering hours are being replaced by programs.  This is new.  What else is being changed in our job market?

• Attorneys: Legal research is farmed out to places like India, which sleep during the day and only come out at night to do legal research.  This research is done at a fraction of the cost of the average new law school graduate.  What will the new law school grads do?  I vote that they move to Iran and mess that place up with lawsuits.  You can’t even find a place to put nukes if they have an environmental review.
• Teachers: Why do we need one per classroom?  Why not have a group of lectures by the Tiger Woods® of lecturers supplemented by people who can answer student questions?  Also, we would give the classroom people Tasers®, because, as noted above, we ain’t getting any smarter.
• Accounting: This could be done by people in foreign countries if we trusted them with our bank account numbers.  Yeah, that always ends well.  Regardless, we can assume that this will be increasingly automated and globalized, like your mother.  (That’s not a great “your momma” joke, but I have a quota to fill, and I’m behind.)
• IT: Eventually the systems we use will be self-healing.  And we will need to bring them fresh electricity or whatever they need.  Since they’ll be self-sufficient, and also have our credit card numbers.  Expect random deliveries from Amazon to self-assemble a replacement for that bearded guy who fixes your hard drive.  He’ll still make the same jokes that involve Japanese anime that you haven’t seen.  Anime:  proving the Japanese are way more twisted than the Germans about sex things.
• HR: Will be replaced after at with HR-Bot 2000™.  Because HR still thinks “2000” sounds really cool and futuristic.  Actually, I’ve seen several HR software platforms that make it so HR can be eliminated.  Guess that will decrease the load on the company Internet.

Anime isn’t this disturbing.  It’s this disturbing times 186,000.  Just say no to Anime!

Automation will go after the higher (and lower) salaries first.  Burger floppers and attorneys and engineers.  Computers can do most of what you do already, except for the coffee drinking and peeing.  But they suck at welding.  Oh, wait!  They’re better at that than people.

I kid.  A little.

If you’re going to college and not majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math?  You’re just burning your dollars.  Or your Dad’s dollars.  And if your dad has that much money to burn, I’d like to do some networking with him on selling Amway®.  Or just writing me a check if he’s that gullible.

Hey, maybe I could turn your school into an unpaid internship.  Yeah.  Your dad only has to kick in half as much.

That will teach you two a lesson.

Because degrees are always worth it, right?  Even your degree in Sociology?  I hate to burst your bubble, but a really good STEM person will make what you make in your career in five years.  Maybe two if those stock options take off.

Wow.  I still have about five things to talk about relating to college and wealth, and I can see that maybe I’ll have to wait until next week.

Don’t worry – I can bully you then, too.