The New York Times reported on why Mitt Romney could have a hard time capturing the youth vote in November:
The high school senior who stood up at Mitt Romney’s town hall meeting here today was worried about how he and his family would pay for college, and wanted to hear what the candidate would do about rising college costs if elected. He didn’t realize that Mr. Romney was about to use him to demonstrate his fiscal conservatism to the crowd.
…
“It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that,” he said, to sustained applause from the crowd at a high-tech metals assembly factory here. “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”…the advice was pretty brutal: if you can’t afford college, look around for a scholarship (good luck with that), try to graduate in less than four years, or join the military if you want a free education.
What an uplifting message! People love hearing pragmatic advice about dashing their hopes and dreams—especially when it’s helpfully offered by a quarter-billionaire.
That’s acutally really good advice.
I think it is good advice. Protip: If your degree is going to lead to a job that pays $30k a year, maybe you shouldn’t go to a college that costs $30k a year. Go to a state school.
It’s very good advice. And encouraging students to shop for the best education and not the best brand is a necessary step towards lowering tuition costs. Intelligent lending at the federal level is another step. And incentive programs for schools that maintain good value is a third. Obama made passing reference to the last two in a recent State of the Union speech. I doubt that he can advance the cause much, but at least he acknowledges the role that federal lending has played in driving up tuition costs.
Government lending to students is a good thing for our nation to support. But we should encourage due diligence from students. If not, tuition prices will continue to rise out of line with other indicators as schools compete to latch on to the federal teat.
But I suppose it’s easier to quote an article from the Times and add a snarky remark.
Is Paul required to think about the things that he reads before he posts his opinions?
I LIKE THAT THE SAME TROLL POSTED FOUR DIFFERENT COMMENTS IN A 30 MINUTE PERIOD ON THE SAME ARTICLE. THAT’S SOME GOOD ADVICE, BRO!
I agree with the troll, though. I don’t think a lot of people evaluate the costs/benefit for college.
And quite a few people seem to think they’re automatically entitled to government assistance to allows them to attend for-profit colleges, responsibility free.
I’m kind of shocked by the reasonable responses posted here. I’m no Mittens fan, but I have to agree as well. Go to a college you can afford and if you can’t, don’t go.
Hey, regarding my answer above – I’ve been struggling with that opinion in recent discussions with friends, though, so if someone has a good case against it I’m interested in hearing it.
It might be tough to implement, but I could really get excited about government assistance that’s major-specific. Give tuition assistance to people getting an Engineering or Computer Science or Medical degree or something, and let other people pay for their own “hobby” degrees in Comparative Religion or Communications or Conflict Resolution or the Art Institute.
THE PRICE OF STATE SCHOOLS HAS BEEN CONSISTENTLY OUTPACING THE RATE OF INFLATION BY AROUND 200%. IF THESE PEOPLE SHOULD GO TO A CHEAPER COLLEGE THEN THE STATE COLLEGES; WHERE EXACTLY SHOULD THEY GO INSTEAD?
PRO-PROFIT SCHOOLS ARE A RIP-OFF. ESPECIALLY THOSE ONES LIKE ART INSTITUTE OR PHOENIX UNIVERSITY.
BUT THE MAJOR ISSUE THAT COMES UP IS ONE OF THE COST OF EDUCATION CREATING AN ABJECT LACK OF CLASS AND ECONOMIC MOBILITY IN OUR SOCIETY. THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE THAT CAN AFFORD TO GO TO THE HIGH-END SCHOOLS ARE THOSE WHO COME FROM HIGHER ON THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC LADDER, THUSE CREATING A SELF-PERPETUATING CYCLE OF ECONOMIC SUBSERVIENCE TO THE LENDER-CLASS BY THE BORROWER-CLASS.
ALSO, USING YOURSELF AS AN ANECDOTE OF BOOT-STRAPPINESS DOES NOT MAKE FOR ACTUAL GOOD ARGUMENTS, IT MAKES FOR BULLSHIT THAT’S NOT USEFUL TO ANYONE ELSE. TRY AND LOOK AT THE ISSUE IN LARGE SCALE TERMS.
