What do people without a college education do?

[FidelCashflow]

They go to Nascar races.

 

[Brian278]

Originally Posted by HomerJ

I was half kidding and did say mean rather than median. I doubt it's true but here are some interesting facts.. In the 2007 Forbes 400, 8 out of the 11 wealthiest Americans did not acquire their wealth through a college degree. They either dropped out like Gates or never went like Kerkorian. Some have college degrees but inherited the money from someone who didn't have a college degree. If you look at the top 25 of that list, those without a college degree are worth more as a group than the graduates. Again, if your high school dropout grandfather left you 10,000,000,000 and you graduated college, congratulations but that fortune was made by a dropout. Athletes make chump change in comparison to the Forbes list but they are well known. Of the top 10 earning athletes in 2007, only Mickelson has a college degree. I'd say it's the same pattern for just about celebrity who shapes our pop culture which is more and more THE culture. Historically, it's no contest. None of them had a college degree. Rockefeller tops the all time list at 192B (2007 $) followed in order Vanderbilt 143 Astor 116 Girard 83 Carnegie 75 Stewart 70 Weyerhaeuser 68 Gould 67 and on and on.
I'm sure I don't have to tell you your taking some pretty serious outliers in one case and cherry-picking your sample in the other. The richest in America didn't derive their wealth from their education or lack thereof, they did it through some pretty random factors, and often through simply being in the right place at the right time either in the hereditary sense or in business. In regards to your comment on athletes, I would counter that we should look at the top 10 hedge fund managers (who make far more than athletes) and see how many of them have college degrees. I'm sure if we looked at the other end of the spectrum (the poorest Americans) the vast, vast majority of them don't have college degrees. So there's that. dl20's stats are far more telling of what the "average" college graduate vs. high school graduate makes, in my humble opinion.

 

[dusty]

Is this for real?

 

[Merckx]

Originally Posted by dusty

Is this for real?

Bank on it.

 

[dl20]

Originally Posted by HomerJ

On average (mean), college dropouts are richer than college graduates. So I suppose they are busy owning the world you live in.

Originally Posted by HomerJ

I was half kidding
Obviously

dl

 

[HomerJ]

Originally Posted by Brian278

I'm sure I don't have to tell you your taking some pretty serious outliers in one case and cherry-picking your sample in the other. The richest in America didn't derive their wealth from their education or lack thereof, they did it through some pretty random factors, and often through simply being in the right place at the right time either in the hereditary sense or in business. In regards to your comment on athletes, I would counter that we should look at the top 10 hedge fund managers (who make far more than athletes) and see how many of them have college degrees. I'm sure if we looked at the other end of the spectrum (the poorest Americans) the vast, vast majority of them don't have college degrees. So there's that.

dl20's stats are far more telling of what the "average" college graduate vs. high school graduate makes, in my humble opinion.

No you don't have to tell me. But you two just won't let me have any fun with the numbers. These people at the top without a degree are so wealthy they make up for a lot of people at the other end based on mean. Not quite wealthy enough but I thought it was a good joke for someone living in Silicon Valley asking what college dropouts do, considering the most famous dropout of all time.

I gave the example of athletes and other celebrities because they shape American pop culture which has become the American culture. We're fed history from USC dropout Spielberg. How many of the top 10 hedge fund managers are household names? The average American is more likely to be influenced by dropouts like Michael Jordan, George Clooney, Paul McCartney, Sean Combs, Tiger Woods than they are some guy named Eddie Lampert.

 

[dl20]

<-------------- Killjoy

BTW, Eddie Lampert is my idol...

Relax, i'm jk too When I googled college grad earning potentials I stumbled onto the Forbes info as well, including a list of the richest men in the world. Can anyone friggin imagine checking your account and seeing that your have 62,000,000,000 to your name? Money isnt everything ******, if I were these guys i'd walk around with a ****-eating grin 24/7. Just imagine what it would be like to literally be able to buy anything in the world that you wanted, cars, clothes, houses, etc. Do you think you'd ever get tired of material things, or lose that special feeling of making a large purchase or would everything essentially be relative like instead of a Kiton blazer, you'd buy GE. dl

 

[montecristo#4]

I'm not sure what people without college degrees do. I do know that a college degree is pretty damned unnecessary for performing most jobs that require one.

 

[Huntsman]

Outside of the Sciences, the degree, per se, is indeed unnecessary. My understanding is the point is a benchmark that says you can commit, and are able to think and order information at a certain level that a degree of some sort indicates. It really is far too nebulous. Many of my colleagues from Engineering are at MorganStanley and Mason and (some!) at Bear -- they do no engineering, but those firms know that engineers can perform the type of mental analysis they are looking for in recruits. ~ Huntsman

 

[Matt]

...and now let's compare post college debt levels for PhD students vs just-completed-apprenticeship plumbers.

I have to admit to looking at what some of the guys I went to school with who skipped uni and went into trades have managed to accumulate.

Most of those boys have solid-but-not-great incomes, but then have mortgaged one house against another, and done renovation projects with their mates in unofficial little DIY syndicates, and made a bunch of money in property using the skills they developed in trade school....they were well and truly on their way to a very healthy asset base long before I got out of college and started tackling the student debt.

 

[username79]

Originally Posted by Journeyman

I know a number of people working in IT who don't have a college degree - they're basically self-taught geeks who excel in that sort of work and got their first jobs on the basis of their programming/IT system maintenance skills instead of their qualifications.

I've heard it argued that to be truly good at IT you cannot have a "classic" (e.g. CS) degree. For the most part, I think its true.

 

[globetrotter]

Originally Posted by drake

You would kill your children? Wow...


its a parents job to make sure his kids come out descent human beings - very frankly, I wouldn't want my kids to live like some of you guys.

And no, I don't go to gyms or where blue collar people hang out, hence the question.

you should try it - the best gyms are not wear accountants hang out and do pilates, its where garbagmen hang out and push serious metal around.

Right. I think I'm just a little surprised at the multitude of these jobs.

here is part of the problem - you went to universtiy, and yet you are supprised at how many various options for blue collar work there are? who makes food? who makes cars? who move things around? who fixes things? this never dawned on you?

 

[tiecollector]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

My uncle has a saying that he got from an MD somewhere... The A students go in to research, the B students work for the A students, and the A students work for the C students. He's proud to have been a C student.

I always understood it as the ones who gets As teach and the ones who get Cs work for the ones who got Bs. Hope it is true, cuz I had a 3.0 average. Every overachiever in school I know wants to be a researcher or professor and takes it in the pooper.

There is also from the dot com boom I heard a lot of, those who can do, those who can't teach.

 

[LabelKing]

I imagine it would require a university degree to be a Maserati/Citroen mechanic.

 

[rdawson808]

Originally Posted by drake

I've read that about 30% of Americans have a college education. What do the remaining 70% without a college education do as jobs?

Just as a quick sort of reality-check:

According to the 2000 US census, more than 33% of the US population was over 45 years of age. My simple point is that for a large proportion of the population, college wasn't the norm.

Now if you said that only 30% of those aged 18-40 attened or graduated from college, you would have an interesting statistic. But what you have isn't interesting.


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