Whenever I write about the value of a college education, I get complaints from folks who argue that they have a degree in X, but now they’re working in completely unrelated field Y. “My degree is useless,” they tell me. While I feel for these folks, the anecdotal evidence doesn’t discount the statistics. (And the statistics say that the more education you have, the more you’re likely to earn.)
That said, it’s interesting to note that there are lots of folks who have satisfying careers doing something wholly unrelated to what they studied in college. Me, for example. When I was in school, I studied psychology. (I got a minor in English, and almost another minor in public speaking.) Now I write about money all day long.
My college (Willamette University in Salem) has started an annual tradition of profiling folks whose jobs don’t necessarily match their education. Every year, they highlight a handful of graduates who are doing interesting things. Last year, for instance, they recognized my friend Dagny, who earned a Theater/Spanish double major, but now manufactures and sells funny boxer shorts. And my friend Jim, who earned a law degree but now works as a police officer.
I’m tickled to be one of the nominees for this year’s awards. Whether or not you attended Willamette University, you can read the nominee bios and vote for your five favorites — even if I’m not one of them. There are some great stories here. My favorites include Rosie Robertson (an art major and compsci minor who is a software designer by day and a board-game designer by night) and Chris Wilson (who uses his art major to buy and sell antique home parts).
Meanwhile, as always, here are some of the financial articles I’ve been reading from around the web:
Over at Wise Bread, David Ning (who usually writes at Money Ning) shares six things you can look forward to when you have more money. I like this story. Kris and I have both noticed that since I’ve paid off my debt and actually built some savings, there are certain unanticipated benefits (such as the ability to be an opportunistic shopper, being able to pounce on great prices because I have the money in savings to do so). Ning’s list names a few advantages, but there are many others. (On a related note, Trent recently noted that an emergency fund is more than just money.)
My wife, who loves the Huffington Post almost as much as she loves NPR, sent me a link to this article that describes the trick to outsmarting advertising. The whole article is interesting, but (spoiler alert!) here’s the good stuff: To reduce the effects of advertising, the author recommends that you slow down when making decisions and take as much control as possible of how much advertising you’re exposed to.
A couple of people sent me e-mail to note that the U.S. tax burden is at its lowest level since 1958, which might explain some of our government’s funding issues. (Of course the other side is that the government is just spending a hell of a lot of money.) This article made we want to learn more on the subject, so I read the Tax Policy Center’s five myths about taxes, plus my own articles about understanding the federal budget and the truth about taxes. For such a boring subject, I find a lot of the debate over taxes interesting.
Finally, my colleague Jonathan Fields recently wrote about how money makes us stupid. “Surveys show we now consider time our most precious resource, even over money,” Fields writes. “Yet all too often, we look for the biggest, baddest, most voluminous, time-consuming solution we can find for the money, assuming that the option with the greatest volume will provide the greatest value.” Instead, he says, we should strive for the best value. I can sense a fascinating GRS post in the making here…
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That’s pretty cool about the nomination. Hope you win! I think a lot of people ends up working in an unrelated field. It’s all good though because college is still a valuable experience as long as you didn’t rack up 6 figures debt. I’m an engineer and most of my friends stayed in the field. I only know a few people who changed field.
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A popular Indian restaurant here in Albuquerque is owned/run by an engineer who (obviously) changed paths, though he likely remains an engineer at heart– you can order your food with one of 10 available degrees of spiciness!
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That’s hilarious!
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Maybe the stats are missing some Gen-X cliches, like the overeducated & underpaid coffee barista with a PhD? The problem with statistics is that while they account for the aggregated population, they often have little to do with the individual. Especially when said individual has an arts or humanities degree–hA! But seriously… An HVAC technician with a 2-year Associates Degree will make significantly more than someone with an MFA in Poetry (4 years college + 3 years grad school) and will likely have much less student debt. Children, you’ve been warned…
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I just read recently that there is virtually no income benefit to a PhD over a Master’s degree for virtually every field outside of engineering.
Also, there is something to be said for a correlation vs. a causal relationship. People with more education earn more money, but it could be equally said that people with an education tend to come from parents who both value education AND give their children the motivation to be successful in a career, and it’s hard to distinguish the effects of one over the other.
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Of course, for some jobs, the PhD is a minimum requirement even if it doesn’t amass handsome riches–like teaching humanities in a university.
I find it just depressing to compare the salary of an engineering graduate to a humanities graduate so I just won’t go there.
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Your friend looks like a young Meg Whitman, I thought this was going to be some sort of eBay related post for a minute there
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That’s who she reminds me of! I couldn’t think of the name, but right off the bat opening up this post, I thought “Oh, that’s….”
