<p>Well- people in corporations are a whole lot happier than people in law firms! And maybe you want to check with doctors, too. Work is “work” for a reason, and it isn’t always inventing facebook! </p>
<p>There are sucky corporations and boring jobs with horrible bosses. That is true EVERYWHERE. If you haven’t read the books written by young MBA grads and interns, maybe you should.</p>
<p>As far as wanting to live in the northeast…my kid (Penn '10) wanted to get as far away as possible. He is in one of the top “desirable” cities for young people, has a spacious, new apartment, a 15 minute commute to work and 300 days of sunshine a year. His company has a strong recruiting program and takes the new hires to all sorts of fun sports and cultural events. I doubt he’ll work there forever, but he sure isn’t miserable at his slice of corporate America. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl is right- I work with professionals of all levels and educational backgrounds. Many have a forestry background, and are as smart as anyone I have met, and it’s fun to be in business meetings at someone’s deer camp. You can’t possibly know the range of jobs and opportunities that are out there. </p>
<p>Here in Nashville there are fascinating jobs in the music industry- some with big corporations (CMT, Sony) and some following a star around. </p>
<p>Human resources offers entry level positions for grads and many large companies are adding staff in this area. It gets the young person exposure to corporate life and to a wide range of talented individuals.</p>
<p>Do you think you are going to be a Vice President as soon as you hire on?</p>
<p>A typical corporate and accounting professional job does not pay $35,000. In any major city the average is around $50,000-$60,000 plus a significant bonus of around $10,000-$20,000. These are the jobs many business majors at state U’s typically get. Engineers start in a wider range depending on area–from $45,000-$70,000+ for computer engineers.</p>
<p>@@ as if the salary you get when you’re 22 and fresh out of college means that you stay at that salary forever. I swear, it’s like some of you set up straw men.</p>
<p>And based on the new competitiveness of state schools, and the cost differential, and the job market, I will be surprised this year if expensive liberal arts colleges fill their classes.</p>
<p>debrockman- Do you just pop into every thread to randomly advocate your position that private universities are going down the tubes? I’m sure Williams and Amherst are really sweating it! (not)</p>
<p>Oh puh-lease, there are enough full-pay families with smart kids who want to give their kids an elite educational experience (regardless of the employment payout) that the elite expensive LAC’s are in no danger of having empty beds.</p>
<p>I asked this in another thread, but I’ll ask it here again: When my son received his admission packet from Williams, I read in a brochure that even if you pay full price at Williams, you are paying half of what it costs to give each kid a Williams education. I think that Harvard says the same thing on its website. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Regarding “practical skills”, I would argue that a liberal arts education from a highly competitive school is one of the best ways to prepare a young adult for the work force. A liberal arts education prepares the student to think critically, and it hones the student’s communication skills. And the rigorous environment of a competitive school prepares the student for the rigors of the working world. It may be true that graduates from the more competitive schools (I think labeling these schools “elite” misses the point entirely, they are not elite, but rather competitive) expect a higher salary, and they may proceed to graduate school in greater numbers after a brief period in the work force, but neither of these observations support the conclusion that high school graduates with exceptional qualifications should avoid these schools in pursuit of the large state universities in the WSJ article. All the article indicates is that large employers who are looking to recruit potential employees for entry level positions prefer to target certain universities that offer large pools of qualified candidates, nothing more, nothing less. This fact should not necessarily inform a high school senior’s decision regarding which colleges or universities to target for application.</p>
<p>Williamsdad reminds me of my first job out of business school. I was pricing a large proposal and took the list prices from the company’s pricing book and did the extensions.
