Yes, I agree. It also illustrates that the “eliteness” is really determined by supply and demand in a particular field. Unfortunately, the demand is dropping in many fields, and what’s in demand today may not be so in a few years.
@blossom I don’t think even community colleges have tenure spots for any but the elite. Most departments around here have 1-2 FT (not even tenure track, just FT) faculty and fill the rest of their needs with adjuncts.
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Many cc’s here in CA anyway have more math than just pre-calc. Since they have to prepare the students for transfer, they have calc 1/2/3, differential equations, linear algebra, stats and then some do have discrete math, or other more advanced courses.
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Yes Californians are incredibly lucky because the state years ago created a fully integrated system where CCs can fully function as the first 2 years of a 4-year college and from which a student can prepare for their state’s flagship. As a result, most CCs offer math through calculus 3, Diff eqs, etc, since they offer pre-reqs for Engineering and other STEM majors.
Depending on where you live, that is most definitely not true. In the worst case scenario, if you’re in Michigan or Pennsylvania, the CCs do not prepare you for the flagship, which will ask you to retake lots of courses and delay your graduation - you can attend “branches” or directionals but not CCs if you wish to transfer smoothly, which is of course much much more expensive. In many states, CCs primarily or quasi exclusively offer remedial, vocational, and technical education.
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Re: TT positions. There are also regional effects. So many Public universities in the South prefer faculty with PhDs from another Southern university over graduates of other Universities which are in general considered “elite”.
There is also an important factor that, for many LACs, an undergraduate degree from a LAC is the primary requirement.
There are also other issues as to what is considered “elite”. In academia, it is based on the reputation of the particular program among people in the field, rather than any ranking system. An applicant for a CS position with a PhD from UIUC is far more attractive for almost any university than an applicant with a PhD from Harvard. Ecology departments would choose a person with a PhD from UC Davis over a person with a PhD from Notre Dame or U Chicago.
Finally, universities or colleges with “lesser” reputations in areas which are not popular will often not hire graduates of “elite” programs, since they consider them “flight risks”. So a small directional college in a rural area will often not look at any applicant whose PhD is from an Ivy, since they do not believe that those applicants will stay if hired.
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There was a very thorough report done on lifetime earnings of people by college major by Georgetown U and Brookings Inst.
summary graph: https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/legacy/files/downloads_and_links/MajorDecisions-Figure_2a.pdf (bachelors only, so does not include MDs. Full report does).
Engineering at top, Business, Science middle, Education, Arts at bottom.
There would be two effects- a field where most grads get jobs but low paid (say Education) or a field where few grads get jobs (in the field), hence do not benefit from their degree (say Film and Video) though pay is good.
Full report over 100 pages. Has 25th, median, 75th percentile for each field.
Date: 2015.
Main website: The Economic Value of College Majors
full report: The-Economic-Value-of-College-Majors-Full-Report-web-FINAL.pdf
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I will probably get flack for this but I am increasingly convinced that “following your dream” is a luxury. A college degree is now ubiquitous enough that merely having a degree no longer separates you from average. Unless there is a clear plan for the future you are spending money that may not give you much of a return on your investment. You mentioned some of the degrees that clearly lead to a career path. I would add nursing as a 4 year degree that is well worth it. Most of the degrees at the top of the list are also the most selective to get into and typically have a pretty solid bottom (as someone else mentioned). In other words they are “elite” if you will just getting in and completing the degree reasonably well.
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Agree, “following the dream” is a luxury for those who have family wealth and/or connections to fall back on. Otherwise, it is a lotto ticket.
There are plenty of happy and successful 28-35 year olds right now who “followed the dream” without family money or connections.
What did they have? An insane work ethic AND a grip on reality- which I find is missing in a lot of the young people I meet and try to help with their launching.
You can become a self-supporting successful actor with voice-over and commercial work. (and out-earn your more “prestigious” colleagues by multiples). You can become a self-supporting and successful writer by getting a job at a pharma company or bank-- editing, writing, shaping communications and narratives. You can become a successful museum curator- maybe not at the Smithsonian (certainly not right away) but at one of the world class art museums in Kansas City or Fort Worth.
It’s the “follow the dream which means hitting it big in year 1 plus living in a cute loft in Tribeca or San Francisco” which only works with family money and connections. And I just heard about a young, VERY successful musician/composer. He composes jingles, remixes classic songs for commercial use, is a consultant to ad agencies on multi-media presentations which feature his own, original work when they don’t want to pay rights for re-using familiar music. No- he’s not Bruce Springsteen and you wouldn’t recognize him if you passed him on the street. But he’s been successful by seizing on a lucrative niche in the music industry (even with digitalization, someone has to score and develop the instrumentation in order for a piece of music to work, and he’s not too proud to do that since it pays the mortgage) and working his tail off.
Not a lotto ticket. Just hard work.
