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Yesterday Mark Cuban continued to rail against “sports management” majors. It’s a “thing” of his.
If you just look at the unemployment rate for recent college graduates, it’s 6.8 percent. My guess is that if you take out Sports Management majors and a few other “I did this for passion and not a job” majors (sorry had to get that in there), that rate might be under 5 percent.
That’s from a “cute” piece Cuban wrote for the Huffington Post. However, it you want some more “meat” check out his blog post on the subject of college debt.
The discussion on ROI when it comes to a college education is an intriguing one, in general. If you are a numbers person, I think the story is a bit hard to digest. That’s because “drive” and “motivation” play a huge role in how well a young graduate “uses” their newly obtained degree. That means it’s hard to say graduates from this university always do better than graduates from that university. Or it’s hard to say graduates with a major in “this” do better than graduates who majored in “that.” Character plays too big a part to make those sweeping statements.
In fact, you don’t even need a college degree to get a high paying job. But, if you are playing the odds, you are much better off getting that bachelor’s degree.
How much is that bachelor’s degree worth, though?
Both Cuban and I attended public universities. The cost of attending a public unviersity is drastically less than that of a private university. Cuban writes;
IMHO, the biggest problem the economy has is the enormous student debt new college grads and those leaving college find themselves with. In the past leaving college meant getting a job and getting a used car and/or an apartment with some friends. Yes there was student debt, but it wasn’t any where near your car payment. You could still afford the car and the apartment. Now its the exact opposite. Today, the minute you graduate college you face the challenge of debt against a college education whose value is immediately “underwater.”
As the price of a college education has (dramatically) increased, students have not become smarter shoppers. The internet has allowed everyone to price shop a half dozen different sites for a pair of pants, but when it comes to an education apparently people will pay anything.
Is the crushing debt of student loans (I’ll use Cuban’s pet peeve) for that sports management degree from [insert mediocre private college here] worth it?
[via Huff Po]