The general manager of the divsion increased them by half and then instructed the proposal manager to give list prices and the discount and do a great write-up about how the client would be getting the work at half price! I wonder if the GM is now the President of Williams college. (We won the work by the way).</p>
<p>In Williams’ case, it’s easy to verify: Williams is essentially a 100% undergrad institution, so you can attribute its entire budget to undergraduate education. If you run the math, tuition revenue comes to just about half the budget. So in that sense, it’s true that you’re paying only half the cost.</p>
<p>What that ignores, however, is that there may be more cost-efficient ways of providing a comparable education to the one Williams provides. The US News ranking methodology rewards schools like Williams for having the highest spending per student, on the assumption that more spending per student is automatically a good thing. But you could also view this as rewarding schools for having the highest COST per student, and at the margins this creates an incentive for schools to run up the costs of undergraduate education to help bolster their US News rankings. Raise faculty salaries? Good; it helps our US News ranking. More deluxe amenities for students? That helps in US News’ eyes, too, even though the contribution those “extras” make to the quality of undergraduate education may be minimal or non-existent. At a minimum, this reward system gives colleges a reason not to contain costs.</p>
<p>Moreover, this formula will always favor smaller schools because many of the costs of running a college or university are fixed. Take libraries, for example. Libraries are pretty expensive. But if two colleges have, say, identical 1-million volume collections and identical library staffs and services, and College A has 1,000 students while College B has 2,000 students, College A will benefit in the US News ratings because its “spending per student” on libraries will be twice that of College B. And that’s so even though the students at College B have access to the same books and the same library services as those at College A. Of course, if College B reaches the congestion point, where it’s harder to get the books and library services you want, then the students at College A will be better off. But that’s not always the case; the collection and services at College B may be perfectly adequate to meet all student needs at that level, but the spending-per-student will be lower because there are efficiencies in spreading the fixed costs over a larger “customer” base. In short, students at College A and College B may be getting identical and perfectly wonderful library services, but US News will assume students at college A are better off simply because the fixed costs are spread across a smaller student body.</p>
<p>The idea that we want to reward colleges for raising the cost of undergraduate education strikes me as perverse. It’s a little like saying to health care providers, “The higher the cost of the services you provide, the more you’ll be rewarded.” Oh, wait a minute, that IS how our health care system works! And that’s why health care costs are totally out of control. As are the costs of higher education.</p>
<p>"Well, BBD, all I can say is that I was a director in a Fortune 50 company, and now I do consulting for Fortune 50 companies, and guess what – either way, you gotta do a lot of grunt work "</p>
<p>I wasn’t referring to grunt work, so much as to the overall intellectual atmosphere, the “fitting in”. Though of course a large consulting firm is still more of a hierarchy than the independence I think Galbraith was thinking of.</p>
<p>"Likewise, “doesn’t fit well into the corporate culture” doesn’t always mean “brilliant iconoclast who is better off creating his own thing anyway.” </p>
<p>Sometimes it just means “uppity jerk who thinks he’s all that, and has no ability to learn from and work with others.” "</p>
<p>Sometimes its someone who can work well with others, but finds the hierarchy, the rules, rigidity, the deference to higher ups, the political homogenieity, stifling. And yes I know there are many firms not like that, but there are or at least were, enough that are. It was certainly like that at the firm I worked for in the 80s, and at many of the firms i was on consulting projects for in the early 90’s. </p>
<p>There are of course many Ivy and LAC grads who fit in just fine at big corps, and thrive there. I wouldnt assume all the ones (and I think there are many) who avoid the big corps in favor of other environments are doing so out uppityness, and not all are mistaken.</p>
<p>"Oh, wait a minute, that IS how our health care system works! And that’s why health care costs are totally out of control. As are the costs of higher education. "</p>
<p>except of course that costs is one factor among many in the USNWR rankings, and I think its a stretch that a modest difference in USNWR ranking actually gives a significant revenue boost to a college.</p>
<p>"For example, why exactly do high schools spend so much time teaching students how to deconstruct works of literature - a skill that is practically useless outside of academia - rather than teaching marketable tech skills? {To be clear, I believe that students should read important works of literature. But why such an emphasis on deconstructing them? Why can’t a story just be a story?} "</p>
<p>Deconstructing does not mean what you think it means.</p>
<p>^ virtually all schools claim that their expenses are not covered by tuition payments from students … and that subsidies from the endowment (and the state for state schools) is what balances the budget … this is not new and not unique to Williams.</p>
"</p>