First of all, federal student loan debt is not forgivable (i.e. if you declare bankruptcy, those debts are not wiped out). So even the stupidest students who borrow more than they can afford cannot be bailed out; apparently, bailouts are reserved only for the people that work at Goldman Sachs.
Secondly, with obvious exceptions not included, it’s almost always worth it to get additional education after high school. Even if you’re a hippie and major in art, 92% of art majors report being employed (76% of them on a full-time basis) and they have a national median earning of $44,000 .*
Lastly: WTF, Mitt? I guess advanced book learnin’ is reserved for people who can afford to go to Stanford, BYU, and Harvard all on their daddy’s dimes.
*SOURCE: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/c…
Yeah, why doesn’t Mitt Romney just lie to the kid and fill him full of bullshit? Stupid honesty and practicality.
I’ve never met anyone that was held back by what college they graduated from. And I’ve never seen anyone passed over for a job because they spent two years at a junior college before moving on to a more prestigious college. There are networking advantages in going to a Harvard or Yale, certainly. And if you go to MIT or CalTech, you’re going to have some sweet toys to play with and brilliant professors. But by and large, if you’ve got the grades, test scores, and brains to get into those, money isn’t going to hold you back. Worst comes to worst, you get a full ride just about anywhere else.
More important is to go to college and do well, whatever it is. Or even just graduate. Doing well will only affect whether you get into grad school or a professional school. I never had anyone in a job interview ask me my GPA.
@Graham +1
This piggish assault on the liberal arts is just dumb. As I posted above, even college students who major in so-called “hobby” fields still make more than people who didn’t go to college and they’re employed at a higher rate.
And most importantly, they make up a small percentage of overall college graduates. The idea that the United States does not need an more art and anthropology majors is asinine. The liberal arts should not be reserved for the rich and well-to-do; that’s some 1-percent bullshit I won’t stand for.
Super Chundy, he didn’t say don’t go and he didn’t say that it will be forgiven. He said 1) be willing to go to a less expensive school, and 2) don’t EXPECT the debt to be forgiven — in other words, the debt is a real debt. I know that lots of my friends and I considered our Stafford Loans free money. We worked part-time and I used my Stafford Loan once, eg, to buy myself a used car. I regretted it after college that I was so loose with my loan money. At least I went to a relatively cheap school, though, and only came out with $20,000 in loans rather than some of my friends who came out with nearer $100,000 in loans.
FOR THE SAKE OF ACTUAL FACTS, THE ESTIMATED COST OF ATTENDENCE OF TWO YEARS AT PCC FOLLOWED BY TWO YEARS AT PSU IS ABOUT $75,000 (THAT INCLUDES ESTIMATED LIVINGE EXPENSES WHICH IS USED WHEN DETERMING FINANICAL AID STATUS).
IF SOMEONE CAN POINT OUT A CHEAPER WAY OF GETTING A BACHELOR’S DEGREE THAN TWO YEARS OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOLLOWED BY TWO YEARS OF A STATE UNIVERSITY, I’M ALL EARS.
@extramsg no one is arguing that point.
But even if attend a community or junior college, you often still can’t afford to attend a state college because tuition is too expensive. No one is saying community college, technical schools, et al. are not worth pursuing! It’s a question of, should the government subsidize them with grants and loans?
If the government can’t afford to send hard-working kids to school–any school, than we’re in trouble.
@SuperChundy
I didn’t see Mitt Romney claim that they shouldn’t be subsidized with grants and loans. In fact, in the NYT piece, it points out that a few minutes later he touted a grant program he passed as governor. I think he was arguing for fiscal restraint and doing more with less rather than always asking for more from the government.
@EXTRAMSG: YOU’RE MAKING THE CLASSIC MISTAKE OF LISTENING TO ANYTHING THAT MITT ROMNEY SAYS. HE’S JUST A POOR ROBOT MADE TO PANDER AND NO TWO COMMENTS WILL ACTUALLY MATCH UP LOGICALLY.
Part of the reason I joined the Army Reserve was to pay for school. Big commitment, but worth it to graduate virtually debt-free.
