Part 2   How Germany Educates Toward Student Employability and Self-Esteem
Germany is Our Chief Competitor for High Value Added Exports1, World Education Statistics mislead, US is Doing OK but
Our Brightest Face Stiff Competition and most others are left behind.  

   Go to Part 1  Part 3   Part 4   Please          author's bio
1) Germany's lower performers graduate at 15 with a basic qualification and practical skills.
2) Germany loses Testing War by a Nose but Wins the Employment War.
3) Siemens Seeks Apprentices by Searching the Rest of Europe.
4 McKinsey consultants Recommends More Vocational Education.		 More Testing Statistics Reveal US is not behind.
5) Singapore system many want to emulate, has only 37% HS graduates.
6) Finland the world's latest education darling, scores much less than her demographic twin Massachusetts.  

1) Germany Graduates 97.2% Providing Self-Esteem but 55.9% are lower level completers receiving much special attention and graduating at fifteen or sixteen years of age. Another 13.3% are similar to U.S. students though they complete a very vigorous academic curriculum in ten years, and 28.0% are similar to US post graduate prep schools.

In Germany, "These lower performers leave school [graduate]  at 15 with a basic qualification, usually in practical skills." Others go to their version of a U.S. prep school before going on to college or entering the work force where they become part of an apprentice system.

Wolfgang Nowak, a west German Social Democrat who led the school reforms, explains: “We wanted to lose the ideology, but keep the best of the old eastern system—the selective gymnasium for the academically minded, but also a bigger focus on the ‘middle schools' for other pupils.” Crucially, he cut out the third-tier Hauptschulen schools for weak academic performers. “It's terrible for integration, it's terrible for results.” (The best Chinese schools, adds Sir Michael Barber, have also modified their obsession with high-fliers to ensure that they address the “long tail” of underachievement—something that hampers Britain's performance, too.)

A recent improvement of sending students to secondary school at 13, instead of 11, improved  results immensely, especially with the boys. School ends at 1 PM with no provisions made for lunch. From The Great Schools Revolution,  Economist Magazine 9/17/11 and A Nation of Dropouts Shakes Europe WSJ 3/25/11

Editors Note: This indicates the main reason so many German students graduate secondary school is because of their early out vocational programs. 

See Also South Korea tries to curb parents education spending as 42% of her college graduates represent an oversupply and have little to do. Business Week 6/24/13.

South Korea  ranks 18th in median income, the U.S. 4th and Germany at 80% of the U.S  median income; is the world leader in value added exports.

See Germany’s dual vocational training system: a model for other countries?

 

 

 

 2) Surprise, U.S. Beat Germany in Education Testing by a Nose.

To get more funding, American  educators reported the US as 14th, but we are the second most successful large industrial country just behind Japan which has been in an economic recession for twenty years and has not been helped high school graduates having to take calculus!

Germany, our main competitor for high value added exports scores just below the U.S. in testing.

Schools Matter reports that US low poverty schools rank first among the world's low and moderate poverty schools. But US poverty schools ran so low that the US rank is average.

Successful people have a dream, plans, knowledge/training, ambitions and persistence which are all characteristics our schools are not providing for our young people living in poverty. Curriculums designed for high level academic testing for nonacademic students are the reason. See Characteristics of Successful People

 

 

 

But She Wins the Employment War!

 

 

 

See German Education System Economist Magazine 3/16/13

 And Spends Less on Academic Education

Economist Magazine  11/2/13

 
3) Siemens Seeks Apprentices by Searching the Rest of Europe
"... After graduating from the National Technical University of Athens [a five year prestige's school], Vlasios Ntizos," "..., is one of 29 European youths who were chosen by Germany’s biggest engineering company."  He beat out 1,000 Greek student applicants. Siemens had 45,000 applicants for this year's apprenticeship class.

