<p>Had to laugh when I read this. It is so true. It seems we have become a nation that is all about making and spending money. </p>
<p>Think about our lifestyles: we work more hours and take less vacations than many nations. We are in debt up to our eyeballs, buying homes, cars and consumer goods we can’t afford, we have a negative savings rate, no one is saving for retirement. (okay - not everyone falls into all these categories but the U.S. population, in general, does). With the exception of our colleges (which are run by people who mostly have liberal arts type degrees), we lag behind many developed countries in terms of education - especially math and science. </p>
<p>In the not so distant past, if one wanted to be considered well-educated, one pursued a liberal arts education, now it seems we are a society that is more concerned with making lots of money. </p>
<p>I often wonder if this will be our undoing as a nation.</p>
<p>My son has SJC on his list. I think it is a bold and intriguing choice. Actually, the dean of his private college prep school raves about SJC. I would have mixed emotions about son going there but if it was something he was passion about we would support him. His intention is to go to graduate school so I’m not overly concerned with a more general liberal arts education. </p>
<p>Also, I work in health care and quite a few of my son’s classmates parents are physicians. Many physicians do not get a ‘pre-med’ degree. In fact, a lot of medical schools encourage prospective undergrads to get liberal arts degrees and pick up the necessary pre-req science classes on the side.For example, I know several physicians with undergraduate degrees in History. So I won’t rule out going to SJC prior to applying to med school or law school.</p>
<p>BTW - I have a degree in Accounting and an MBA - so I am far from anti-business.</p>
As I noted before, being pre-med at SJC is quite different from being pre-med at LACs. </p>
<p>It is not unusual for a pre-med to major in English or anthropology, and it’s normally not a problem to pick up the required courses (chem, organic chem, physics, calculus) on the side, since virtually all LACs offer those courses.</p>
<p>SJC, however, does not. As I mentioned earlier, it is necessary for most pre-meds there to take courses elsewhere or complete a post-bac degree, both of which cost extra money. While I would certainly not advise someone to scratch SJC of the list if (s)he likes it, it’s something of which (s)he should be aware.</p>
<p>The ones from good schools probably are. Most of the rest aren’t, at least not at the level you may be thinking of. There are many, many lawyers in this country, and most of them went to colleges that aren’t too hard to graduate from without developing an in-depth knowledge of anything outside your major.</p>
<p>I respect the lawyers who are in the field because they have an abiding love of justice, and who develop a deep understanding of the law and related history and social issues.</p>
<p>Take a look at the BEA Savings Rate. It hasn’t been negative in this century and is currently running around 5%. There are different calculations for savings rate bandied about with some not including things in savings that should be.</p>
<p>I just saw a statistic that US retirement assets declined to $14 trillion in 2008. Someone is saving for retirement and the amounts are massive.</p>
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<p>And yet you rag on vocational degrees like electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering which place great emphasis on math, science and problem-solving?</p>
<p>My nephew who was a smart slacker in high school is really loving SJC. It will be interesting to see where he goes on from there. Quite sure it won’t be med school though! :)</p>
<p>Good point. There is a lot of debate about what constitutes savings. I meant in the most basic sense - sorry, it’s the accountant in me.</p>
<p>Here’s what I meant:</p>
<p>After tax income - spending = annual rate of savings. If annual spending is greater than annual net income then people have to dip into their previous savings or increase their borrowing. Hence, the term negative savings rate. If it is a business, it would be considered a net loss for the year.</p>
<p>That was going on for several years leading up to the economic crisis. In recent months, people have stopped spending excessively and the rate has turned positive.</p>
<p>In other words, are you really ‘saving’ when you are increasing your consumer debt? Especially, if you have to go into the your savings or borrow more money to service that debt. I understand that is a totally debatable question. I think most people define savings as ‘cash on hand’, which makes sense. Other the other hand, if you are ‘saving’ while borrowing money to increase your spending, IMHO, that’s just a sleigh of hand.</p>
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<p>Sorry, I don’t see anything in my post that ‘rags’ on vocational degrees. I have a ‘vocational’ degree. I think there is a place for all types of degrees. One is not better than another. It’s a matter of personal choice. All I was saying is I perceive there has been a shift in the educational emphasis and societal values in this country in the last several decades. At one point, a liberal arts education was highly valued. Now there is more emphasis (in some circles) on degrees that are more business oriented. </p>