I LIKE THAT THE SAME TROLL POSTED FOUR DIFFERENT COMMENTS IN A 30 MINUTE PERIOD ON THE SAME ARTICLE.
Stop doing the “I like” shit. You’re older than 16, right?
@iceprez: I don’t think Mittens understands that, though. It’s either okay for the government to pay for higher education, or it isn’t. Many people (Republican presidential candidates included) have a hard time understanding that entitlement programs which pay for school and health care are “big government interfering in our lives”.
@Graham
That’s very misleading. How much does it cost just to not go to college at all? Most of that is probably the cost of NOT going to college as well. And then when you factor in the lifetime lost revenue by not going to college….
Yearly tuition at PCC is going to be about $3-5k. PSU costs about twice as much. Either way, it’s a manageable figure, even without financial aid for most people, yet most people will be eligible for financial aid. If you add in things like living with parents or family while going to school or taking on a part-time job or working full-time during the summer to save for college, you can really cut into your need for financial assistance even.
My wife’s family is dirt poor. She has 13 brothers and sisters. None of them has had to pass on college and yet none has received help from their parents and none of them had a college fund to tap into. A large number of them were good students in high school, and that certainly helped, but even the ones who weren’t have gone to college. They’re 14 for 14 and several have gone on to post-graduate schools as well, including my wife. And her and I came out with less than $30k in loans when we were done, primarily because we worked during college. She finished summa cum laude, despite working every year she was in college, and I finished with a 3.4. I actually transferred from a school I had a full-ride scholarship to to be with her. Our school cost more than PSU. She had a half-tuition academic scholarship and I didn’t have one at all (because UC Santa Cruz, where I transferred from, didn’t have grades).
It’s always amazing to see businessmen who were born ultra-rich preach to others about tightening their belts and making compromises that Mitt’s ilk will never have to consider. Easy for him to tell people to settle for trade schools and diploma mills or go into the military, because he doesn’t know a thing about it. Why are we all supposed to think of higher education as a simple pragmatic financial transaction that’s always supposed to pay for itself, while we sink hundreds of billions a year into the military, which stands no chance of paying back in any practical way, except as a handout to corporations in the military-industrial complex (corporations which Mitt thinks of as “people”)? Here’s an idea: stop letting education and the entire social infrastructure crumble while we waste more and more of our national budget on propping up a failed empire that produces nothing except chaos, destruction, and publicly-funded innovations that high-tech firms then profit immensely from.
Here’s one of my favorite examples of a rich member of a political dynasty giving kids a pep talk about accepting their limited options: George H.W. Bush speaking to mostly Latino high school students during the Reagan years:
“You don’t have to go to college to be a success… We need those people who build our buildings, who send them soaring to the sky. We need the people who run the offices, people who do the hard physical work of our society.”
@Cat & Beard
Save your criticism for when Romney actually says something outlandish and irrational. If he can’t even say something practical and reasonable without getting attacked and demonized, then there’s little hope for productive political dialog. If a call for fiscal restraint and considering other options than extending government aid gets misconstrued as a call to eliminate all government aid and safety nets, it makes it really difficult to have a conversation.
Political discussions would be greatly helped by simply trying to understand what the other person is actually saying and re-presenting it as such, rather than trying to find a way in which what they say can be twisted to be interpreted in the most extreme meaning.
It’s the political season. We will get plenty of stupid from both parties. Pick your moments better.
@EXTRAMSG: THAT’S SOME REALLY HELPFUL ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE THAT REALLY HELPS WITH POLICY DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR THAT.
EVERYONE KNOWS COLLAGE IS FOR TEH GAYS.
@cat and beard- Yes, the government paid for most of my education. What they did not do was “give” me the money. I earned it for services rendered as per my enlistment contract.
This is indeed a surprisingly decent discussion (uh, toward the top half). I’ll just say that a) I like Reymont’s idea of using gov’t money to encourage graduates of programs we feel we need more grads of, and that doesn’t mean we can’t also loan money on ordinary terms to liberal arts majors. Also, B) I think the bigger point in post-subprime era America is that we need to do a way better job of teaching kids about money, and making educated and reasonable decisions about money from an early age.
(We have millions and millions and millions of adults to educate, too.)
