Arts BFAs are obviously pre professional but not as much a theater BA which generally had many fewer training classes and more history and literature of theater classes. And yes she is very frugal and works the theater “job” as well as a subsistence job. She probably works 60 hours a week but is well below poverty line. It’s only been 6 months out. We will see how long she can stand piecing things together. And she is still on our health insurance and cell phone plans.
“Who went to HYPS. Show me the U of Iowa history majors on Wall Street.”
@barrons As the poster who made the comment you are referencing, I firmly stand behind my comment as my career in the finance/investment world has repeatedly provided me with first hand observations and I do agree that “trading floors are still thick with kids from non-elite schools and all sorts of backgrounds. The skillset to be a trader is very different from M&A or private wealth management…”
Totally true. For my D it was chemistry. Same with her best friend. D works in a history field, and her bestie has a job that actually combines chemistry and history. Insanely cool job.
My first-hand experience in the finance world is pretty old now, but back in the last century I spent some time in two trading departments of a major Wall Street institution. It was certainly true that they were “thick” with people (not so much kids) from non-elite schools (and in some cases from no schools at all above the high school level). But it was also true that they were hired and maintained on a separate basis from the Ivy types who worked next to them. They had nowhere near the same prospects for advancement, and they were paid on a different basis (which was almost entirely eat what you kill). It was definitely a two-tier system. I doubt it’s quite that way now, but I would be surprised if there’s no trace of it left.
Today, most of the trading floors with which I am familiar are full of math PhDs, with maybe the occasional Math 55 alum or phenomenally successful online poker player with no PhD. That’s not at large institutions, however.
I laugh at a “Doctor of Physical Therapy”. Does the holder of this paper credential need to actually do original research and contribute to the state of the art of physical therapy by creating new knowledge in the field, as does the holder an actual research doctorate (i.e., PhD) must do? The United States loves title and credential inflation. Does one really need a “doctorate” to put pills in a bottle in Walmart (“Doctor” in pharmacy), to give hearing tests (which are largely automated by the audiometric test instruments today as in “Doctor” in audiology), etc? Even medical, dentistry, chiropractic, podiatry, etc. are not true doctorates in that no original research is required to obtain them. In Europe for example the title “doctor” is largely reserved for those who performed original research, and clinical or “trade doctorates” are not called that. In England, India, and other nations that utilize the British model educational system a medical credential is referred to as a “Bachelor” in medicine and surgery. And last but not least, the lawyers some years back, to imitate the MDs, renamed the law degree as a “Juris Doctor” from the original “Bachelor” nomenclature. In Canada and Europe and most of the world other than the US, the bachelor title remains.
JHS, of course traders are hired and “maintained” on a different basis then someone who gets paid to do client management, credit analysis, deal origination, etc. Every function on Wall Street has different demands (intellectual, social, psychological, quantitative) and therefore, much as CC hates to admit- the hiring and advancement criteria are different. And in terms of a “two tier system”- a solid trader can make a nice 7 figure salary… so that kid from Rutgers (10 years later) isn’t exactly in a second class system vs. his peer from Princeton who is in private wealth management, whose comp tops out at about $500K at the same tenure level (not too shabby, but not in the millions). And I say “his peers” only because the number of traders who are female at that level is still shockingly low.
Lots of careers have two tier or three tier systems- why is it that we react in shock and horror when it’s Wall Street and not anywhere else? You can’t compare the earnings of a pediatrician to that of a neurosurgeon… not in the same ballpark. You can’t compare the earnings of an immigration attorney who hangs out a shingle in El Paso to a personal injury lawyer in Dallas.
It’s called a labor market.
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Yes, there’s a lot of degree creep. Add a year to the schooling, and the old, master’s level credential becomes a doctorate, and no, to my knowledge, my students heading out for DPT, DNP, OTD, etc. programs are not required to do original research or write/defend a dissertation. However, I will say I don’t think most use the title “doctor”
I actually think the USA is less title crazy than some other countries. I can think of several which use tons of honorifics and titles we don’t use, especially those with a monarchy and titles of nobility.
I agree, generally the US doesn’t use credential-based titles as much, particularly wrt doctor for a non medical PhD. My business cards said “Dr” in the UK, but not in the US. And in Germany, Doktor is even more ubiquitous.
“Add a year to the schooling, and the old, master’s level credential becomes a doctorate” - well, no, not at any real research university. Maybe that is true for ersatz doctorates such as the ones you mentioned. The average time in engineering and physical sciences from master’s to doctorate in the US for example is 5.7 years, the bulk of that time performing, publishing, and defending the original research and proving that one has indeed opened up a new area of knowledge.
The creep is not just in the name of the title, but in the prerequisite education needed before the professional education. Bachelor of medicine and law degrees do/did not require having a bachelor’s degree before entering the professional program. The current US system where students have to earn a bachelor’s degree (in any major) before entering a medical or law program increases cost and debt to the student and functions as an additional weed-out mechanism. That may serve the interests of incumbent practitioners, since it raises the barrier to entry against additional competitors.
Other examples of creep include moving the first professional degree in occupational therapy from a bachelor’s degree to a master’s degree, and the increase in minimum credits for the CPA exam to 150 (five academic years’ worth of college course work, even though the specific subject requirements do not require that much). Then there are also the jobs that do not require the general or specific skills indicated by a bachelor’s degree (i.e. can be done well by a high school graduate) listing a bachelor’s degree as required or preferred.
