Saturday, November 26, 2011

Charts of the Day

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are threatening to stop paying student loan debt. They blame the 1 percent, when the fault is theirs:


source: Marginal Revolution


source: Chronicle of Higher Education

The Wall Street Journal has a nifty interactive gizmo allowing comparison of the popularity of college majors with the graduate's resulting earnings and employment. The five majors whose graduates were most likely to be unemployed:
Clinical Psychology
Miscellaneous Fine Arts
United States History
Library Science
Educational Psychology
Similar charts here.

Based on the WSJ data, Gabriel Rossman at Code and Culture plotted "unemployment by rank popularity. Because low rank means popular, the funnel is backwards":


source: Code and Culture

All of which suggests that the OWS protesters should major in something other than liberal arts so they don't go deep in debt without being able to "get a job".

Alas, OWS hasn't realized that. Nor do they seem to know that federally guaranteed student loans normally are not dischargable in bankruptcy. Although were there mass defaults, American taxpayers might be more willing to downsize the guaranteed student loan program.

But that's not the way OWS protesters see it:
[Dylan] Bozlee dropped out of college at the University of Hawaii to join Occupy, and says he’d rather travel across America than get a job. "Do I want to work? Only if I wanted a home, wife, kids and a dog. If not, I think you’re ruining your life," he said.
In other words, not only did OWS choose to become slackers, they insist taxpayers fund it. Call the soap opera "The Young and the Lazy."

4 comments:

KitWistar said...

I responded yesterday to your vertigo trigger questions,Carl, but my post has not appeared. Where did it go---I musta hit a wrong key or something.
Shall I re-post or did you get it?

On today's post re: OWS/student loans/college majors. I do research on higher ed systems; its really complex, as you've shown here and, in the US, really broken.
Liberal arts education is a luxury this country can no longer afford.
Ironically, college is big business, but not one that helps young people to learn to flourish in society. One of my new areas of research is this, in a nutshell: the US ed system does not foster innovative thinking, does not allow its students to fail, hence, many (and at every level) are almost guaranteed to.

@nooil4pacifists said...

Kit: Unfortumately, I didn't get you comment; nor is it hung-up in the spam checker. Could you repost?

I agree on education. Cheap student loans ignited massive inflation in the cost of college while, at the same time, devaluing a degree. Something's gotta change.

KitWistar said...

Will re-post on vertigo issues.

On ed : I'm convinced that in times of economic uncertainty such as we now are facing, it is the exact right time to turn ed. on its ear.
If you look around, as I do in my job, some really cool ed. stuff is coming out of left field. You'll be fascinated. More later.

Warren said...

A great way to bring down the cost of college are Knowledge Transcripts.

You can read about the idea here:

http://www.smartmoney.com/borrow/student-loans/the-case-against-the-college-degree/