<p>I will support whatever route my son chooses to take. In our home, we talk about the pros and cons of both types of educational and career paths. The bottom line is you have to be able to support yourself, preferably doing something you enjoy. Unfortunately, sometimes people end up choosing career paths that only allow them to either make a lot of money or do something they enjoy but not both. That is just sad.</p>
<p>As for SJC, I mentioned earlier that it’s probably not for my son, but I failed to say that I wish I had the courage to nudge him in that direction. The two things that scare me are the archaic science education, as science is his primary interest, and the cost, as they don’t seem to have great financial aid.</p>
<p>I’ve been seriously considering donating to SJC even though we don’t have any connection to the college, just because I’m so enamored of their educational philosophy.</p>
<p>The problem is in the calculation of net income.</p>
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<p>Any financial analyst would be foolish to only look at the income
statement to value a company.</p>
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<p>The BEA numbers indicate that the savings rate has been positive for
this century. Spending actually fell off a cliff last year.</p>
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<p>It’s more complicated than that. What we’ve had is asset bubbles which
are a rather interesting phenomena. I like the rationale of
Kondreytieff Waves to explain long-term credit behavior. If you have
large assets like stocks or real estate that are rising, then it may
well be reasonable to borrow against such assets of consumption. The
trick is in getting off before the music stops. The bigger trick is
in then shorting the market collapse.</p>
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<p>We had the manufacturing capacity that was destroyed in the rest of
the world so we had a massive advantage that translated into easy
prosperity for our country. The rest of the world rebuilt and now we
have to compete with them for jobs and resources.</p>
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<p>Economic times permitted that. A lot of businesses now want a faster
return on their employee expenses.</p>
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<p>We had the transitions into financial engineering and the information
age to fuel our economy as our manufacturing base collapsed due to
foreign competition. Business was seen as an easy way to a good or
even great salary.</p>
<p>Enrollments in my son’s department are up about 40% this year. It
appears that many believe that a CS degree holds some financial value
in the job marketplace. Will it be useful in four years? Probably. You
have to predict the future as parents and students. Or take a leap of
faith.</p>
<p>Actually, the way the government calculates the savings rate, amortization (student and car loans, mortgages, etc.) counts as savings.
Closer to the topic, I love the pluralism available in American education, even at outliers like SJC.
My daughter at a different university took the humanities sequence, a double course both semesters of freshman year. In one session, two students hob-nobed in class with a professor in ancient Greek. Amazing. Not for everyone. But for the right person?
I have to believe a math and writing person is golden in college admissions. Or ought to be.</p>
<p>“Actually, the way the government calculates the savings rate, amortization (student and car loans, mortgages, etc.) counts as savings.”</p>
<p>There are at least two government numbers: BEA and Commerce. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are additional numbers - perhaps the Fed has their own number. </p>
<p>If you had bought shares of Berkshire Hathaway at $80, would those count in any savings numbers? They’re trading around $100,000 a share right now.</p>
<p>If you think that being educated or brilliant can keep you from losing money in the markets,</p>
<p>Joseph Spence wrote that Lord Radnor reported to him “When Sir Isaac Newton was asked about the continuance of the rising of South Sea stock… He answered ‘that he could not calculate the madness of people’.”[4] He is also quoted as stating, “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men”.[5] Newton’s niece Catherine Conduitt reported that he “lost twenty thousand pounds. Of this, however, he never much liked to hear…”[6] This was a fortune at the time (equivalent to about £3 million in present day terms[7]), but it is not clear whether it was a monetary loss or an opportunity cost loss.</p>
<p>Totally agree. I think the market is totally irrational, except of course, when it’s being rational :)</p>
<p>I will look into the Kondreytieff Waves theory. My husband is a CPA/Investment broker and we have followed the financial crisis pretty closely. He had been following the asset bubble for some time and pulled most of our money out of the market before it tanked (but not at the tippy top, unfortunately, but close to it).</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to imply that a company is only valued on it’s net income, although, certainly, income stream is an important component of a business valuation. I realize that there are many other factors that go into it (my father recently wrote a book on small-cap merger and acquisitions and is considered an expert in business valuations).