"Siemens spends about €177 million ($222 million) each year on apprentices (they get paid roughly $1,000 a month), with 1,350 trainees and students passing through its facilities in Berlin. A regular apprentice costs as much as €100,000 for a three-year program, which Siemens hopes fosters a sense of loyalty that will last a lifetime."

"The country’s [Germany] vocational education system—built on a centuries-old guild tradition that combines state-funded classroom sessions with practical training by companies who pay apprentices modest salaries—offers more than half a million high school graduates a year of hands-on education in hundreds of professions as a respected alternative to a university degree. The system has helped keep youth unemployment at 7.9 percent, the lowest rate in Europe."  [U.S. with four times the population would need a 2,000,000 student apprenticeship program to compete.]

1 Tradable goods are producing high paying jobs that require more education. Germany does best at manufacturing tradable goods. She is avoiding high unemployment with job sharing, called disguised unemployment. I'm betting the recovery in Germany will bring back slightly higher wages but hours work will stayed reduced as robots and computers do the work. Eventually this will happen in the US but US workers seem more interested in higher wages than job security. Maybe generations Y and Z will have more European values?

Editors Note: This is caused by an ever increasing flat world where more intelligent computers and in the future robots do more and more. But robots don't get paid so will our people require politicians to redistribute resulting profits or will the people instruct politicians to let the top one percent receive all the increased profits

 

Sources: Global Economic Intersection, The Economist, Seeking Alpha
Businessweek, The Week , USA Today, Business Insider ...

 

 

 4) Mckinsey Consultants Recommends More Vocational Education

 "McKinsey, a consultancy, reports that only 43% of employers in the nine countries that it has studied in depth (America, Brazil, Britain, Germany, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey) think that they can find enough skilled entry-level workers."... "The best way to do this is to revamp vocational education, which outside the German-speaking world has been treated as the ginger stepchild of the education system." "...some far-sighted countries, schools and firms are busy reinventing vocational education, McKinsey argues. South Korea has created a network of vocational schools—called “meister” schools, from the German for “master craftsman”—to reduce the country’s shortage of machine operators and plumbers." "...Academic drift is one of the most powerful forces in educational life: look at the way Britain’s technical schools were allowed to wither on the vine and its polytechnics converted into universities. [Editor's Note: The oversupply of academically directed students has brought down salaries. Vocational training is for increasing non- routine cognitive jobs.

"Germany’s vaunted dual-education system is its latest export hit

URSULA VON DER LEYEN, Germany’s labor minister, likes to point out that the two European Union countries with the lowest unemployment, especially among the young, have dual-education systems: Austria and Germany. Like Switzerland, they have a tradition of combining apprenticeships with formal schooling for the young “so that education is always tied to demand,” she says. When youths graduate, they often have jobs to walk into."

...". Germany recently signed memoranda with Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain to help set up vocational-education systems."

..."Youths not interested in, or qualified for, university sign up for a program in which they work three or four days a week for a firm that pays them and teaches relevant skills. The rest of the time they spend in school, completing mostly specialized courses."

....'About two in three young Germans go through this system and into about 350 careers. Some end up in blue-collar jobs, others in sales and marketing, shipping and agriculture, or pharmacology and accounting. The practical nature of the education is an advantage, as is the mutual screening between potential employers and employees during training."

THE ARTICLE ENDS BY POINTING OUT THAT ..."German success today surely owes more to its labor-market and welfare reforms of a decade ago and to unions’ wage restraint. In an ageing and shrinking population, demography also helps, as fewer German graduates choose among more open jobs."