None of these really require an undergraduate (bachelor’s) degree prior. This is just a barrier to entry to reduce the number of people doing these jobs and thus increase their income, as the US for-profit medical system does as you point out. The half dozen or so basic science courses that medical schools require of applicants could be provided as part of the medical school, perhaps, in say a five year program. The current system in the UK I believe requires a bachelor’s degree before beginning medical school to obtain a bachelor of medicine degree (at least, if I look at the websites of English universities, they list combined degree programs and state that the first bachelor’s degree is a requirement). CPAs are a dime a dozen. Is accounting so involved that so many credits are required? Accounting should be a 2 year course in a community college. Before the title of the law degree in the US was changed from bachelor to “doctor”, most law schools required a bachelor’s degree. In England and Canada for example they still do.
Some did not. Edmund Brown (senior), a governor of California, did not go to college for undergraduate study, but did earn a bachelor of law degree at night while working. This was back in 1927.
My mother in law graduated from HS in the mid 1940’s, and had no further education.
She wrote beautifully- had taken rhetoric, composition, years of grammar. She learned history, civics, music and art appreciation, all in HS. She was able to do arithmetic, geometry, and could read a bar chart and understand what compound interest was. She was an avid reader, attended plays and concerts, followed politics and foreign affairs.
Therefore, there were many, many jobs she was qualified for. She wasn’t a math whiz, but she understood the difference between the mean and the median. She didn’t speak Mandarin but she understood why Mao was a seminal figure in world history, and why Russia was (then was not, and is now back) to being a superpower. She could find both Iran and Iraq on a map, thanks to 8th grade geography, and she knew that Yemen and Afghanistan were two different countries.
It is very hard to find HS graduates these days who can do all of the above, unless they are on a college track in which case they go to college. So the credential creep of a BA is very real. It is tough to get a job without some “proof” that you can read, write and calculate at a 12th grade level- which is why employers require a BA as a proxy that even entry level clerical hires can look at an invoice which has a 6% sales tax on it and understand that 6% is not 60% or .6%.
My local hospital requires at least an AA for an entry level pharm tech job. I know the head of HR who has told me that in an environment where HS graduates don’t know that Kilos and lbs. are different, or that 5 mg vs. 50 mg can be the difference between making someone better or killing them, it is just too hard to hire HS graduates.
I sympathize. Do you want that person administering your chemo? Or replacing the bag of morphine when you are post-op?
Many years ago some law schools in the US didn’t require applicants to have a bachelor’s degree. A few decades ago some states didn’t even require one to have graduated from law school to sit for the bar exam - if one could pass the bar exam, they could get a license to do legal work in that state. The bar exam is the same barrier of knowledge for everybody, so their logic was that if one passed the exam they posses that knowledge and that was sufficient qualification to be a competent lawyer. Abraham Lincoln never went to law school nor did he take a bar exam I believe. Some medical people in those days didn’t go to medical school, they were trained as apprentices by working physicians.
One can certainly learn medicine, law, pharmacy, etc. competently without a bachelor’s degree. In those fields the requirement for a bachelor’s degree which may be completely unrelated to the trade course of study later is a superfluous waste of time and money. You don’t need a BA to know the difference between 5 and 50 mg. That can be taught as part of the professional course. If one passes the licensing exam to be a pharmacist, he/she would have to know this.
Years ago the forerunner organization to ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) proposed that engineering be a five or 6 year course consisting of a four year BS in math or science and two years of engineering school, or a five year master’s program that would contain the underlying science and the engineering specific courses (as the four year program today does). Some of the more ambitious proponents of that idea suggested four years of undergraduate science (leading to a BS) and four more years leading to a Doctor of Engineering (that degree is still offered in a few schools - it usually requires research and dissertation as does a PhD, but is largely archaic in the US). That didn’t gain much traction, because few wanted to spend the time or the money needed for those extra years, and the current four year degree program produces competent engineers (though most undergraduate engineering programs require more than the typical BA requirement of 120 credits. Mine was 153 credits for example).
Most of the bachelor’s degree courses in the UK for example are only three years. Apparently they believe anything more is a waste of time and money.
zoosermom, I’d be very curious to know what that job is. Chemistry and history are both subjects that DS19 very much enjoys.
Back in the day AT&T had a company historian. He had a PhD in history and undergraduate and master’s in electrical engineering. At that time AT&T/Bell Labs saw value in preserving and keeping the storied technological history of the Labs and the parent corporation alive, as it developed the majority of the technology that makes the present day world of internet, communications, satellites, electronics, computers, and more possible. When AT&T itself divested into separate companies in 1995, the company historian position was maintained by then Lucent Technologies which retained the majority of Bell Labs. Eventually though the company history department was phased out. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) History Center has a staff of engineers/physicists/mathematicians some of whom also have history backgrounds.
When talking WS I am talking IB and such. Not the floor trader. How many are even left?? https://qz.com/1078602/why-the-new-york-stock-exchange-nyse-still-has-human-brokers-on-the-trading-floor/
The Chicago Boards used to be full of burly ex jocks from the Midwest too. But they are nearly extinct.
“The current system in the UK I believe requires a bachelor’s degree before beginning medical school to obtain a bachelor of medicine degree (at least, if I look at the websites of English universities, they list combined degree programs and state that the first bachelor’s degree is a requirement). CPAs are a dime a dozen. Is accounting so involved that so many credits are required? Accounting should be a 2 year course in a community college.”
This is not quite the correct interpretation. In the UK you do an integrated 6 year undergraduate course which gives you a batchelors degree (MB). But you are just as qualified as an MD in the US.
I’d note that UK system for accounting is quite different too. Generally you qualify by doing paid training for three years after graduating in any field. Doing accounting for your undergraduate degree is the exception. And for law you generally do an undergraduate degree (or a postgrad conversion course) followed by paid training.
All these options leave you with a lot less debt than the US system.
Not all traders are floor traders. Both the buy and sell sides use traders in many financial markets. There are plenty of very well paid jobs in finance and investment management that aren’t in IB and don’t require an Ivy diploma. @barrons I’m guessing you don’t have work experience in the industry.