We’d have a lot more rational policies if we had a lot more rational actors as citizens.
@CC: SO HOW DO WE DETERMINE WHICH TYPES OF EDUCATION ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT? I THINK THAT SORT OF THING WILL BACKFIRE. WHAT DO WE DO FOR THE PERSON THAT STRUGGLES AND STRUGGLES WITH MATH BUT IS A BRILLIANT POET? I FEEL THAT A MORE FAIR SYSTEM WOULD BE TO GIVE THE SAME OPPORTUNITIES TO EVERYONE AND THEN HAVE SOME SORT OF LOAN FORGIVENESS FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO ENTER IN TO PUBLIC SERVICE.
Lets go a step farther with this, if you as hypothetical parents make less than six figures yearly your child should not be allowed to learn how to read and write. Less than five figures and your child isn’t allowed to go outside. That should fix the poverty problem.
@EXTRAMSG As I said before, federal loans are not easy to get rid of and it should stay that way. If Mitt Romney believes that subsidizing education is not a worthy investment, he’s not a very good business man. See this chart: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/0…
If he wants a smaller government and an American where people do more things for themselves, then send kids to college. They’ll earn more over their lifetime and therefore pay more in taxes and take less in benefits.
In fact, he wants to do the opposite by limiting eligibility for Pell Grants. The changes made by the House (which he endorsed) would mostly affect part-time students! The ones that are probably working as well as going to class. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12…
If Mitt becomes president, students loans, grants and aid will be cut because he certainly isn’t going to cut defense or medicare first.
@ GRAHAM: Like I said, both the math student and the poet can receive gov’t loans, if eligible, but we can subsidize the math student’s loans.
Making choices like that is what policymaking is. If we as a nation feel we need more poets, we’ll make it a little easier for a kid to be a poet.
I’m not suggesting that we subsidize just the supposed “economic benefit” majors and tell all the hippies to fuck off.
I’ll also agree that public service should be heavily incentivized, including loan forgiveness. We did that 40 years ago and had a great bureaucracy until we took away all the benefits and made public sector work a truly shitty alternative for the best people in almost every case.
@Super Chundy – extramsg’s point was that you’re not staying on topic, and you’re resorting to hyperbole.
Mittens DIDN’T say that subsidizing education is not a worthy investment, like you just claimed. So why are you talking? Why those links? Why so many paragraphs?
You’re just making up a straw man argument so that you can rant to us. Knock it off or get out of the thread.
@Colin – Oh, I’m definitely saying that we should subsidize the “majors of economic benefit” and tell the hippies to fuck off. That’s definitely what I’m saying! They shouldn’t even get federally guaranteed student loans!
“But what about the poets?” is not a rallying cry that particularly moves me.
I can’t imagine that worldview catching on very widely, though. I’ll just add it to my other character flaws.
@REYMONT: THE REASON WHY PEOPLE CAN’T AFFORD SCHOOL (REMEMBER WHEN I SAID THAT TUTION HAD OUTPACED INFLATION BY 200%) IS BECAUSE WE’VE STOPPED SUBSIDIZING HIGHER EDUCATION. THEY ARE THE EXACT SAME ISSUE, IT’S JUST A QUESTION OF WHEN WE’RE PAYING FOR THESE NECCESARY PUBLIC SERVICES.
@REYMONT: SO YOU’RE SAYING THAT WE SHOULD PURELY SUBSIDIZE BUSINESS MAJORS AND TELL EVERYONE ELSE TO FUCK OFF? IT’S THOSE BUSINESS MAJORS WHO’RE THE BANKERS AND STOCK BROKERS. THEY MAKE THE MOST MONEY… SO YEAH. THAT’S A GREAT PLAN.
Kids don’t know what credit is or how loans work when they enter college. Overwhelming evidence exists to back that up, and if you don’t buy it, go down to the Cheerful Tortoise and strike up a conversation about credit card debt with some PSU students.
We need comprehensive financial management education in high schools (as well as civics) to teach kids how debt works, how to save, how to plan expenditures, etc. Otherwise it’s going to get a lot worse before it ever gets better. I feel very fortunate my parents taught me these things before college and I wasn’t suckered in by the aggressive credit card marketing targeted to students (often with the cooperation of and financial benefit to the college).