5) Singapore, number 5, tests very few students.   The Week magazine of 5/23/12 reported that the state of Massachusetts outscored both Singapore and Japan on the 4th and 8th grades math and verbal tests.  In England, the education czar has made passing Singapore, the city that is a nation.
                                                                   

The Great Schools Revolution, from Economist Magazine 9/17/11

 

 6) Why Finland's Unorthodox Education System Is The Best In The World but,
with a population of 5,400,000, of which only 3.4% are foreign, Finland is rural with the Greater Helsinki metropolitan are its most urban and 3 other cities with population over 100.000 is hardly similar to the US. In addition, children of foreigners born in Finland and who cannot get citizenship of any other country, they become citizens.[101]

Editor's Note: Massachusetts Test Well and is much more diversified than Finland.
Massachusetts, like Finland, is rich, what are poor states to do?       

e-mail comments to antonw@ix.netcom.com

 
 
 from http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21610337-what-shortage-workers-film-sets-georgia-says-about-america-behind-scenes

Skilled labor

Behind the scenes

What a shortage of workers on film sets in Georgia says about America

One such program is Go Build Georgia, which teaches teenagers a trade. But efforts to train young people as plumbers or pipe-fitters run up against concern from parents. Instead of being proud to raise a future welder, “everyone wants to believe that their child will go to Harvard”, says Matthew Gambill, the director of the Georgia Association for Career and Technical Education. Despite the lower cost of a skills-based education and the solid job prospects, enrolment at technical colleges has dropped 23% since recession-stricken students clamored for entry in 2010.

Still, Georgia is pouring money into training, and targeting industries such as the movie business that are particularly short of skilled labor. It spent $24m last year on the teaching of trades in schools, while the state’s technical colleges received $318m. Some of these institutions are already collaborating with film studios to design specialist courses. Lee Thomas, the deputy commissioner of Georgia’s film, music and digital entertainment office, says a stand-alone academy is also in the works for those who wish to become stars behind the scenes

From Parts 1-3 We have a Bottom Line

Our Most Educated Generation Has No Savings

(Source: Urban Institute)

 Chart Urban Institute

Large Debts

Most Have Poor Job Prospects as  Only Our Best and Brightest
Find Good Jobs  Data Through 2013

 

 

Because

An Increase in the Supply of College Graduates
Does Not Create Demand for College Graduates.

Goal of Academics and Publishers is to Make Money.

And

Bright Students Are Serviced but Face Severe Competition.

Most Students Are Not Well Prepared for Work/Life

Please                                                          

 

Please  E-mail or antonw@ix.netcom.com
 the retired teacher/editor/author Walter

 
 

Epilogue: The Cost of a Misdirected Education

My Keene State College 1990 Economics 101 class was given data showing that average college graduates make much more than high school graduates. They had seen it before. That is why most of them were in college. Then I showed them median income of college graduates. They were disappointed with the lower number. I explained how some really high earners make the mean higher than the median. Then I showed them data indicating the bottom quarter of college graduates earned about the same income as high school's top-quarter. They became more unsettled. Then I gave them the lowest income statistic of all,  median income for those with just a bachelor's degree. Those with higher degrees were left off. From the back of the room I heard  "you mean they are ripping us off.  

It took about twenty years, but I pleased to report that, because of the Great Recession,  mass media coverage of the decreasing economic return from a college education is no longer sporadic . But like any unwelcome news, parents, teachers, and politicians will be the last to react properly. The collateral damage has been immense. It will continue to be so unless some responsible mass media helps makes an educational system that improves the well-being of all students . Here is the collateral damage of our love affair with college.

College graduates who can't find a job and dropouts owe over one trillion dollars in outstand college loans and are finding they do not have the skills to earn a positive economic return from their investment.

Disgruntle U.S. graduates and dropouts whose needs were not met by their investment of many years in school and from whom society receive little support. In fact, many need society's support.

But some took the path less traveled. 

Many years ago my then fourteen year-old nephews announced he wanted to attend a neighboring carpentry high school. Four years of getting up early and getting a ride from his father to grandmother's house where he waited for the school bus to take him to a new, strange school. At fourteen! After school he walked the three miles home from grandma's house. No one told him from anyone, he just didn't like academics and decided on a vocational education. Now a successful small contractor, his biggest problem is convincing his wife they don't need a new Volvo every two years.

