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7:14 am
November 29, 2011
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PK @ DQYDJ
| | The Intersection of Politics, Economics and Personal Finance. | |
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I posted an article today which was a collaboration from Matt Allen at Rambling Fever, JT at Money Mamba and yours truly from Don't Quit Your Day Job. We took 2010-2011 data from the Current Population Survey (joint program from the Census Bureau and BLS) and finally answered the age old question:
Should you get a Bachelor's Degree or Drive a Truck?
Yeah, it's 1,641 words, sorry. However, seeing Matt's truck is worth the article read alone! We hope you enjoy it.
(Interested in how we did it or any of the technical details? Let us know and we can help!)
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8:41 pm
November 30, 2011
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Miss T @ Prairie Eco-Thrifter
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Sounds cool. I will definitely check it out.
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5:07 am
December 1, 2011
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OneCentAtatime
| | Florida, USA | |
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Sorry to say PKamp3 but, in my personal opinion this is not right thing to do. As socially responsible bloggers we should encourage education more. You'll disagree I know, but, I don't support driving truck in lieu of college degree.
I left more of my opinion in the comments.
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5:25 am
December 1, 2011
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Sustainable PF
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OneCentAtatime said:
Sorry to say PKamp3 but, in my personal opinion this is not right thing to do. As socially responsible bloggers we should encourage education more. You'll disagree I know, but, I don't support driving truck in lieu of college degree.
I left more of my opinion in the comments.
Someone has to drive the trucks that support distribution systems.
I know numerous folks w/ college / university degrees that never found jobs in their fields and work in other industries that do not require education. Many of them do very well (one HS pal runs the finances of a drywall co, another sells men's clothing and pulls in $85k a year).
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5:26 am
December 1, 2011
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Penny Pinching Professional
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I don't know that bloggers inherently have a social responsibility in that way. I have no interest in trucking and I'm glad that I've chosen to further my education, but that doesn't mean that's the right decision for everyone. Furthermore I don't think the article really came off very strongly favoring either side of the argument, so I don't think they discouraged education or supported driving a truck in lieu of a college degree; they presented two options and gave the pros and cons of both leaving the decision in the hands of the reader.
I thought it was an interesting and well thought out article. Good job, guys!
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6:09 am
December 1, 2011
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Dave @ DebtBlackHole
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Interesting comparison! I posted my thoughts in the comments.
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6:30 am
December 1, 2011
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Dr Dean
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If everyone went to college, who would be left to build bridges, skyscrapers, maintain the complicated machinery that make our factories, and our world work.
Making all of our kids feel they are failures if they don't go to college is wrong. They need to be encouraged to reach their full potential in whatever way that's possible.Tech school is the right thing for many of our young people.
Some of my best friends never darkened the door of a college or university and have been successful in their business or occupation.
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7:02 am
December 1, 2011
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Miss T @ Prairie Eco-Thrifter
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Dr Dean said:
If everyone went to college, who would be left to build bridges, skyscrapers, maintain the complicated machinery that make our factories, and our world work.
Making all of our kids feel they are failures if they don't go to college is wrong. They need to be encouraged to reach their full potential in whatever way that's possible.Tech school is the right thing for many of our young people.
Some of my best friends never darkened the door of a college or university and have been successful in their business or occupation.
I absolutely agree. There is no one size fits all solution here. We need diversity to be a successful planet. Everyone has an important role to play and university is not a be all end all in that.
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7:08 am
December 1, 2011
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Elle
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Great post – had to promote it!
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8:11 am
December 1, 2011
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PK @ DQYDJ
| | The Intersection of Politics, Economics and Personal Finance. | |
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Thanks for the comments, all! Be as harsh or as supportive as you want – my goal was originally to just present the statistics. When you look at the stats it's pretty obvious that a degree comes out on top in a vacuum. Trucking becomes way more competitive when you start to talk about massive college debts – I had pointed out to Andrea in the comments that someone like Kelli Space (Google her) would be paying over $10,000 a year for her education – so that would narrow the gap immensely.
