Suppose someone is 26+ years old, still living with their middle-class mother and father, and educated, but they have nowhere to go. They might even feel like they did everything they thought they could do to actually succeed. I'm sure that student loans is probably something that drives this person crazy, because they've come to realize that the value of their degree is significantly less than the value of their education--this is a problem, by the way. What I mean by that, is that if a 4-year degree costs $30 grand on average,* but the degree doesn't get the student a job, then the degree is useless and, more important to the point, worthless. There are a lot of people who laugh at students that go to school for subjects that are hard to be successful in, i.e. art, social services, etc, but they shouldn't be laughing. They should be realizing that there's a problem with the educational system. A problem with schools that over-value degrees for students that seldom lead to a career.
To put this idea into perspective, here's an example: Let's say we use engineering as the degree and the school as Drexel. Well, a 4-year degree at Drexel costs students $43,135. This does not include the potential for scholarship--which would lower the cost--nor does it include room and board--which would significantly increase the cost. It doesn't matter what major you go to Drexel for, Drexel is charging every student the same thing even though Drexel's engineering program is near impossible to pass the first year in...so that would be 43 grand down the drain. However, if you made it through, 43 times 4 is da-da-daaaa 172. So that's $172 grand of debt with an engineering degree (assuming the student can't pay any of it out of pocket, which on-average is a poor assumption--don't worry, just scroll up, then scroll back down to the bottom to know what I'm talking about. Definitely scroll up first, though, and re-read everything. Streamlining is for quitters!). That's definitely a lot of debt, but on average a bachelors in engineering for a student will receive a $96,200 salary right out of school! Even with the loans that high, that's 3 of your $30K/year jobs combined--I'm pretty sure that person will be fine. I'm an accountant by trade, so I'll do the bi-weekly math for you: before taxes that's $3,700 each check. Yeah, in my dreams. No one wants to have a lot of payments, but with that type of money ($7,400 monthly) a $1,500 loan payment doesn't seem so bad. (In some cases, the monthly loan payment could be greater or lesser than the amount I'm giving. I've found that $1,200 is about the average considering both private and federal loans.) Engineers are the highest paid professionals without needing another degree, i.e. masters, PhD, etc.
Now, let's take a look at someone with a bachelors in business administration. Their average starting salary? $54,000. That's $2,076 per check and $4,152 per month. In other words, good luck ever leaving your parents basement, you piece of worthless crap. (Yes, I know that's still a good chunk of change, and I'm sure not many would be complaining, but after taxes, which nowadays is roughly one-third of your gross wages, you're never going to be able to afford an apartment that is more than 600 bucks a month. So, say "hi" to the roaches for me.) Oh, and P.s. $54,000 is not the lowest salary you can obtain out of school. That would be Animal Science, which obtains a whopping $31,100 average salary. They'll have to wait 10 years just to approach $54,000. Yuck.**
I know, I'm sure some of you already want to kill yourselves by this point because 1. This is some pretty depressing stuff and/or 2. You just hate anything that has to do with math. I understand that, but please stay with me, I'm getting to the important part.
The $54,000 salary average for business admin divided by the $92,600 salary average for engineers is 58%!!! Holy fuck-balls, mom and dad! OK, so with that in mind, what I'm trying to say is that institutions should lower business degrees by roughly 42%--this way degrees are directly proportional to the amount of potential salary they'll likely obtain leaving college. That means that business degrees should be offered for $25,233/per year for the Drexel student. So on and so forth for the other majors. Using the same formula, Animal Science would be roughly $14,014/year at Drexel.
I'm sure this sounds a bit idealistic. I know there's a lot more number crunching that would have to go on for Universities to make this work, i.e. wages, other expenses, etc. but here's the start of the conversation! Let's get it going!
- PatInTheMonocleAndTopHat
* No joke. I thought it was higher than this originally, but here's the article for proof: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/11/13/average-student-loan-debt-hits-30-000
** Here's your top ten lowest paying salaries. Until the educational system gets fixed, I'd stray away from some of these: http://college.usatoday.com/2014/08/13/the-top-10-lowest-paying-college-majors/
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