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
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I honestly think of my intentionally limited exposure to advertising as a quality of life issue. I don’t watch broadcast (or cable) TV. I get a few shows off iTunes, but those have no ads. I have an ad blocker for my web browser, and I subscribe to sirius satellite radio, which lets me listen to music in the car with no commercials.
It’s fantastic. It makes so much bigger a difference in my life than you’d realize if you’ve never tried it.
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Agree completely. My happiness notably decreases as my media exposure increases (e.g., the more sexist advertisements I see, the angrier I get).
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OTOH, I have learned about all sorts of things that improve my quality of life by hearing advertisements on the radio. My partner and I go to live music concerts all the time, and those are often not only advertised on the radio, but sometimes even include free tickets. I got free tickets to the premier showing of a movie I would have paid full price to see anyway, because of a Facebook ad. And without any basis of knowledge about the city I’d moved to a little over a year ago, it really requires exposure to advertising to know what events and businesses are available for me to use when I need their services. I don’t even watch TV except on DVD and the occasional show on Hulu, but more often than not I’ve found that because I am so inundated with advertising from billboards/radio/internet ads, I actually know a good deal when I see one because I’m constantly comparing prices. It takes a lot less time to make decisions that matter when time is of the essence, when you already know what options are available.
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I totally agree. I only watch satellite TV and listen to satellite radio stations that don’t have advertisements. I HATE ADS.
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In an interesting note, I am deployed and exposed to absolutley no advertising. It is odd how I have no desire to buy anything at all. I get asked if I want any gifts and have to struggle to think of things. Now, I’m not a heavy spender back in the states, but the difference in my desire is dramatic with the lack of advertising influencing me.
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>I get complaints from folks who argue that they have a degree in X, but now they’re working in completely unrelated field Y. “My degree is useless,” they tell me.
>lots of folks who have satisfying careers doing something wholly unrelated to what they studied in college. Me, for example.
Those folks who whine about the uselessness of their degree are the ones that think of college as something to “get through” NOT something to “learn in.”
J.D. you don’t work in in psychology, but can we really say that you don’t use any psychological or English skills or public speaking skills in writing this blog????
Um, let’s see:
1) You constantly point out how money is about attitude – psychology!!! – not just calculations.
2) You are writing this blog – in English!!!
3) You are speaking – publicly!!! – to a large audience.
It is absolutely POSSIBLE that you would be as articulate with a high school education…but only if you continued to educate yourself informally by reading, writing, etc. Either way = education.
If you think of college as something to “get through” so that people OWE you a job if you show them your degree (Free job with purchase of one degree! Unlimited time offer!) then not only are you going to be disappointed but you just wasted four years of your life and your professors’ time.
If you think of college, or high school, or PBS specials, or ANYTHING educational as the opportunity to learn and develop skills and understanding…you will never come out empty-handed.
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The stats say that the more education you have, the more you’re likely to earn (because with a degree you can ask for more money). But also the stats say that if you wish to become a billionaire you should not get a degree
(most of billionaires does not have a college degree)
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J.D. – did you notice that the website they list as your own is incorrect? If people go to that website they are definitely NOT going to vote for you! No offense – I’d have them change it!
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J.D, I have great respect for your blog but I think you are reading too much into the statistics when it comes to education:
“While I feel for these folks, the anecdotal evidence doesn’t discount the statistics.”
I’m not sure if you discussed this in an earlier post, but correlation does not imply causation. There is no guarantee that education increases income – the statistics are just saying that these two variables tend to move together (for reasons that have not yet been fully determined).
By the same logic, then we should also play golf, buy expensive cars and join country clubs because of the correlation these activities have with $$$.
So, I ask…are you using statistics to validate intuition? If so, why not just call them intuitions.
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I had to comment on this one, I am afraid. I have a PhD, I teach at University and I write about university education and research. So here are several points I wish to make on this one:
1) Education including Masters was known to carry a premium (increase earning potential); PhDs make people specialised sp they never did – but people do PhDs for reasons different from increasing earning.
2) Education is valuable because it is rare – so in times of mass education (as we have in the UK) the premium goes down.
3) Education still gives advantages – these are social and cultural capital. Hence people who have education can be successful in areas not related to their technical field. Oppenheimer tried to poison his PhD supervisor and talked his way out of it, is a classic example.
Well worth getting education, if you ask me. Correlation does not mean causality; education has different value and to a degree it is what enriches and preerves our humanity.
Keep well, people.