For the record, I personally come down on the side of degree (so OneCentAtATime I agree with you, heh). I graduated with ~$30,000 in debt from college (maybe a little less) but I couldn't have been hired at my Day Job without my degree. Like I had quoted Matt in the article, he actually was 1.5 years into a degree before he decided against it. That's one reason I'm looking forward to his follow up post!
I also think Dr. Dean makes a great point – how many of us have complained about the costs of trademen (and women) like plumbers, electricians, finish carpenters, HVAC repairmen and the like? If everyone gets a degree, all of those things will become even more expensive. It's the same for Trucking and the transportation costs on the goods we use now. That's what's great about market economies – you can choose to pursue the career that you want and let the macro trends take care of themselves.
Thanks for the great discussion, here and on my site! And, of course, if you want to look at a question like this I'm all ears.
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8:58 am
December 1, 2011
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JT_McGee
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Post edited 8:59 am – December 1, 2011 by JT_McGee
OneCentAtatime said:
Sorry to say PKamp3 but, in my personal opinion this is not right thing to do. As socially responsible bloggers we should encourage education more. You'll disagree I know, but, I don't support driving truck in lieu of college degree.
I left more of my opinion in the comments.
I agree with you. But more like Mark Twain – "I never let school get in the way of my education." Education is a great thing, but it doesn't always have to flow from the same (expensive) source. I encourage education, just not by a single source at whatever cost.
I fear a world where everyone has a degree to do the exact same jobs that were available before everyone had a degree.
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9:49 am
December 1, 2011
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Khaleef @ KNS Financial
| | Fat Guy, Skinny Wallet | |
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I definitely don't think that college is for everyone. I think that this country is headed in the wrong direction because many people have this view.
I'm bookmarking the article to read tonight.
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1:38 pm
December 1, 2011
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OneCentAtatime
| | Florida, USA | |
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I don't think country is going in wrong direction because every one wants to be educated..its going because education cost is increasing exorbitantly. And getting education is going out of common man's reach.
I agree with you all that in an economy people in all profession is needed. But imagine your self and tell me how far can you reach driving a truck? Would you advice your kids to be a truck driver?
If you have it in you to use your knowledge, go for education but, if you struggle to get a job even after college education, then its not probably in you.
Not every human being is born with similar brain cells. If you have better cells, you will get jobs and get ahead. Don't ever think about driving a truck. If you don't have, then why burden the education system by reserving a seat? Go be a truck driver.
You can earn $85 a year driving truck but how far can you stretch that? Think how far can you stretch with an education.
There are notable exceptions where people left education to create value in other ways and became legends. But, again its because they had it in them, and, they are exceptions.
Thank the trio for putting this together as food for thought! This is where blogging and news papers differ.
And yes bloggers have social responsibilities believe it or not. Sooner you realize this better it is for your readers.
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3:27 pm
December 1, 2011
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NetWorthProtect
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I liked the post a lot and I left my comments. I don't think the article "pushed" one way or another, i.e. college vs. no college. The post definitely left me questioning my desk-jockey day job…
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7:08 am
December 2, 2011
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PK @ DQYDJ
| | The Intersection of Politics, Economics and Personal Finance. | |
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OneCentAtATime – without getting into all of the reasons why the cost of education is increasing, why do you think it is? A whole lot of the college price increase has to be traced back to a historic demand for higher education due to the values instilled in Generation Y. The fact that so many more students choose to enroll in school as compared to a generation ago is one of the factors driving the increase in costs.
That doesn't mean "don't get a degree", not by a long shot! It does, however, mean you need to think hard about what degree you want to get. If you are dead set on college and think you're going to take out $100,000 in loans to get through… you're better off with a Civil Engineering degree than one for Psychology. That's not a knock on Psychology – it's just that Psychology pays less and has fewer job opportunities than Civil Engineering.