Not long thereafter his younger brother was much more academic, but found school a waste of his lazy, but conniving mind. He dropped out early in the 9th grade, eventually went in the military, kept looking for a good job in corrections until he found a unionized one working for the state. No one had to tell him that investing in a 40K in addition to the state retirement plan was a good idea. He also bought car mortgage insurance a year before not being able to pay said liability.

It turns out my first nephew unknowingly followed the German educational system with little guidance from anyone and his younger brother use American ingenuity to be successful.  
As they say in the programming industry, "good stuff in, good stuff out."

Epitaph: Many of our best and brightest did make a proper investment in college and there are enough of them to maintain our nation's well-being. Imagine a country where the school system maximizes all kinds of all Special Intelligence rather than maximizing the math/verbal intelligence of everyone including those with whose learning disabilities requires special attention. Edited 1/30/13

Older Generations Accumulate, Younger Generations Stagnate
CHANGE IN AVERAGE NET WORTH BY AGE GROUP, 1983–2010 from http://www.businessinsider

 

 More Interesting Thoughts

The Great Reversal in the Demand for Skill and Cognitive Tasks 3/13   source

"Many researchers have documented a strong, ongoing increase in the demand for skills in the decades leading up to 2000. In this paper, we document a decline in that demand in the years since 2000, even as the supply of high education workers continues to grow."

Quotes

" The mind is not a vessel to be filled , but a fire to be kindled."  Plutarch The Week Magazine 11/02/12 p199

Edited 1/30/13

Obama Wants to Move US Up

Early Years  Education The Economist Magazine 2/9/13
 

"Finland on top (it scored direly in the OECD study). At least 98% of children aged five or six are in pre-school education there. Finland also dominates the overall league tables for education performance, so perhaps the scope for improvement is slight. Other enthusiastic providers of pre-school education like Sweden, Norway, France and Belgium and Denmark do not score particularly highly on attainment in later education, whereas Japan, which combines early-years provision with a fiercely competitive exam culture, excels. So too does South Korea, where the state until now has provided under half of pre-school places. So pre-school is no panacea, says Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the OECD’s big triennial PISA report on educational attainment. “Drilling children” in early years does not lead automatically to learning gains, he says."


Editor's Note: I'd trade two more years of early childhood education for two less years of high school in a second. Academic kids not mature enough to leave home for college could go to junior college or work for a while, maybe as workers in a vast public/private pre-school industry.

 

GDP and Personal State Tax Burden Per Capita by State
Retirement Home Location Guide Provided Tax Data		 Richest/Poorest State
GDP/Capita
territory per per territory per per territory per per territory per per territory per per Rank State GDP/ Taxes %
Taken
capita capita capita capita   capita capita   capita capita   capita capita  
 United States $47,482                          

50

Del

 $69,667 3,426

8.4
 D C 174,500 1
 Colorado
51,940
11  Louisiana 47,467 21  North Carolina 42,884 31  Tennessee 39,730 41 1 Miss $28,,259 2,924 10.2
 Delaware 69,667 2 Calf 51,914 12  New Hampshire 47,385 22  Oklahoma 42,237 32  Michigan 37,616 42 2 Ark 29,999 3,088 10.3
 Alaska 65,143 3 Maryland 51,724 13  Nevada 47,222 23  Ohio 42,035 33  Kentucky 37,535 43 3 NM 30,642

3,031

 09.9
 Connecticut 64,833 4 Minn 50,396 14  Texas 45,940 24  Utah 41,750 34  Montana 37,200 44 4 Utah 30,917 3,261 10.5
 Wyoming 63,667 5 ILL 50,328 15  Pennsylvania 45,323 25  Georgia 41,711 35  Arkansas 36,483 45 5 Idaho 31,031 3,139 10.2
 Massachusetts 58,108 6 SD 49,875 16  Rhode Island 45,000 26  Indiana 41,169 36  Alabama 36,333 46 States of Interest
 New York 57,423 7 Neb 49,778 17  Oregon 44,447 27  Missouri 41,117 37  New Mexico 35,952 47   Mass 49,203 5,047