Colleges should also expand the mission of financial aid offices to offer free, confidential debt management and financial planning counseling. Ideally, this would be a terrific peer-to-peer program for business/accounting students to get some real-world experience in the field by working with “clients.”
But I’m a dreamer.
@Graham – Now you’re pulling a Super Chundy. I didn’t mention Business Majors at all – no one did! I mentioned Engineering and Computer Science and Medicine, and Colin suggested Math. Someone should have thought of Teaching by now, but no one suggested Business. So WTF are you talking about?
@Graham –
I’m not sure, but it seems like you’re cherry-picking there, or at least not going far enough. You said that people can’t afford tuition because tuition has gotten so expensive. But I’d suggest that tuition has only grown so expensive BECAUSE people keep signing up to pay those fees. Supply and demand, right? Like any other business, they’ll charge as much as they can get away with.
And I’d suggest that making federal student loans available for hobby majors has artificially increased the demand for those majors.
@Reymont: Is the demand for those majors and the subsidization of them really a problem, as you see it? I know plenty of people who only succeed in college because they are able to pursue a field of study that challenges and inspires them. Often they have no desire to go into that field, and having a degree in something not directly related to the work at-hand is not usually a real drawback. As long as you have relevant work experience, good references from respectable people and interview well, I couldn’t give two shits that your BA is in basket-weaving.
@REYMONT: YOU MENTIONED “subsidize the majors of economic benefit”. WITHOUT SPECIFYING WHAT YOU MEANT. I TOOK THAT TO MEAN THE MAJORS MAKING THE MOST MONEY. WHICH WOULD BE BUSINESS MAJORS.
SO TELL YOU WHAT, YOU MAKE A LIST OF THE PEOPLE IN SOCIETY THAT YOU VALUE WITH YOUR WHITE HETERO-NORMATIVE CIS-GENDERED WORLDVIEW AND THEN EXPLAIN WHY THOSE ARE THE PEOPLE WE SHOULD HELP AND THEN EXPLAIN THAT PEOPLE WHO DON’T FIT IN TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING SHOULD BE PUT ON AN ICE FLOW LEFT TO STARVE TO DEATH. OR MAYBE WE SHOULD LET EVERYONE GET AN EDUCATION AND THEN SEE WHAT THEY CAN ACCOMPLISH WITH THEIR EDUCATION. IF THEY STARVE, THEY STARVE. BUT AT LEAST THEN WE GAVE EVERYONE THE SAME OPPORTUNITIES.
@REYMONT: YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT THE TOPIC.
RATE OF INCREASE OF SCHOOL COSTS: http://www.economist.com/node/16960438
ROLE OF STATE SUBSIDIES IN THE COST OF TUITION: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45040257/ns/us…
@33 You’re the one who took the thread “off topic” by mentioning major-specific federal student loans. Anyways….
There is no national glut of communications, religious studies, or art history majors; combined humanities and liberal arts students make up 9.7 percent of ALL college majors.
More to the point, these 10-percenters are contributing members of the society we all–except Reymont, apparently–live in. Among these majors, 93-percent are employed (84-percent full-time) and a plurality are employed in a managerial position in an office or sales occupations.
Unless we want the “hobby majors” to be reserved for Le Rich, the federal government should continue to fund all fields of study without preference. If a student has a high GPA and SAT/ACT scores, they should be able to select their course of study without fear that their student aid would be affected.
Oh, by the way, all those links, there called facts and evidence. You know, the things you adduce to defend your claim. Like this piece of evidence: http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/c…
Well said, Sūṕër Ḉḩüñdŷ. The notion that some of the major academic fields are inherently impractical is a lie used to justify the ongoing gutting of programs in the humanities and social sciences. The logic is entirely circular: These majors are deemed unimportant because it’s relatively hard to get jobs in related fields. And it’s hard to get jobs in fields related to these majors because they’ve been deemed unimportant. There’s nothing inherent in the fields of history or literature, for example, that would necessarily make it impractical to then earn a living teaching or writing in that field. We’ve let that happen by pressuring universities to model themselves as profit-driven enterprises.
