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Those majors combine for what? 10% of college graduates? 15% maybe if we generously count indirect ones. Yeah of course, we are all aware that life is good for the top guns in society.
I would agree that it's better on the job front. I graduated in 2010 and remember being in waiting rooms for interviews going against people 20-30 years older than me with decades of experience. Not like that now, at the moment.
However, college is over 100% more expensive than 2008 - at my alma mater about 150% more expensive compared to a deacade ago. So they are going to doubly more debt, and I thought my debt was bad.
When I start college in 2004, I had a scholarship through the state lottery, as well as a few merit based scholarships, that completely covered the cost of my tuition with a check cut to me for the leftovers. I don't believe the lottery scholarship was indexed to inflation. It's about the same as I remember it. Meanwhile, that $~5,200 or so that tuition/books/fees was then is now around 2.5x that amount. Other than maybe medical care and something wildly variable like gasoline, I can't think of anything else where the price has risen so dramatically.
I'm better off for sure even though I had a job loss a couple years later. Kicked myself into high gear, turbocharged my saving/investing efforts the last 5 years, front-loaded 401K contributions, maxed out every savings & retirement bucket I could, and made hay while the sun was shining.
Those majors combine for what? 10% of college graduates? 15% maybe if we generously count indirect ones. Yeah of course, we are all aware that life is good for the top guns in society.
I would agree that it's better on the job front. I graduated in 2010 and remember being in waiting rooms for interviews going against people 20-30 years older than me with decades of experience. Not like that now, at the moment.
However, college is over 100% more expensive than 2008 - at my alma mater about 150% more expensive compared to a deacade ago. So they are going to doubly more debt, and I thought my debt was bad.
Those humanities major are undergraduate to go on to either law, medicine, or MBA. PhDs in these majors are useless. I’m surprised most students study them blindly.
Those humanities major are undergraduate to go on to either law, medicine, or MBA. PhDs in these majors are useless. I’m surprised most students study them blindly.
Living in a coastal town it seems every high schooler I know is planning on getting a degree in marine biology. Not sure how the job search is going to go for them when they graduate or whether a higher degree in that particular field is worth the money. Anyone?
Living in a coastal town it seems every high schooler I know is planning on getting a degree in marine biology. Not sure how the job search is going to go for them when they graduate or whether a higher degree in that particular field is worth the money. Anyone?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a marine biologist for a while. I thought that the people at Sea World who worked with the whales & dolphins had to have marine biology degrees.
LOL!
Little did I know that they hired those trainers for little better than minimum wage, and chose them based on how well they filled out a wet-suit.
I think marine biology is one of those fields where it's either academia, a federal or state government agency like NOAA, state parks & wildlife departments, or bust. Maybe oil companies, fishing companies or something consult them for offshore animal issues, but they probably work with biologists already employed at universities.
When I start college in 2004, I had a scholarship through the state lottery, as well as a few merit based scholarships, that completely covered the cost of my tuition with a check cut to me for the leftovers. I don't believe the lottery scholarship was indexed to inflation. It's about the same as I remember it. Meanwhile, that $~5,200 or so that tuition/books/fees was then is now around 2.5x that amount. Other than maybe medical care and something wildly variable like gasoline, I can't think of anything else where the price has risen so dramatically.
Legal services. The charges to hire a lawyer have similarly inflated. For whatever reason it's not covered by the news. E.g.: if you're trying to startup a company - the cost of a patent lawyer has doubled since last decade.
For a median lawyer at one of the top 200 firms, they passed the $1000 an hour mark in 2011. They passed the $1500 mark in 2016. It has to be pushing $2000 an hour now. Your small town lawyers are of course less, but have risen by similar proportions at their smaller scales. You could hire one for $100 an hour in the late 90s. Today it's $200-300 an hour.
I'm surprised more people don't compare the legal field and academia who both have had a very similar cost increase. Especially given that like newly minted PhDs - newly minted lawyers can't find work.
Last edited by redguard57; 08-17-2019 at 05:34 PM..
On average, most people should be better off because they're 10 years older.
I'm 10 years older, and have made predictable progress toward retirement etc.
The stock market exploded starting in 2009...for example the Dow hit bottom in March 2009 at around 9,100 and shot above 19,700 by early 2015.
9,100 wasn’t even close to the low, though. That was 6,800 actually, nowhere near 9,000. I sure wish I had the cash at that time to plow into the market.
This time around, if there’s a stock market crash, I wonder how long that would actually last?! There’s so much cash on the sidelines. So many people who have kept money in low yield and safe investments or in the bank, I can’t imagine those people are all actually afraid to invest as much as many of us missed out on the run up. I don’t care personally, my net worth increased substantially in other investment sectors not stocks. But this time around, if I see a big selloff lasting for months and the market plunges to, say, 18,000 or so for the DOW I will definitely push a bunch of cash in for the long haul. I just don’t have any interest in buying right now with the economy in good shape but running out of fuel for substantial growth; the runway is running out of space, so to speak. Can’t time the market to be sure, but buying at such a high doesn’t feel right. I’d rather buy after a bit of a bloodbath.
I actually miss the 2008-2014 period. Houston was untouched by the 2009 recession. I kept hearing about the recession in the national media, but it was pretty abstract and distant from my vantage point in Houston as a 20-something.
Now stagflation is all over America, even Texas. Job security is pretty low with all the outsourcing to contract employees to prepare for the shift to offshoring in lower COL countries. (I would have moved with the jobs to another country a long time ago if not for the xenophobes in every country yelling "Secure the border".) Good luck getting a job, especially if you're young and don't have years of (that H.R. B.S. fuzzy buzz word) "experience"!
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