10.3
 New Jersey 56,477 8 Hawaii 49,214 18  Kansas 44,310 28  Maine 40,923 38  South Carolina 35,717 48   Ohio 36,054 4,332

12.0
 Virginia 53,463 9 Iowa 49,067 19  Wisconsin 44,105 29  Arizona 40,828 39  West Virginia 35,053 49   NH 42,707 3,136

07.3
 Washington 52,403 10 ND 47,714 20  Vermont 44,000 30  Florida 40,106 40  Idaho 34,250 50   Fl 36,734 3,566

09.7

   State Tax Burden as a percentage of Income

 

 

 

Tax Burden Rank

Tax Burden 
as a Percentage 
of Income

Tax 
Burden
Per Capita

Income
Per Capita

United States

-

10.6%

$4,072

 $38,376

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California

46
50
32
27
15

8.8%
6.6%
10.1%
10.3%
10.9%

$2,881
2,598
3,350
3,088
4,451

$32,599
39,499
33,156
29,999
41,022

Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia

38
9
48
39
  25

9.8%
11.3%
8.4%
9.7%
10.4%

$4,098
6,018
3,426
3,566
3,564

$41,987
53,152
40,964
36,734
34,327

Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa

5
31
14
12
26

11.7%
10.2%
10.9%
11.0%
10.4%

$4,496
3,159
4,335
3,796
3,709

$38,269
31,031
39,902
34,647
35,807

Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland

18
20
11
1
19

10.7%
10.7%
11.0%
13.5%
10.7%

$3,885
3,383
3,463
4,719
4,996

$36,209
31,639
31,358
34,935
46,562

Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri

28
16
4
29
34

10.3%
10.8%
11.9%
10.2%
9.9%

$5,047
3,965
4,930
2,924
3,509

$49,203
36,751
41,363
28,591
35,408

Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey

42
6
43
49
17

9.5%
11.6%
9.5%
7.3%
10.8%

$3,108
4,294
3,758
3,136
5,234

$32,719
36,999
39,683
42,707
48,590

New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio

36
2
23
37
3

9.9%
12.9%
10.5%
9.8%
12.0%

$3,031
5,734
3,526
3,421
4,332

$30,642
44,571
33,732
34,808
36,054

Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina

40
35
24
8
30

9.6%
9.9%
10.4%
11.5%
10.2%

$3,129
3,492
4,057
4,629
3,213

$32,661
35,300
38,849
40,331
31,480

South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont

45
47
44
22
10

9.2%
8.6%
9.4%
10.5%
11.1%

$3,177
2,979
3,368
3,261
4,118

$34,647
34,568
35,913
30,917
37,025

Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

41
13
21
7
33

9.5%
10.9%
10.6%
11.6%
10.1%

  $4,056
4,334
3,212
4,289
4,120

$42,642
39,705
30,317
37,115
40,917

District of Columbia

-

12.8%

$8,092

$63,044

 

 

 

 

Massachusetts Test Well  

# 1 Most Projected New Jobs  and Bachelors Degrees Confirmed
OCCUPATION NUMBER OF NEW JOBS (PROJECTED), 2010-20 2010 MEDIAN PAY Rank Degree
Good Job Possibilities in Red
Digest of Educational Statistics Table 286		 1970-71 2009-10 Increase
    US Population 203 308 52%

Registered Nurses

 711,900 $64,690 per year.

1

 BUSINESS 115,396 358,295  

Retail Salespersons

 706,800 $20,670 per year.