I was trying to explain one version of how personal annual savings rates are calculated, not a person’s net worth.</p>
<p>Thanks, BCEagle91, for all the interesting information. I enjoy reading your posts.</p>
<p>As a junior at St. John’s, I’ll once again take it as my civic duty to address IB’s contemptuous critiques of our program. To read his posts, you’d think we’re all a bunch of antiquarian bigots who, despite being generally ignorant, get off on flaunting our erudition. </p>
<p>First off, he’s absolutely right about our math and science classes. No student or professor here is pretending that our math and science courses are the equivalent of those at a traditional university or even at a school like Reed. The math and lab components are simply incommensurate and they also serve very different ends. There’s a good reason why we graduate with a double major in philosophy and HISTORY of math and science. Of course we will not graduate with a solid grasp on the latest and greatest advances in, say, quantum mechanics, and the books we read would not serve us well to that end. We will, however, understand broadly how quantum mechanics emerged from a single tradition beginning with the likes of Euclid and Apollonius. Our curriculum, more importantly, aims to make manifest the manner in which advancements in the mathematics and sciences parallel the arch western philosophy. Cartesian mathematics seems much more significant when it is understood within the context of Descartes’ broader philosophical project which entailed harnessing reason so that man might “conquer and master nature.” Math and science at SJC serves a purpose beyond the mastery of modern math and science. It deepens our understanding of the western tradition as a whole. Such an understanding is the true intended end of our program.
Of course, the school has its fair share of problems and short-comings, but IB is not doing SJC justice by simplistically comparing and contrasting our program to traditional curricula.</p>
<p>Also, St. John’s is in fine financial health. We don’t have an operating deficit and, in the broad scheme of things, our enrollment and retention is on the up-and-up.</p>
<p>One very important aspect of valuation is expected future earnings. Another is the expected behavior of assets. In our mortgage bubble, buyers had expectations of rising incomes and rising asset prices as that is the environment in which they developed. Expectations are reinforced through a positive feedback loop. Most people haven’t studied bubbles in history. Most people haven’t studied financial history. Even going back 100 years.</p>
<p>One of the inputs to calculating savings is, of course, income. I would guess that savings analysis is often done with IRS data - the problem with that is that 401K and IRA contributions (at least in the old days) decrease income.</p>
<p>I have the book Philosophy of mathematics, Selected readings by Benacerraf and Putnam on my desk. It’s normally on my bookshelf but I decided to take it out. I bought it for my son several years ago for leisure reading. I’ve read some of it myself and I find it difficult reading but I know some of what the writers are talking about due to mathematics that I’ve learned in getting a CS degree along with other interesting math books by Suppes, Russell and Landau. Does a SJ education enable you to discuss the topics in this sort of book?</p>
<p>I enjoy doing research and in building things. You can get great insight into things by swirling around abstract and concrete problems in your mind to some particular goal. Abstraction is fine for teaching but much of the world is a bit messier than we’re led to believe in using pure abstractions and doing research and development is often a good way to experience that.</p>
<p>I feel this way as well. When I mention on CC or in public that I’m going to get an urban studies or IR degree, people are always concerned about how I’m “going to make money”. I’m going to make money. Around $30,000 per year. I seem to live in a very different world than some people who think only $80,000 or $120,000 per year will do.</p>
<p>Where you live and what your goals are can affect your earnings expectations. In some areas, $30,000 is a lot and in others it isn’t a lot. It’s easier to live with a modest income if you are on your own but it gets harder when you have others dependent on you. This may be a spouse or children or relatives or your parents.</p>
<p>At Reed, Chicago, or Columbia, you get something of a “Great Books Lite” program (plus a conventional major). Most students (certainly the Humanities concentrators) will read the major Greek philosophers, poets, and dramatists in translation. In my first 2 or 3 years at Chicago we also read one or two entire works of St. Augustine (but none of Aquinas); Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu, the Federalist Papers, and Marx (but not Freud); a little Shakespeare, Melville, Tolstoy, a heap of poetry; Cartesian philosophy, but not mathematics; no Leibnitz, no Spinoza, no Newton. The biological sciences, physical sciences and math were all taught from modern materials in lectures and labs, not in seminar discussions of historic texts (with a few exceptions such as the works of Darwin, essays by Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc.) History classes sometimes would have included archival materials (church/municipal records and such).</p>
<p>As IBclass would point out, there are obvious advantages to this approach compared to a pure GB approach. Less obvious is what you lose. The big payoff from the GB material is not just reading it but discussing it from different perspectives, then being able to come back to it later with a different mentor in a new setting. In “GB Lite” you begin to lose the value of having all members of the community, including the faculty, be conversant with the same works, authors, and ideas. In this respect, I think the SJC experience is much more than the sum of its parts (the 100 books).</p>