You wrote, "if you struggle to get a job even after college education". The problem is, you've already got your degree at that point (and spent the money). It would be better to look at the alternate career paths before you choose. Trucking? Maybe not. However, trucking isn't the only career which can be done without a degree. Still, on the Trucking side, Matt is going to follow up my post with a Truck Driver's viewpoint which I know will be interesting (His article will include stats on 30-39 year olds versus mine which had 24-30s).
We definitely enjoyed this article and all the opinions that we've seen. About the social responsibility – I agree, to a point. There are lots of blogs where people can go to read similar information. We three just asked a question that we didn't see covered anywhere else – I assure you we had no intention to turn people off of either trucking or college degrees. We were only trying to arm people with more information than they had prior to the article. And yes, at every percentile, a college degree holder makes more than a trucker – so it's one more data point to consider when picking a career. I hope that no one construes that as bad information!
Thank you for your comments (and thank you everyone else who has read it and commented!). The point of articles (in my mind) is to provoke discussion and by that standard this article was definitely a success.
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9:49 am
December 2, 2011
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JT_McGee
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Post edited 9:59 am – December 2, 2011 by JT_McGee
Yeah, I really just wanted to know if truckers earned more than people with degrees. I knew Pkamp3 is a stats maniac, so this came together really well. I don't think it's wrong to question, and now I hope that people who want to compare their future earnings power (and choices!) are enabled by his post. Bringing information from the depths of academic world and into the blogosphere is just one of the many ways this place we call Earth gets better each year.
Honestly, I'm a bit surprised with the results. I really thought truckers would earn more than college educated people because, in my geographic area, this is very much the case. Also interesting is that the number of truck driver positions open where I live is several times greater than the number of listed job openings for other careers. (Excluding nurses, accountants, and some very specific fields.)
Without being too cynical today, I really think safety is a greater danger than taking on perceived risk. When everyone participates on the low end of the risk curve, the best returns relative to odds are to be found on the high-end. The 10-year treasury will allow you to have safety in the sense that you're always losing to inflation, for example, whereas equities have greater downside potential but far better potential for outstretched performance. And index funds will always lose to the market (after expenses), but individual stock-picking (the biggest No-No in all of PF) at least allows for the potential for outsized returns, for example.
I guess at the end of the day this is why we all operate different blogs. We all have different perspectives, opinions, and viewpoints.
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10:23 pm
December 5, 2011
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Matt76Allen
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Due to the ridiculous hours (59.5) I put in at my day job (trucking) last week, I didn't even know this forum discussion was going on! Sorry I didn't have a chance to respond, although I did do pretty good at keeping up with the responses to comments within the blog post.
I did finally write that follow-up which ended up going in a slightly different direction than I originally intended. In the follow-up, I attempt to paint a picture in which it could make sense to skip college and go straight to work. I made some pretty biased assumptions in my example, then Pkamp3 followed that up (within my post) with a degree holders defense by more of his excellent writing and number crunching!
Check it out @ http://money.ramblingfever.com…..egree.html
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5:20 am
December 6, 2011
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101 Centavos
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Over the years the income disparity narrows and eventually goes in favor of the college graduate. In the aggregate, that's what the numbers tell us. However, it would be interesting to break this down by degree, or similar groups of degrees. Do we predict that degrees in the soft sciences, e.g. sociology, psychology, poli-sci, history, will outperform against hard trade skills? I'd wager not.
Good collaboration, guys.
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6:22 am
December 13, 2011
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Matt76Allen
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Inspired by this whole discussion, the very first 'guest post,' was submitted to my blog. Here it is: http://money.ramblingfever.com…..cking.html
entitled: Earning an Online Degree While Trucking
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7:57 am
December 13, 2011
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PK @ DQYDJ
| | The Intersection of Politics, Economics and Personal Finance. | |
| Moderator
| posts 361 |
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I'm going to have to go back at some point and grab just the truck drivers with college degrees, huh Matt?
Thanks for keeping it going – these articles are still getting a bunch of interest!
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