2

 SS/HISTORY 155,324 172,780  

Home Health Aides

 706,300 $20,560 per year. 3 HEALTH 25,233 129,634  

Personal Care Aides

 607,000 $19,640 per year. 4 EDUCATION 176,307 101,265  

Office Clerks, General

 489,500 $26,610 per year. 5 PSYCHOLOGY 38,167 97,216

155%

Food Preparation, Serving Workers/ Fast Food

 398,000 $17,950 per year. 6 VISUAL/PERFORMING ARTS 30,395 91,802

202%

Customer Service Representatives

 338,400 $30,460 per year. 7 BIOLOGY/BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE 35,706 86,400  

Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers

 330,100 $37,770 per year. 8 COMMUNICATION/JOURNALISM 10,324 81,266

687%

Laborers/Freight, Stock, Material Movers, Hand

 319,100 $23,460 per year. 9 ENGINEERING 45,034 72,654

61%

Postsecondary Teachers

 305,700 $62,050 per year. 10 ENGLISH LANGUAGE/LITERATURE 63,914 53,231  

Nursing Aides, Orderlies, and Attendants

 302,000 $24,010 per year. 11 HOMELAND SECURITY/LAW/FIRE 2,045 43,667  

Childcare Workers

 262,000 $19,300 per year. 12 COMPUTERS/INFORMATION SCIENCE 2,388 39,589

lots

Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks

 259,000 $34,030 per year. 13 MULTI/INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES 6,324 37,648  

Cashiers

 250,200 $18,500 per year. 14 PARKS/RECREATION/FITNESS 1,621 33,318

lots

Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education

 248,800 $51,660 per year. 15 AGRICULTURE/NATURAL RESOURCES 12,672 26,336  

Receptionists and Information Clerks

 248,500 $25,240 per year. 16 PUBLIC ADMIN/SOCIAL SERVICES 5,466 25,414

108%

Janitors, Cleaners, Except Maids/ Housekeeping Cleaners

 246,400 $22,210 per year. 17 PHYSICAL SCIENCE/SCIENCE TECH 21,410 23,379  

Landscaping and Grounds keeping Workers

 240,800 $23,400 per year. 18 FAMILY/CONSUMER/HUMAN SCIENCE 11,167 21,818  

Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing,
 Except Technical and Scientific Products

 223,400 $52,440 per year. 19 FOREIGN LANGUAGE/LIT/LINGUISTICS 20,988 21,516  

Construction Laborers

 212,400 $29,280 per year. 20 ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY 5,148 16,075 212%
      21 MATHEMATICS/STATISTICS 24,801 16,030 -35%

See also Careers Needing Workers and Determining the Economic Return of a College Education  e-mail comments to antonw@ix.netcom.com  

15 most valuable majors
in the current marketplace.
Annual pay for bachelor’s graduates without higher degrees. Typical starting graduates have two years of experience; mid-career graduates have 15 years. see top 130 at payscale.com
 

#3 The 10 Worst Majors
"Not all college degrees are created equal. ...Georgetown University, your choice of college major substantially affects your employment prospects and earnings."  forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau 10/11/12