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Whether one can follow their dream or not usually depends upon what their dream is. I see oodles of typical high school students do it each year. Their dreams range from working at local factories to construction/various trades to college and related jobs afterward. Not many in our area dream about becoming a professional athlete, though a couple have and would be known if I wrote their names here. More would dream about coaching in schools. That happens too.
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Sure there are people who succeed in a non-traditional field who work very hard at it or are lucky, but they are the exceptions. For every anecdote you throw out about the exceptional person who succeeds, I can throw out multiple anecdotes of young adults in their 20’s who still live with their parents, underemployed and in debt. I have a niece whose dream was to be a fashion designer. She enrolled in a for profit and my cousin signed a note for $25k that he could not really afford. She is painting nails at a nail salon today while her dad has to deal with the debt mess. I have several friends with very talented musical children. They pursued their dream with their parents’ support, which was great. But the difference between making it and not is huge in that industry. Even if you are in a modestly successful band, you might make a couple hundred bucks a gig. If you open for a major act, the band may make a couple of grand. They have to round out their musical income with lessons or unrelated non-career jobs. Almost all of them threw in the towel after about 10 years to pursue a career outside of music. For them and their families it was worth it to give it a shot but it meant a real investment in time and money with a low probability of success.
Moving from anecdotes, let’s look at some hard data. “In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of monthly Census Bureau data. … The share of young adults living with their parents is higher than in any previous measurement (based on current surveys and decennial censuses). Before 2020, the highest measured value was in the 1940 census at the end of the Great Depression, when 48% of young adults lived with their parents.” 52% of young adults in US are living with their parents amid COVID-19 | Pew Research Center. Note in particular the graphic representation of this statistic, with the bottom at 29% in 1960 rising to 38% in 2000 and then sharply increasing through the 2000. Perhaps we can blame the 2007-2008 recession for the early spike, but the percentages did not come down during the boom years afterwards.
At the same time, let’s look at student debt. Student debt has been growing at 23.6% annually during the 2000, 513% greater than the growth in GDP. It is now $1.68 trillion compared to $240 billion in 2003. The growth rate in debt has exceeded the growth rate in tuition by 354%. Student Loan Debt Statistics [2023]: Average + Total Debt Of the $1.6T+ in student debt, the default rate as of 2015 (latest available figures) stood at over 10%. During the same time, as a frame of reference, mortgage default rates were sitting at around 5%. Clearly, more people were borrowing for something they could not afford.
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FWIW, this is not necessarily a “Dream Killer.” My youngest and his wife moved in with us back in March. They could still afford their studio apartment, but preferred to spend Covid on our farm where one can easily get outside and enjoy themselves. In the meantime they get to save a lot of money as they eventually want to move overseas and work (could be part of DIL’s job).
I imagine a fair number of people living with their parents could be doing it because it makes sense and they want to vs they have to financially due to working low end jobs.
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You will not find me endorsing attending a for-profit college- whether or not it requires debt. I cry inside when I meet a young person paying tuition at a local for-profit where they are majoring in “legal studies” to become a court reporter. They will be on the verge of retirement when they have made enough money to pay back their loans.
But my point was- “living the dream” requires redefining the dream in practical terms. Becoming a composer/musician who is living off Carnegie Hall appearances is markedly different from looking around, seeing that commercial music pays well and while it requires some talent, isn’t nearly the meat grinder that the concert circuit is. A Design Director at a large ad agency in a major metro who knows the in’s and out’s of packaging design for cosmetics and toothpaste and hand sanitizer makes a comfortable 6 figure income. No, not selling art work to MOMA (although a few iconic package designs eventually reach the “art” world). But if you love to create, and don’t want to sell insurance (a fine way to earn a living, not disparaging it) then being nimble and thoughtful and yes, creative about a career path is going to serve you well.
Borrowing for something you cannot afford- again, not what I’m advocating. But not sure what your statistics have to do with the comment that “living the dream” requires rich parents and connections. Especially since some of the creative fields (not all) are the least “elitist” of many competitive fields. You have a BA in Fine Arts from a Directional state college? It’s all about your portfolio, nobody cares if you were summa cum laude or bottom of the class. You have an MFA in Digital Design from one of the top schools in the country? Nobody cares if your work samples/product/reel stinks.
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Young people, not living with extended family, is a historical and geographical blip. For most of time and in most places in the world, it has been and still is the norm. In North America it was the norm up until WWII. It may just be that we here in North America are merely reverting to that norm.
I volunteered at my oldest son’s high school for a number of years helping out in an ESL classroom. I still remember one boy from Syria telling me that North American parents don’t love their children because they are so eager to kick them out of the house. Back in Syria his entire extended family lived in a compound of several dwellings. Also many immigrant families here, especially from Asia, live that way still, with the grandparents looking after the grandkids while the parents work, and the parents looking after the grandparents as they age.