@GEYSER: THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THE HORRIBLE FALLACY OF THE PROFIT-DRIVEN SCHOOL. AS WE CAN CLEARLY SEE FROM THE SUCCESS OF THIS GAO REPORT, THESE INSTITUTIONS CAN BE FAIRLY DESCRIBED AS DESPICABLE (http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-948T). ANYONE WHO TRY’S TO USE THE PROFIT MOTIVE AS A DRIVER FOR HOW SOCIAL SERVICES OUGHT TO WORK IS AN IDIOT.
SO LET’S GET BACK ON A USEFUL TOPIC. WHY IS IT THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CONTINUALLY TRIES TO REMOVE FUNDING FOR EDUCATION (PRIMARY, SECONDARY, AND POST-SECONDARY)? MANY PEOPLE (MYSELF INCLUDED) THINK IT IS BECAUSE THERE IS A CORRELATION BETWEEN HIGHER LEVELS OF EDUCATION AND VOTING FOR PROGRESSIVE (READ: NOT REPUBLICAN) CANDIDATES(http://diverseeducation.wordpress.com/2008…). SO GENERALLY SPEAKING, IT WOULD BE SELF-DEFEATING FOR REPUBLICANS TO HELP TO FUND A SYSTEM THAT WOULD REMOVE THEMSELVES FROM THE HALLS OF POWER; THEY DO THIS AT AN OBVIOUS COST TO SOCIETY. THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY SOCIOPATHS.
@Super Chundy – You said that humanities and liberal arts majors only make up 9.7% of all majors, above. If that’s true, you’re totally right – there’s no glut to worry about at all! Where did you get those figures? This is something I’d like to read more about. Thanks.
This chart, from the National Center for Education Statistics, shows that Communications, Social Sciences, Art, and Psychology(*) make up about 45% of all college majors awarded in 2008 and 2009. I would have thought it was even higher, based on personal experience in Portland, but of course I know that’s always an innacurate view. And I’d suggest that 45% DOES mean there’s a glut of hobby majors.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/fig…
(*) I sure would NOT have thought Psychology was a hobby degree, when I started this conversation. But HuffPo reports that 4 out of the 10 majors with highest-unemployment rates were all different flavors of Psychology. I think that means I should include it on my list of things that people study primarily for fun, even though there aren’t enough jobs in the market for them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/08/t…
@Geyser – Sounds like you and I just differ in opinion, on the value of certain majors. If it’s opinion, I’m not sure how to understand yours better – that’s what I’m struggling with. I just don’t see the value in degrees that aren’t likely to get you hired. That’s a hobby, that’s for personal pleasure. And spending 4 years and thousands of dollars on a hobby “feels” wrong to me….narcissistic and masturbatory.
@Oregometry – To answer your first question – I sure don’t know! I’ve just been thinking about it a lot, lately. Thanks for helping. But you said you knew people who only made it through school because they studied something they thought was fun. I don’t see anything revelatory, there. EVERYONE prefers to work on something fun. Why would we reward that with public funds? Why not recognize the people who ARE willing to work on something hard, instead? Let the people studying something that’s PRIMARILY for fun pay their own way.
Here’s where I got the 9.7% figure: http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/c…
But using your numbers from the NCES, I did calculated a higher number. In 2008-09, 30% of college students graduated with a degree in area, ethnic, cultural, and gender studies; communications; English language and literature/letters; foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics; liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities; philosophy and religious studies; social sciences and history; and visual and performing arts (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tab…).
(It’s 36% if you include psychology majors.)
I don’t think that’s too high; especially when you consider that several of these fields of study produce degree holders who are gainfully employed–usually with higher median earnings and lower rate of unemployment compared to the general population.
But to disprove you point, if there was a glut of any of these hobby majors than it’s communication majors. Over the last 38 year, the number of graduates majoring in communications has increased by 650%. Yet, according to the WSJ, the unemployment rate among this group is 6.3% (http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1… The current national unemployment rate is 8.3%.
I’d rather let the market determine which majors are “hobby majors”–not you.