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I’ve had a major career transition as well. I have a master’s degree in electrical engineering and worked as an engineer for several years. But when I began having children in my 30s, I realized that working 60+ hours a week as an engineer wasn’t conducive to being a good hands-on parent, and part-time engineering jobs weren’t available to me. So I gradually became a teacher, part-time at first when my boys were little. I’m now the high school mathematics teacher and guidance counselor at the small private school my sons attend. I believe my training as an engineer is very valuable to my current teaching career.
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Congratulations on your nomination. I think it’s a great idea for your school to highlight the creative life choices of its graduates.
As for the money issue–
As someone who majored in history, I don’t think of an advanced degree as job training. I see it as education.
My undergraduate and graduate work in history did not teach me how to calculate mortgage payments or counsel people on how to fix their credit. But it taught me how to think, gave me exposure to a wide range of thought outside my own culture, and gave me a tremendous advantage in playing trivia games.
So whether higher salaries are correlated to or caused by higher education, I still find education beneficial in creating an informed citizenry.
That said, I don’t think everyone should be shoehorned into college just because it’s an arbitrary, minimum requirement for many jobs. There are many ways of becoming a skilled and educated person besides a four year degree.
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I received a degree in Zoology (1993), went to work in an environmental lab (chemistry). Started creating spreadsheets to work with the data, that led to creating full blown LIMS applications, the world caught up with me a few years ago, now bioinformatics is a big field – and I have a nice job. My current job, is probably the closest I have ever come to using my original BS – and that is very very little. All that said, I would never had had the opportunity without the degree. A college degree at the very least opens doors, what you do with the open doors is up to you.
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Did you realize they list the wrong website (.com not .org) under your bio on that survey?
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Thanks for the shout-out, J.D. =) As for degree v. career, I can easily trace a direct line from my theatrical costuming background through my improv training post-college to the boxer business – but I will eternally have Willamette to thank for teaching me to think critically. And furthermore, irrespective of entrepreneurial intentions, completing a degree proves to a prospective employer that a person is capable of learning and following through on a long-term plan. I’m perfectly happy with the idea of learning for learning’s sake, but there’s a pretty compelling link between a degree (regardless of the major) and broader employability.
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Not all degrees have clear job placement opportunities. As the joke goes, they say that none of the big humanities firms are currently hiring.
Also, studying something and doing something as a job are often very different. For example, I really enjoyed studying science but I never enjoyed doing science.
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I’m a photography blogger with a home studio and camera bag full of fun gear. Twice a year I go through my collection and separate the “can’t live without” from the “OMG, I have one of these” items. The later goes up on Craigslist and Amazon.com
Last year, I sold enough to pay for a camera upgrade and a few lenses!
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College isn’t just about the degree. You learn other important skills while taking all those classes. They don’t advertise philosophy courses (a requirement at my school) as: how to formulate an effective argument and how to evaluate an argument, but that’s really what it is.
Other important coursework: how to function in a professional environment, how to behave like an adult (sadly, many current students are failing this).
All those business majors may think they’re wasting their time in English courses, until they get out and have to write an executive summary. Boom – English class comes rushing back!
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Wow, I´ve been reading your blog for a while now and never would have thought we both went to Willamette! I loved studying for my Anthropology and Spanish majors, although I never planned on becoming an anthropologist. I work in educational sales in Chile, so the Spanish major is serving me well!
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I know several people who are in jobs right now different than what they went to school for, but the job they’re in just requires a degree. Doesn’t matter what it’s in. They’re not necessarily high-end jobs, but they’re making more money than they would flipping burgers.
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I think people confuse knowledge with skillset. I have a degree in software engineering (knowledge), but what I really learned was how to solve hard problems with simple solutions. I went back for an MBA, not because I wanted to move to finannce, but to learn how to manage my time and juggle competing priorities. Sure, sometimes you really do need that specialized knowledge, but when I hire people, I hire based on skills and capabilities, not on what they know.
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I received a degree in neuropsychology two years ago from a top 25 university, yet I am not doing anything directly connected with academic(graduate studies) or applied(research, psychotherapy, etc.) psychology or neuroscience. I currently work as an agent and investment counsel for a private investment bank and find that many of the skills that made my academic career very successful have done the same for my current position. I think too many see college as a step towards employment and not enough view college as a way to refine and expand one’s overall skill-set.
No matter the degree you receive, college forces you to refine certain traits that are necessary in most every field. For the most part, a diploma signifies that you likely possess a certain degree of general competence, not that you possess the specific skills needed to succeed in a particular field. A diploma indicates that one likely possesses the ability to develop the specific skills necessary for a particular position. You are deemed capable.
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How funny! I live in Indiana and read your blog regularly. I had no idea you went to Willamette, I did too! I graduated with a Politics degree and worked in IT for ten years and now I stay home with kids.
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