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Sure there are plenty of incidences of kids living with their parents as part of a sensible plan. If our kids wanted to take a job in our hometown, I’d love to have them at home so that they could save money to buy to buy their own place. I’d still probably charge them rent just to get them in a budget mindset, but I’d also likely gift them their rental payments back when they were ready to buy their own place. I also get that Covid is driving the latest uptick, but that is why I point to the rise in children living at home during the 2000’s.
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Agree. My DD intends to live at home for 2-3 years after graduating. As her job will involve a lot of travel, it makes sense to live at home and save that money she would spend on rent for an apartment she will rarely enjoy. The savings will give her better flexibility once she does move out.
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I agree that there are those who can follow their dreams by combining their interests with practicality. Unfortunately, there are plenty who have only a vague idea of something they like to do without considering the practicalities. I pointed to those statistics on kids living at home and debt as an end product of too many young adults who invested in a very expensive education on borrowed money without a practical plan.
I’ve posted on the topic of the ROI on education many times over the years always from the perspective of following your dream.
We raised our son to understand that his education is all about the life of his mind; the life of his wallet will take care of itself and is a by-product of how he cultivates his thoughts. Marketable skills and money are not the goals of education. We’ve always been more concerned about the quality of the tape that plays in his head than any marketable skills. College is about gaining the mental enrichment to inform whatever you choose to do for a living. If you love to do something, you will make a go of it – even if you have to live in a box under the freeway for a while. That’s what we always told our son, anyway. He grew up knowing that his undergraduate education would be our last financial gift to him, and he could do whatever he wanted with it, absolutely no strings. We would not support him financially in his adulthood because we have our own lives to live and provide for. He’s always known that and has looked forward to making his own way in the world, whatever that eventually looks like for him; money/employability was never the driver, never the goal.
Given his interests in high school, we thought he’d end up living in an old car traveling around with a camera on his shoulder enjoying seeing life through a lens, and that’s all that mattered. Instead, he astounded us in his junior year saying that he felt he needed to serve his country before venturing out on his own. His prep school talked a lot about service and told its students they better not dare consume a quarter of a million dollars of this world’s goods without considering the weight of that consumption. He took that very seriously and will all of his life. Though we never struggled with him being a starving cinematographer, we struggled mightily with him joining the military. The irony! We and his school taught him service above self but never considered that he would choose the “wrong” kind of service. The fates are laughing at us, I’m sure. But, I’m also sure he didn’t choose his current path for money.
I’ve never understood the argument that you have to be rich to pursue education for education’s sake, and I’ve never understood expecting some form of financial ROI on college. To be well educated is an end in itself, a great gift to oneself and those you share it with. What does money have to do with it? I always figured I could cut hair or learn some other trade to avoid starvation, but I never equated my education or that of our son’s with what I’d/he’d be able to earn. Education is about the ability to live happily and fully, curiously engaged in one’s head. For me, the by-product of that internal engagement has always been sufficient to translate into something useful enough to keep me off the streets. I grew up extremely poor, went to beauty school out of high school, and ended up in college by a twist of fate. What I learned there was the magic of books and stories and writing and history and engagement with people and faculty who helped me start to think differently and more deeply about the world around me. I left a very different, better person from the one who entered, and I treasure that mental epiphany and those magical years I almost missed more than anything. That transformation, not any particular job, is what education is to me and what we wanted for our son. He always understood that he could pursue whatever he wanted and he should pursue what he loved but that he was on his own to support himself with it, just like his parents did. If he never makes much money, so what? If he lives in a box under the freeway but does what he loves, what’s wrong with that? If his life is hard, why shouldn’t it be? I sure would hate to see him pursue something he doesn’t love just to make money. His education will keep him company while he finds his way with no financial help from us.
At some point, we’ve turned college into trade school and a financial proposition. I find that tragic, and I think that reduction misses the boat of life by miles. For any who are thinking that there has to be some minumum financial payback for the outrageous cost of the educational experience demanded by most here on CC, let me counter that the type of education I’m talking about can be had at hundreds of schools and at many price points, does not have to be completed in four years or out of state, and does not require a boarding experience. It costs, but it doesn’t have to impoverish. If you let go of any ROI notions, you come closer to my definition of what college is for – acquiring knowledge for the pure love and mental enrichment of it. I believe the rest will take care of itself. It’s the ROI cynicism that is turning our bastions of higher education into trade schools and our would-be scholars into money grubbers. And, for better or worse, our kids are excellent consumers of the messages they hear.
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I am stunned by the profundity of this post. Choatiemom, you’ve posted about your son’s choices before but I don’t think I ever understood the full context.
Thanks go to you and the rest of your family for raising such a courageous young man; thanks to him for his service, and thank you for such a heartfelt and wonderful contribution to the discussion!
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You really don’t. You can take advantage of all the resources available and teach yourself. For most of our history a formal education was the province of the well to do. Most well educated people educated themselves. Even today I know people without college degrees who are experts in their areas of interest. They are constantly learning.
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