#4 13 surprisingly-low-paying-jobs/

2/28/13 Jacquelyn Smith

 
1. Major Salary after 10 years Major Salary
Grads/
Exper		 Unemployed
Grads. 22-26
Exper. 30-54		 Career Mean Salary
Bottom 10%		 Number
Employed
1. Petro Engin $98,000     $163,000 1. Anthropology
    Archeology		 $28,000
$52,000		 10.5%
6.2%		 1. Private Detective $48,610
$26,080		 26,080
2. Aerospace Engin $62,500      $118,000 2.Film,Video,
   Photographic Arts		 $30,000
$50,000		 12.9%
6.7%		 2. Surgical Technician $42,460
$28,860		 94,490
3. Actuarial Math $56,000       $112,000 3.Fine Arts $30,000
$45,000		 12.6%
7.3%		 3. Flight Attendants $41,720
$24,990		 87,190
4. Chem Engin $67,500      $111,000 4.Philosophy/Relegion $30,000
$48,000		 10.8
6.8%		 4. Desktop Publishers $39,030
$21,320		 18,620
5. Nuclear Engin $66,800      $107,000 5. Liberal Arts $30,000
$50,000		 9,2%
6.2%		 5.Marriage/Family
   Therapist		 $48,710
$25,230		 33,990
6. Elect Engin $63,400       $106,000 6.Music $30,000
$45,000		 9.2%
4.5%		 6. Fire Fighters $47,720
$22,480		 304,080
7. Comp Engin $62,700       $105,000 7.Physical Fitness
   Parks & Recreation		 $30,000
$50,000		 8.3%
4.5%		 7.Radio/TV Announcers $40,510
$17,150		 31,680
8. Applied Mathematics $50,800       $102,000 8.Commercial and
   Graphic Arts		 $32,000
$49,000		 11.8%
7.5%		 8. Embalmers $$45,060
$27,010		 6360
9. Comp Science $58,400       $100,000 9. History $32,000
$54,000		 5.8%
5.4%		 9. Reporters
    Correspondents		 $43,640
$20,000		 45,270
10. Statistics $49,300       $99,500 10. Eng. Lang./Literature $32,000
$52,000		 9.2%
6.2%		 10. Tax Preparers $39,410
$18,440		 59,180
11. Physics $51,200       $99,100   11. Legisytlators $$38,860
$16,280		 62,180
12. Mech Engin $60,100       $98,400 12. Models $27,830
$15,960		 2,760
13.Biomed Engin $54,900       $98,200 13.Chefs/Head Cooks $46,600
$24,770		 90,300
14. Government $42,000       $95,600

The Sole Purpose of Education
By Barry Ritholtz - November 12th, 2010, 2:00PM

In 1914, John Alexander Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, addressed the first session of his two-year lecture course as follows:

“Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies that (will) form a noble adventure…Let me make this clear to you. ..nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – that if you work hard and intelligently, you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole purpose of education.”

That quote reminds me of the famous Joan Robinson line: “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”

 

      
15. Economics $48,500       $44,900

The Truth Behind High College Grades
   

From less than 40% to about 85% A's and Bs   NYT 7/14/11
People who work for colleges are increasing their own economic wellbeing by using high grades to make demand inelastic and milk the public. Were college catalogs changed to say average is B+ to A-.

In These Selected Countries Income Was Less Equally Distributed, Some Northern European Countries and Canada Increase $ to the Poor, The US and GB did not!
Gini coefficient, before taxes and transfers[12]
Country mid-70s mid-80s around 1990 mid-90s around 2000 mid-2000s Late 2000s
South Korea has the most equally distribution of income 0.344
Norway   0.351   0.404 0.426 0.447 0.410
Denmark   0.373 0.396 0.417 0.415 0.417 0.416
Canada 0.385 0.395 0.403 0.430 0.440 0.436 0.441
United Kingdom 0.338 0.419 0.439 0.453 0.458 0.445 0.456
Finland 0.343 0.387   0.479 0.478 0.483 0.465
United States 0.406 0.436 0.450 0.477 0.476 0.486 0.486
Germany   0.439 0.429 0.459 0.471 0.499 0.504
Germany's income distribution equality is still affected by reunification
Gini coefficient, after taxes and transfers[12]
Country mid-70s mid-80s around 1990 mid-90s around 2000 mid-2000s Late 2000s
 Denmark   0.221 0.226 0.215 0.226 0.232 0.248
 Norway   0.222   0.243 0.261 0.276 0.250
 Finland 0.235 0.209   0.218 0.247 0.254 0.259
 Germany   0.251 0.256 0.266 0.264 0.285 0.295
 S Korea           0.306 0.315
 Canada 0.304 0.293 0.287 0.289 0.318 0.317 0.324
 U Kingdom 0.268 0.309 0.354 0.336 0.351 0.331 0.345
 U States 0.316 0.337 0.348 0.361 0.357 0.380 0.378
Both England and the US have given more to the rich! Has it affected Education?