It seems that in America, there can be no education for education's sake; post-secondary pursuit of knowledge has been so monetized that 18-year-olds are expected to see into the future and determine the earning prospects over their 50-year-career. If your interests are in less paying fields you are the target of constant derision.
These articles and charts change nothing. They merely allow the prized few whose talents and interests line up with the capitalist zeitgeist to pat themselves on the back and shun all those little people who dared to pursue their own genuine interest with their own life and their own money.
In the US, we can't go to university for $500 a year, like in some European countries. Or like our parents did a generation ago.
You've got to come up with the scratch somehow to pay for the education, and that comes in, on average, somewhere north of $20k per year. Most people take out student loans, and graduate with the equivalent of a medium mortgage-worth of debt out of the gate. If you get a degree in some squishy field, you're taking the risk that you're going to sentence yourself to a decade or more of near-poverty because of the combination of loan debt and low salary/lack of occupation in that field, or you have to double-down and go to grad school, racking up more years of debt. Then you might find that you haven't bought yourself much advantage with the two or three years and $75k you spent.
It's always your decision what to do. Fiscal prudence shouldn't be a target of derision either. You can always go pursue your passions on your own time after you put food on the table.
>In the US, we can't go to university for $500 a year, like in some European countries. Or like our parents did a generation ago.
Since we agree it need not be this way (for it hasn't always been), it's prudent to ask why we choose to enrich the few at the cost of the many.
The derision is not towards the fiscally prudent, but towards the stewards that have squandered the nation's intellectual birthright in favor of social Darwinism.
It's sheer opportunism on the part of money lenders upheld by the old guard of "Protestant work ethic." A perfect storm of exploitation in which we should refuse to participate.
None of what you said actually enables anyone to make accurate, or even rational, forecasts of which educations will be the most profitable 50 years into the future. Even 20-30 is fairly difficult.
This is only because the current government is populated by reactionary conservatives who are making many such foolish propositions. I hardly think this qualifies as a legitimate reason. Besides, they will clearly fail, as the current backlash in academic is proving.
This is just like Gingrich era Congress's incessant attempts to cutoff funding for the NEH, NEA, etc. Political posturing that will eventually blow over when people realize the blowhards are just full of hot air.
These articles and charts change nothing. They merely allow the prized few whose talents and interests line up with the capitalist zeitgeist to pat themselves on the back and shun all those little people who dared to pursue their own genuine interest with their own life and their own money.